by Beverly Baird
The 30-foot high sand dune bordering Hermosa Valley School on the west is celebrating 10 years of being nearly free of the invasive ice plant that had choked out the native plants that flourished there as recently as the 1970s. Mule fat bushes were the first native plants to be reintroduced to the dune. Since then, bladder pod, lemonade berry, beach burr, dune poppy, buckwheat, dune sunflower, toyon, sand verbena and wishbone bush have all taken root there.
The plants that follow the path from Loma Drive down to the school playground once covered all of the dunes that run the length of the three beach cities.
Many of the plants are labeled so kids and their parents walking down the path to the school can identify them.
Suzanne Evans, who currently resides in Switzerland, returns to Hermosa Beach several times a year to tend to the dune, and to teach Hermosa Valley eighth graders the importance, simplicity and beauty of native plants.
Evans grew up near the school in the ‘50s. Her mother, Betty, was a member of the Hermosa Garden Club. She taught Suzanne, her older brother Bob and younger sister Jeanne the names of the native plants and the birds that dwelt among the plants. Ten years ago, she decided to restore the dune to its natural state as an homage to her mother, who had recently passed away.
After receiving approval from the School Board, with the understanding no district funds would be required, she enlisted help from Hermosa Valley history teacher Tammy Heath, ethnobotanist Ivan Snyder, neighbors Miyo Prassas, and Jackie Taglioferro, Boy Scouts and other volunteers.
“Native plants ‘sleep, creep and then leap.’ They may not look like they are thriving during their dormant season, but just wait and they will have reseeded themselves with a vengeance,” Evans told a group of eighth graders who helped clear ice plant and sow seeds last week.
The native garden has become so prolific that Evans was able to give students from Heath’s second through sixth period classes bags of seeds to sow along the dune.
In addition to sowing seeds, each class planted a mule fat bush to create a natural wall to obscure the homes to the west.
Ethnobotanist Ivan Snyder shows students how early South Bay natives used sticks from mule fat bushes to start fires.
Ethnobotanist Snyder demonstrated to the students how native peoples of the area used mule fat bush to start a fire by rubbing sticks together. The early South Bayans also used the mule fat bushes’ strong, and very straight twigs to make arrow shafts. ER
