Unique Project Underway in Bear Creek Redwoods
Published June 5, 2025
The Alma Cultural Landscape located within Midpen’s Bear Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve provides a unique experience among Midpen’s 27 preserves for its evident layers of cultural history. Currently, Midpen staff are working to restore and revegetate an area that was once a highly manicured non-native estate garden with native plants, highlighting the history of the area while aiding in the restoration of the surrounding habitat.
The many layers of human history evident on the Bear Creek Redwoods Preserve landscape span from Native People who stewarded the landscape for millennia, to the era of logging and lumber mills in the Santa Cruz Mountains, to elaborate estates of the wealthy and even the first Jesuit College on the West Coast.
“Combining this preserve’s history with a native plant restoration project is such a unique opportunity. I can’t wait for visitors to experience the site as it evolves over time,” said Midpen Resource Management Specialist Amanda Mills.
Midpen’s efforts to rehabilitate the site include planting native species within the layout of historical gardens once present here, while continuously removing invasive species and monitoring progress. This valiant effort aims to increase native species cover and biodiversity, improve pollinator habitats, maintain the openness of the historical cultural landscape and create a lawn-like effect with native species that are more drought tolerant and require minimal maintenance.
All seeds used in the restoration process have been collected locally in Bear Creek Redwoods Preserve and were propagated by Grassroots Ecology Native Plant Nursery. Various native sedges, grasses, rushes and wildflowers as well as manzanitas, coffeeberry, California aster and black oak are being planted. Wrapping up the second year of the project, Midpen field crews have installed an impressive 18,000 seedlings and acorns on site, with a final goal of 60,000.
“The project has already improved the look and feel of the site, especially with so many wildflowers in bloom,” Mills said.