This year’s 18th Annual beach planting  and cleanup at Linda Mar State beach on Saturday, January 17th was truly a COMMUNITY effort! Members of the Pacific Beach Coalition and volunteers did double duty, picking up trash on the beach, then planting natives in the dunes. Three organizations donated lots of beautiful plants: Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy (GGNPC), The Watershed Nursery & Go Native.

Most of these plants were tended by eighteen dedicated plant babysitters who kept their charges alive since May, when the GGNPC made their donation, or October, when the Watershed Nursery made theirs.

Thank you to the Pacifica Shorebird Alliance who stood guard and educated us about our contingent of roosting Western snowy plovers and planted yellow sand verbena and beach morning glory in the Plovers favorite hangout. These two beach plants create the low, open foredunes that the plovers particularly like. By adding more of these plants we hope to improve the beach for these beleaguered birds.

The City of Pacifica offered support by delivering tools and a water tank and removing the pulled weeds. Special thanks to Mary Petrilli who has lead the beach planting all 18 years and to Kathy Kellerman who has grown and coordinated all of the plants for  most of those years! Also thank you to the many gardeners and green thumbs who helped many of us learn the tricks of planting.

On this day we planted over 1,200 plants. Between the stalwarts who have been planting for nearly two decades and all the folks who have joined lately, approx. 20,000 native plants have been planted. The transformation of Linda Mar Beach from iceplant to the beautiful, native dunes is unfolding before our very eyes!