At wildlife crossing, flora comes before fauna

It’s been three years since the crew for the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing Native Plant Nursery set up shop in Calabasas, with dozens of difficult-to-assemble metal tables, a spartan trailer and a million native seeds hand-collected from the surrounding hills.

- BY JEANETTE MARANTOS

That’s three years that nursery managers Jewlya (pronounced "Julia") Samaniego and Jose Campos have nurtured thousands of native plants from seed, despite plenty of rattlesnakes, hordes of pot-gnawing squirrels, the vile smelling essence of cougar pee to repel the squirrels, blistering summers that required twice-a-day watering, even on weekends and holidays, and a couple winters of mud, erosion and endless rain.

Now it’s graduation day, when native plants coaxed from seedling trays to 1-gallon pots stand ready for planting on the crossing itself this month.

"It feels like going off to college," said Samaniego, a slender mother of four whose oldest is in the throes of college planning. They’re ready to go and you want them to go, she said, "except, 'Wait, are you sure you're really ready?'"

Ready or not, the 5,000 or so plants have to go because the wildlife crossing over the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills is ready to receive them, with its special, once lifeless soil that was brought to life with inoculations of the same microbes and mycorrhizal fungi that thrive in soil of the surrounding hills. After the soil was added this summer, workers seeded the ground with a cover crop of native plants particularly good at kick-starting that fungi: Santa Barbara milk vetch, golden yarrow, California poppy and giant wild rye.

Those seeds have sprouted and grown on the crossing these last few months, especially the milk vetch, but they'll be cut back to just a few inches this month to stress the plants and encourage the fungi to produce more nutrients in the soil to help them out.