La Voz

Media Credit: Doris Huang The new Kirsch Center at De Anza College is adjacent to the environmental studies department's gardens.

At the southeast corner of the De Anza College campus, you can stroll through coastal redwoods, pause by a freshwater marsh and wander into a California desert, all in the same 1.5 acre plot. In fact, you can meander through 12 different California plant ecosystems there, and help yourself to an organically grown tomato if you're hungry. All that and much more can be found on the grounds outside the Kirsch Center for Environmental Studies.

In 1971, a De Anza faculty member, Doug Cheeseman, and a few other instructors and students broke ground for a special garden dedicated to California native plant species. They organized the garden into 12 distinct plant habitats. The "communities" included sand dunes, grassland, chaparral, freshwater marsh and eight other California ecosystems. The project, called the Cheeseman Environmental Study Area, flourished over the years and now serves as an environmental learning resource, as well as a quiet, meditative retreat. It contains over 400 species of native plants, and attracts many varieties of birds, insects and lizards. No herbicides or pesticides are used in the area.

Today the Cheeseman ESA thrives under the watchful eye of its coordinator, Annie Presler. Growing up in a large family, she hunted and fished as a child and fondly remembers her mother treating her infected knee with plantain leaves. She has been hooked on botany and its applications ever since.

Plants "sucked me in and they won't let me go," she says. A typical Presler tour through the ESA brings visitors face-to-face with a 12 foot saguaro cactus, estimated to be 50 years old; a fat black carpenter bee feasting on a smorgasbord of flowers; and a Nevin's barberry plant, with its sweet edible berries.

In the past few years, Presler has overseen the addition of an outdoor classroom, a butterfly garden and an organic vegetable garden. She introduced wooden benches and informational signs into each of the plant communities.

The signs, a gift from the De Anza Associated Student Body, provide rich details regarding the characteristics of the various plant communities, and the locations of the communities throughout the state.

Central to the original concept of the ESA is the inherent value of California's native plant species. "Aggressive, non-native plants have surpassed development in terms of their threat to plant ecosystems," says Presler. Non-native plants compete with native ones for limited resources such as water and space. Aggressive plants grow fast and quickly crowd out their native neighbors.

The chemical balance of the soil can be altered as a result. This ripple effect can even spread to the animals living in the ecosystem, as the native plants they feed on are replaced by non-native species.

Presler cited English ivy and eucalyptus trees as two especially invasive non-native plants. Eucalyptus trees, in particular, grow quickly and consume large amounts of available water to maintain themselves. "This is not a well-behaved plant," Presler observes.

By the same token, there are beneficial non-native plants that are non-invasive; rosemary is an example.

Large groups can contact Annie Presler at 408-864-5446 for a docent-led tour.

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