Over the past couple of years, a mother and horticulturist has worked to transform a once-neglected strip of public land along Avenue 20 near the 5 Freeway in Lincoln Heights into a habitat of California native plants.
Marie Massa is behind the Lincoln Heights California Native Plant Corridor. She told KNX News’ Margaret Carrero she was inspired by a Girl Scouts project involving planter beds.
“There used to be a middle school sharing space with the high school, and they actually helped the girl who put in the planter boxes, and when I walked past and saw the planter boxes, I was like ‘Oh look that! That’s so nice! Somebody did something and made the parkway look really nice!’” she recalled.
She said the plants continued to thrive despite nobody watering them, and she got an idea.
“Let me see if I throw some wildflower seeds right before the rainy season in 2022, and they came up along with all the weeds, but the wildflowers grew,” she said.
She continued to weed when she saw the California buckwheat grow.
“So I started doing a design for the space while we were sheet mulching the parkway, and then in 2023 that winter, we started planting,” she said.
Massa said inviting a native plant into your garden is a great way to help nature and its creatures.
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“It's important because we're sharing this earth with other creatures who have been here, who have evolved with these plants for thousands, millions of years,” she said. “By humans changing the environment so drastically, all of these creatures are losing their space, their habitat, and anything that us as humans can do to make this our space more livable for us and them is a small thing that we can do to help all the creatures that we share this planet with.”
She said she’s seen a variety of creatures in the garden.
“So I've seen lizards, spiders, bees, honeybees, and lots of different native bees already,” she said. “I haven't seen a bumblebee yet, but I'm hopeful that one will come. I've seen lots of butterflies. I've planted narrow-leaf milkweed, which is our native milkweed. I'm trying to get this to be like a habitat so that monarchs can lay their eggs, and that the adults can have flowers to feed from, and I've seen birds. There's squirrels [that] are living in this oak tree here, and they're always running around. I've even seen some little mice, and they kind of live closer to the school garden area. “
Massa said she plans on dedicating another two years to the corridor and hopes others in the community will step up to keep it growing.
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