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Be the first to register your site! We are seeking site coordinators to lead cleaning and greening projects for the 23rd Annual Oakland Creek to Bay Day, Saturday, September 15th. Oakland Creek to Bay Day is part of California and International Coastal Cleanup Day, the largest volunteer day in California and the world!
Projects include litter removal, habitat restoration, urban greening, and beautification. Many Creek to Bay Day projects occur in creeks and along shorelines, though off-water sites are equally important for protecting waterways, as shown by this infographic. Lead a Creek to Bay Day project. As a site coordinator, you will have access to:
Please click here to register (This form works best with Google Chrome. Do not use Explorer.) If you need registration assistance, please contact adoptaspot@oaklandnet.com, or call (510) 238-7611. Please register by Friday, August 17, 2018 to allow for adequate planning and promotion time, as well as availability of requested tools and City services. Please mark your calendar for the Creek to Bay Day Site Coordinator Meeting on Wednesday, August 15, 2018 from 6-8 pm. Not interested in being a site coordinator, but still want to volunteer? Check oaklandcreektobay.org in late August to find information on a project to join. Visit oaklandcreektobay.org for site registration, promotional information, and more. Thank you for keeping Oakland beautiful – from Creek to Bay! In the early 2000s, neighbors of the East Oakland King Estates community came together to address neighborhood issues. During one of these meetings came the suggestion to clean up a small open space at the corner of Lamp and Sterling streets. This patch of land was slipping into misuse with dumping, drugs, and disrepair. After an initial planting of native plants, neighbors named it the Phoenix Rising Peace Park. Neighbors came together yearly on Earth Day to maintain it. Over the years, energy started to wane, and plants were dying. Long term resident Susan Boggiano took the leadership of this City-approved Adopt a Spot and, in an effort to re-energize and create a place for the neighborhood to gather and enjoy, Susan applied for and was awarded a grant in 2017 from Keep Oakland Beautiful to buy new plants for the garden. Once again, neighbors are coming together to plant and weed the park.
The small grant from Keep Oakland Beautiful helped bring the garden to the next level. This neighborhood gem of a public space has flagstone paths meandering through drought-tolerant landscaping, a decorative bird bath fountain, a neighborhood bulletin board and book exchange, and a bench with views overlooking it all. The crowning glory is Susan’s own sculpture of a phoenix rising from flames above a totem of hidden Oakland tributes. People, pets, birds, and pollinators will be enjoying this neighborhood oasis for years to come! 
If you've walked anywhere in Oakland, you've likely seen the ubiquitous trash can mosaics. There are more than 60 around the city, and Keep Oakland Beautiful has helped contribute to this effort through our small grants program.
The program began as in 2010 to beautify Allendale Park in East Oakland, and has grown to other parts of the city. Volunteer artists Roberto Costa and Daud Abdullah lead the beautification effort early on and have designed trash cans on High Street, 35th Avenue to Seminary Avenue, Foothill Boulevard, Grand Avenue, and Telegraph. Beverly Shalom, Karen Diffrumolo, and Linda Vogel have also created beautiful works of art on trash cans throughout the city. Costa wanted to bring mosaic trash cans to Oakland after seeing decorated trash cans while visiting Arcata, CA. Costa has also taught neighborhood groups to decorate the trash cans in their communities. Abdullah was quoted in the Oakland Tribune as saying, "I had done a lot of community cleanup projects, I liked the idea of making a trash can look so pretty that nobody could miss it." He has has decorated most of the mosaic trash cans, mostly in East Oakland with the themes of love and peace. Learn How to Mosaic a Trash Can:See a Slideshow of Oakland's Trash Can Mosaics: We have started to see some of the fruits of Oakland community members' planting throughout the city of Oakland! In November of 2017, we gave out 4700 daffodil bulbs and hundreds of packets of poppy seeds to more than 200 groups.
Daffodils have been providing the opportunity for Oakland to beautify their neighborhoods and bring the joy of spring flowers to their neighborhoods every November for the past decade. Stay tuned for more stories about blooms in Oakland and our annual event in November! Check out Keep Oakland Beautiful daffodils planted by Naomi Schiff, an Oakland community member, on the three traffic islands between Harrison St. and Oakland Ave. and Orange St., Fairmount and 29th St. Naomi picked this location because she has been planting in this highly visible area between heavily-used roads for two decades. This area was once a building parcel, with two small stores on it, long ago in the days of streetcars and before the freeways. At one time the city maintained it as a grass lawn, watered automatically and mowed. Some neighbors would kick a soccer ball around. Then came a drought in the 1980s and they stopped watering. When the grass died, people started using it as an informal car repair lot. Neighbors got tired of this and asked the city to do something. A landscape architect had a donated landscape design, which would have been wonderful to execute, but a city staffer left and never followed through. Finally the city planted a few miscellaneous trees in a line down the middle (and a nice oak tree on a smaller traffic island). A neighbor added some trees that had outgrown his planting pots, and some roses. Naomi began planting drought-resistant plants, picking up trash, and keep up with pulling out the weeds.  Naomi has been planting daffodils many of the years since Keep Oakland Beautiful started the program. It is a tough environment and they don't all survive, but some last several years. For the last few years we have managed to mulch some of the area to keep down weeds and to improve the soil, since some areas are rocky, infertile, and full of asphalt. A neighbor works for a tree service and recently donated a big load of excellent mulch. "I hope that Oakland will expand its program a bit and consider distributing appropriate pollinator plant seeds in addition to the daffodils and poppies; some of the local native wildflowers bloom in the summer and fall; are drought-resistant; support native species, and don't mind terrible dirt. The daffodils are lovely, but the bloom is finished quite early, and they don't attract the birds and insects as well as the native species." —Naomi Schiff |
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