Past Youth Council Projects

In Fall 2024, the Ojai Green Valley Project Youth Council installed a large native plant garden at Nordhoff Highschool spanning the hillside on the backside of campus. The GVP members planted 273 plants including: Sticky Monkey Flowers, Purple Sage, California Sagebrush, Toyon, Hollyleaf Redberry, California Poppy, Blue-Eyed Grass, Bush Sunflower, California Wild Rose, White Sage, Elderberry, Manzanita, Yucca, Mountain Mahogany, and Mugwort. This plant palette was selected in order to create habitat for as many pollinators as possible in the space.

The team flagged the site and lead three volunteer planting events. Nordhoff classes helped to dig holes and CREW members helped to weed whack mulch and prep the plant site with soil. This collaborative effort is the biggest garden we have installed yet and was made possible by several community grants including Ojai Rotary and the Ojai Arts Grant.

Project Video

In Fall 2024, our Thousand Oaks Youth Council team worked with rain barrel international to design more aesthetic rain barrels that would encourage homeowners to conserve water in their yards.

The team painted seven rain barrels, selling five at an auction to help pay for costs and donating two to local school gardens including the Cal Lutheran Seed Garden and the Thousand Oaks High School native plant garden.

Rain barrels are a great tool for gardeners that want to save money on their monthly water bill. They help to conserve water in times of drought and reduce runoff on rainy days. Clean Stream Champion says “a 55-gallon rain barrel can save up to 1,300 gallons of water every year”. That means our project is helping to conserve up to 9100 gallons of water every year!

In Fall 2024, our first ever Oxnard Youth Council team worked together to design and install a native plant garden at a Boys and Girls Club in Nyeland Acres. They picked a plant palette of native plants, created a design using google maps, and then led a planting day with the Boys and Girls Club members!

GVP members also presented their project to Supervisor Lopez and asked the City of Oxnard to support in their efforts to save two sycamore trees that would be cut know due to new construction at the Boys and Girls Club site.

They planted a total of 65 plants and will support in monitoring the plants health in the next few years until they are fully established. Way to go Oxnard Youth Council!

The Youth Council designed a pollinator garden at Nordhoff Junior High and High School to create an educational tool and sanctuary for pollinators and the community. Team Rain Masters proposed a rain garden to address water drainage issues and enhance the area with trees and flowers. Team Corner Oasis focused on water retention and sustainability, creating a serene refuge. Team Rose Way emphasized drought-tolerant plants and educational signage to promote biodiversity and beautify the campus.

Students shared their proposed design ideas with campus staff members and worked with them to develop a plan that meets campus needs. The design phase was completed in Spring 2024, Green Valley Project members will lead several community planting events in the fall to make their vision a reality.

In Fall of 2023, Green Valley Project Youth Council worked with the Ojai Raptor Center and the CREW field staff to build and install two barn owl boxes and a raptor perch at Nordhoff High School. On December 12, two rehabilitated juvenile barn owls were released at the school. One of the boxes has a nearby wildlife camera provided by PAX Environmental to monitor if and when the box becomes inhabited by a family of barn owls.

Another key element of their project was to raise awareness of the negative effects of rodenticides on an ecosystem. The owl boxes were a demonstration of a more natural pest management system. We received 60 signatures from residents in Ojai Valley pledging to not use rodenticides in their homes.

Finally GVP members helped to plant over 800 native plants with the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy and trees with Ojai Trees to help build raptor habitat at the East End Preserve at the Turtle Conservancy!

Our 2023 Spring Youth Council group designed and planted a demonstration garden at MESA, a housing facility for transitional foster youths. This garden was a critter corridor demonstrating different ecosystems in Ojai Valley as well as a sensory garden that will serve as a therapeutic space for the residents at MESA farm.

The C.R.E.W. team helped us to remove the asphalt driveway and then we led several volunteer events to plant 250 native plants including california buckwheat, white sage, toyon, coyote mint and dudleyas. We also installed a drip irrigation system to help the plants to establish and ensure the longevity of this project.

In Fall of 2022, Green Valley Project Youth Council partnered with UC Davis and UC Santa Barbra Professors; as well as, Ventura Land Trust to develop and implement an invasive species removal plan to extract smilo grass (Stipa miliacea) from Big Rock Preserve. Smilo grass has high germination rates, high relative growth rates, and prolific seed output leading to dense, low richness communities of primarily grass across the landscape. Youth Council removed over 55 lbs of smilo grass (Stipa miliacea) the Ventura Land Trust preserve.

In Spring of 2022, Green Valley Project Youth Council partnered with Watershed Progressive to create the Green Valley Project Pollinator Corridor. A pollinator Corridor is a network of pollinator gardens that will provide shade, food, and shelter for a variety of pollinators as they migrate through Ventura County. Pollinators have declined by 95% since the 1980s, so it is very important to make an effort to help them recover, especially by cause 35% of food crops rely solely on pollination to reproduce and 75% if the worlds flowering plants rely on pollination from bees, butterflies, birds and other animals to survive. We planted 4 educational community gardens for the community, 50 home pollinator gardens, and added a total of 653 California native plants to our community.

In Fall of 2021, our first ever Green Valley Project Youth Council partnered with Ojai Trees to plant 50 free native oak trees in the Ojai Valley community. Oak Trees play an importance role in protecting Ojai’s watershed. The oak canopy slows rainfall, decreasing erosion of the soil and improving water quality in creeks, streams and rivers. Shading from trees can reduce surrounding temperatures by as much a 6 degrees. Native oak trees can support up to 67 nesting bird species at a time and provide winter shelter and habitat for more than 500 pollinator species. These are just a few of the many benefits of this project!