{"id":36656,"date":"2022-11-26T00:01:10","date_gmt":"2022-11-26T08:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=36656"},"modified":"2026-06-06T07:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T07:04:09","slug":"urban-oasis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/urban-oasis\/","title":{"rendered":"An Urban Oasis: Keeping It Wild — And Fire Resistant"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"clearing-trailside-brush<\/a>
Tending a wild urban oasis — blackberry brambles didn’t stop Beth Keer.<\/span> Photos by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A handful of neighbors gathered on a Saturday morning this fall to reduce the fire load of dead and dying brush from a wild urban oasis — a hidden-away space known as Beaconsfield Canyon in the Montclair district of Oakland, California. <\/em><\/p>\n

The volunteers, many of them members of Friends of Sausal Creek<\/a>, worked all morning, and a lot of flammable debris got hauled down the canyon and into a waiting dumpster. <\/em><\/p>\n

I invited canyon volunteer Wendy Tokuda to write a guest post on behalf of this ever-changing canyon in the city.\u00a0 — BFN<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
By Wendy Tokuda<\/em><\/div>\n

Beaconsfield Canyon has changed! Fifteen years ago, it was overgrown with weeds, and trash was strewn about — a broken computer, tires in the creek, and bottles here and there.<\/p>\n

Since then, neighbors and volunteers with the Friends of Sausal Creek have been restoring the canyon — hauling out garbage (including a washing machine), pulling out invasive plants and replacing them with natives like sword fern, mugwort, coffee berry, native asters, phacelia, and native grasses and blackberry.<\/p>\n

As California\u2019s fires became more dangerous, much of our work has morphed into fuel reduction — getting rid of the flammable overgrowth. We are slowly turning Beaconsfield Canyon into a nature preserve, a healthy, green urban oasis right in our own neighborhood.<\/p>\n

\"BEACONSFIELD-CANYON<\/a>
Volunteers met at the head of the canyon under the shade of its black cottonwood trees. They fanned out from there, some to climb the canyon’s steep walls to cut up flammable material and drag it to the canyon floor. Others took on the job of loading the debris onto sleds and tarps and hauling it down the trail to a waiting dumpster.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\"Patrick-cross-reducing-fire-load-in-Beaconsfield-Canyon,<\/a>
Patrick Cross<\/span> climbed the south-facing canyon wall to trim dead branches.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Ella-Matsuda-hauling-branches-out-of-Beaconsfield-canyon,<\/a>
Ella Matsuda joined in the work of dragging the trimmed <\/span>branches down the canyon trial.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Beaconsfield-Canyon-a-wild-urban-oasis\"<\/a>
The flammable debris was loaded into to a waiting dumpster outside the canyon’s mouth. Arriving volunteers were greeted with a table full snacks and drinks.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"Wendy-Tokuda-Albert-Chiu-in-beaconsfield-canyon\"<\/a>Canyon regulars Albert Chiu and <\/span>Wendy Tokuda kept tabs on the work<\/span>. <\/span>Photos by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

More nature stories at, “The Center of the Universe? It’s a Little Beach in Michigan, of Course,”<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0Also, “Insects I Have Known and (Tried to) Love.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"trimming-tree-urban-oasis\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Beaconsfield Canyon was blighted with trash and invasive species — until its human neighbors took it upon themselves to restore their wild urban oasis.\u00a0 Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2634,2635,34,2275,2636,2637,967],"class_list":["post-36656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","tag-beaconsfield-canyon","tag-black-cottonwood","tag-dont-miss","tag-neighbors","tag-urban-oasis","tag-wendy-tokuda","tag-wild-places"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36656"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49208,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36656\/revisions\/49208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}