The Nature Preserve is a long-standing area at LMC, first created in March of 1999 but it has become old, decrepit, and abandoned with time. But last summer, the Hyphae club, run by Zaire Allen, President, Talon Dumlao, Vice President, and members Brandon Mendoza and Abigail Thin, volunteered to repair the preserve and care for the native plants. One of their first tasks was solving the water issue.
“Yeah, we repaired a lot of pipes with many members,” Mendoza said.
They fixed broken pipes to provide efficient irrigation to water the plants. They also planted new native plants like Yarrow, Milkwe, Black sage, White sage, Hummingbird Sage, and Miner’s Lettuce, among others.
The club also maintains the California Great Oak trees in the arena, including Blue Oak.
They also care for a small fish pond with goldfish to keep the mosquito population down since mosquitos like laying eggs in water, and the first eat the mosquito eggs. The members also maintain the wildlife around the area.
“We try to keep the plants healthy for the pollinators,” Allen said. They keep a beekeeper’s hive in the Nature Preserve to cultivate a bee hive and help the bees pollinate the plants.
The location of the Nature Preserve is hard to find. It is near Parking Lot B, not far from the Student Union and the College Complex.
“It’s kind of towards the back of the school, near the math and welding buildings.” Hyphae club member Brittany Orihuela said. The area is marked by a small brown sign that reads “LMC Nature Preserve.” The sign is old and worn down, prompting the members to try to fix the signs.
“One thing at least I wanted to get going for the projects was to repair the signs around the preserve,” Mendoza said. They should be more prominent so LMC students are aware of the Nature Preserve and can find it easily.
Thin, however, wants to remodel and fix the broken storage room.
“We want a secure storage room or building,” she said, explaining that the storage room door had been destroyed and that it was easy to break into the tool supply area. She also, said that vandals have stolen or left tools around the preserve.
Club members believe the Nature Preserve is a crucial element that belongs to the LMC campus.
“It improves the community around us at LMC,” Mendoza said.
He explained that people join the club and socialize at the Nature Preserve, learning more about native plants and volunteering to care for them. Thin added that the Nature Preserve is unique compared to other school gardens.
“What we have here is native plants, which are not easy to find,’ Thin said.
They can’t find the native plants in Walmart, and they don’t sell seeds. But they can be found on a nature hike. The Nature Preserve isn’t a shared garden; its function is to preserve native plants.
One of the club’s goals is to eliminate invasive plants and invasive grasses since they soak up most of the water and deprive the native plants of the food they need to survive. The invasive plants have been overgrown in the Nature Preserve, providing a cast field of invasive grasses, like an untamed meadow.
The Hyphae Club’s goal is to protect the preserve from vandalism and raise awareness about it to inspire others to volunteer and help them take care of the plants.
If you’d like more information about joining the club and helping to care for the preserve contact Talon Dumlao at [email protected].
