Field journal

Wildflowers in the swales

Woodland Hilltop

  • Small yellow-and-white tidy tips and pale blue baby blue eyes flowers grow among flat stones lining a shallow swale.

    Tidy tips (Layia platyglossa) and baby blue eyes (Nemophila menziesii), from the native wildflower mix, in a rock-lined swale.

  • Purple lupine blooms across a green hillside below an oak and a gray-barked snag, looking out over a forested valley to distant hills.

    Lupine on the hilltop.

Tidy tips (Layia platyglossa) and baby blue eyes (Nemophila menziesii) are blooming in one of the rock-lined contour swales at Woodland Hilltop, which we began digging in October 2024 as a test, to slow runoff and hold water on the slope. Both are in the native wildflower mix we sowed in the swales. Lupine (Lupinus sp.) is out on the hilltop too.

It’s the first spring since the swales went in. We’ll keep photographing them through the dry season to see how long they stay green.

Project Woodland Hilltop restoration

Themes Ecological restoration Water management & soil restoration

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