The Park
A designated Natural Area in the middle of the city.
The hill is a rare remnant of San Francisco's coastal-bluff ecosystem — and the city has flagged it as a place worth protecting.
The hill has been specially designated a Natural Area by the SF Rec & Park Natural Resources Division — meaning the city has flagged it as a place whose natural resources are a priority to protect.
What makes it valuable is what survives here: remnant patches of coastal-bluff ecosystem that have hung on for millennia even as the city grew up around them.
Why have these native plants held on? The answer is the thin, rocky soil that faces directly into the wind off the Pacific. Natives have been here for hundreds of thousands of years and have evolved to survive these gnarly conditions — deep roots that pull moisture and nutrients from far below long after the topsoil has dried.
Where the soil has a little more give, invasive annual grasses move in and crowd out the originals. Native plants are tough, but not invincible. That’s where we come in.
Open in Google MapsWhy native plants
A web of life, built over thousands of years.
Wildlife has evolved alongside specific plants — a complex web that provides pollen, insects, seeds, cover, and places to nest and raise young.
Many invasive plants simply don’t offer those things to the insects, birds, and other animals that would otherwise live here. Lose the plants and, eventually, you lose everything that depended on them.
(We’ll add specific examples soon — like the hairstreak butterflies that rely on particular host plants found right here on the outcrop.)