By Stacey Vigallon and Baldwin Hills Greenhouse Program Interns
On May 29th, 2022 the Baldwin Hills Greenhouse Program wrapped up its 14th school year. The program was a balancing act of online and in-person activities at Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook. Despite the pandemic, Greenhouse students proved themselves to be both committed and adaptable. We fortunate to be able to collaborate with Cal Poly Pomona’s Questad Lab and Jen Toy of the USC Landscape Architecture program this year. The annual Cactus Commencement Ceremony - the culminating event where students present their work to an audience – was reinstated as an in-person event this year. Students led friends, family, alumni, and program collaborators through a series of environmental education stations that showcased the knowledge and skills that students had gained over the year.
Greenhouse interns were committed to seeing their projects to completion. As they do each year in the program, interns collectively invested hundreds of hours in the project process: crafting a proposal, collecting and analyzing data, and designing a project poster. This year, three interns opted for projects that were more product-oriented as opposed to research question centered. These projects included John Recendez’s plan for a habitat restoration community volunteer program, Azul Calderon’s Spanglish Ecology of the Baldwin Hills podcast, and Joseph McCullough’s digital tour of environmental justice issues created through Google Earth. Each year, we publish project abstracts to share the student knowledge with a broader audience. This year’s research projects asked interesting questions about nature-based practices, the future of Ballona Creek, walnut germination, urban foraging, and pocket habitat creation.
Vera Fang
Implementation and illustration of invertebrate habitats
At Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook, I selected three areas to implement pollinator habitats. These habitats would provide important habitats for native pollinators to live in. As coastal scrubs and native vegetation decline and cause native pollinator populations to dwindle, providing these habitats becomes crucial. I focused on three native plant species within these habitats: white sage, narrowleaf milkweed, and bladderpod. The invertebrates I focused on attracting were the monarch butterfly and carpenter bee. With the help of 20-25 Greenhouse Program students, I was able to implement these three habitats within three after-school workdays, installing a total of 54 plants. I also created illustrations of my target native plants and pollinators, as well as the harlequin bug. These illustrations will be used to create coloring pages and signage to educate the public about the importance of native habitats. The implementation phase went extremely well despite the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions limiting in-person workdays. Unfortunately, the plant nursery was not able to provide some of my original target native plants, such as California Buckwheat, so I had to adjust my plan. Overall, this project is definitely replicable by other groups seeking to implement their own pollinator habitats.
New signage for pocket habitats at Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook, using illustrations created by intern Vera Fang.
Jonathan Kim
Visualizing the Future of Los Angeles: How do students envision a restored Ballona Creek?
Urbanization of the local Ballona Creek and watershed has resulted in much of the existing native habitat being lost or damaged. Despite this, the remaining underlying watershed processes leave restoration as a viable option. I am conducting a multi-year research project exploring the idea of the impacts of the restoration of Ballona Creek, with a specific focus these past two years on how Baldwin Hills Greenhouse Program students understand this issue. As an initial step, I conducted a survey of my fellow Greenhouse peers to understand their opinions on nature access and aesthetics. These survey results aided me in the primary part of my project, which involved coordinating a visualization activity. Students were divided into different groups and created a drawing reflecting their collective vision of an environmentally restored creek. I determined that all groups idealize a creek with an abundance of plants and wildlife, as well as opportunities for human recreation. Next year, I plan to continue my project by using mapping tools to visualize realistic areas that Ballona Creek could be restored. All of these results will serve as a collective justification for why restoring the creek is necessary for the surrounding environment and community.
A team of Greenhouse students present their ideas for the future of Ballona Creek as part of Intern Jonathan Kim’s project.
Devansh Sharma
Urban foraging: finding comfort in eating wild plants
Foraging has been around for ages. From the native Tongva people to the average park-goer, foraging intrigues people from all walks of life. For this reason, this project was developed to better understand the connection between willingness to forage and the education behind it. Initially, the question was proposed: Will teenagers want to forage if they gain education on the topic? I hypothesized that teenagers would become more comfortable with foraging after they received education pertaining to foraging, such as basic rules to follow and what is edible on a plant. A group composed of high school students and Greenhouse students were asked questions regarding their background such as, Have you foraged for your own food before?, and they were asked about their willingness to eat foraged food. Following the initial survey, an educational presentation was given to the Greenhouse students, and then a subsequent survey showed an increase in how many people were extremely keen on foraging.
Adam Kim
Walnut germination: the potential effects of mycorrhizal inoculant
My project is on the effects of mycorrhizal inoculant on the germination of the Southern California Black Walnut. This project is important as the Southern California Black Walnut is endangered in Southern California due to habitat loss. If there is a rise in the germination rate of the walnuts through use of mycorrhizal inoculant, then it could help with the restoration effort of this important species. I set up 245 cold-stratified walnut seeds in 2-inch pots and split them into two groups: one with 123 pots that contained the mycorrhizal inoculant, and the other 122 that served as the control group (no inoculant added). Each pot got a mixture of potting soil, topsoil, and biosol fertilizer. They were monitored for approximately 3 months. Overall germination was low during that period. More of the walnuts with mycorrhizal inoculant germinated (11) compared to the control group (7). However, we have seen more seedling mortality in the inoculant group, though this could be caused by an outside factor.
Greenhouse Program students collaborate with USC Landscape Architecture graduate students to help install the Baldwin Hills Test Plot in November 2021.
Yusuf Maung and Aryan Punj
Mimicking nature: can video games replicate a nature walk effectively?
With the video game industry’s influence rapidly increasing every year and the COVID-19 quarantine showcasing that nature will not always be accessible to everyone, it is important to research ways to reduce stress other than relaxing in nature. We studied how videogames can be used to deal with mental stress and compared videogame impact to that of nature-based activities. Our study group was Greenhouse Program students. Surveys were taken before and after (1) a nature activity in person at Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook and (2) a videogame activity in Zoom. Surveys asked participants to report their stress level and their emotional state. Results indicated that our initial hypothesis that videogames would have the same level of impact on people's stress and emotion level as nature was not supported by the data set. Although our data set portrayed that videogames are not able to completely replicate nature’s impact in reducing stress and improving emotional status, it showcases that videogames can still help to a small extent.
Isabella Kelly
Discover Park to Playa!
The Park to Playa Trail and Ballona Creek Bike Path are highly used pathways in the Baldwin Hills area, although many people may not know that they are using them. I hope to develop a marketing strategy using my research that will popularize The Park to Playa Trail and encourage people to use it more often. I first conducted a survey on Greenhouse Program students to better understand their relationship to the Park to Playa Trail and Ballona Creek Bike Path. I found that all Greenhouse students who completed the survey (24) knew about the Ballona Creek Bike Path, while there were two that had never heard of the Park to Playa Trail. I then analyzed four hashtags on Instagram: #ballonacreek, #parktoplayatrail, #ballonacreekbikepath, and #parktoplaya. l found that hashtags associated with Ballona Creek Bike Path had upwards of 1000 posts while hashtags associated with Park to Playa Trail only had upwards of 100 posts.
Support for the Greenhouse Program was provided by the California State Parks Foundation Climate Resiliency program, National Fish & Wildlife Foundation, SoCal Urban Wildlife Refuge Project, and generous donors. Want to know what Greenhouse Program students are up to this coming school year? Be sure to check in with Nature Nexus Institute (naturenexusinstitute.org), the new organization that will be managing the Baldwin Hills Greenhouse Program in future school years.