April workday report

It was great to have USF students show up and join with our regular volunteers

After a morning of raking by a group of volunteers, a thick layer of San Francisco's own home-grown wood-chip mulch now covers the ground beneath the branches of the cherry, plum and horse-chestnut trees at the Panhandle's eastern edge. The mulch will protect the roots of these juvenile trees from the heavy feet of the many, many human visitors the park will see this spring and summer. Over the past several years, volunteers for the community workdays in the Panhandle have spent a good deal of time with this cluster of trees, amending the soil, sheet mulching, and removing weeds. They now provide a welcoming sight, with the pink blooms of the cherry and plum trees in early spring and the large panicles of the horse chestnut holding creamy white flowers in late spring.

Brian deposits a load of wood chips under Cheryl's watchful eye

We actually separated into two groups of volunteers, so that several young trees near Clayton could also get a layer of protective mulch. Once these projects were complete, and we were fortified by a snack of homemade baked goods, we ventured to the rain garden and mound to remove spring weeds. In comparison with the perpetually chilly March workday, the April workday was warm and sunny, so it felt good to work in the shade of the Panhandle's tall trees.

Complete restoration of William McKinley monument is underway

The Panhandle's largest public artwork is under restoration after years of deferred maintenance and suffering from exposure to the natural elements and occasional vandalism.

Stains on the marble and on the granite visible in this photo from 2011

The restoration includes cleaning stains from the inset white marble on which the face of William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, is carved. The tall bronze figure of a standing woman will also be resurfaced. The mortar between the granite pieces of the base will be replaced, a process called "repointing." New rods will be inserted to seismically strengthen the structure.

According to project manager Jennifer Correia, the work will be done by ARG Conservation Services at the cost of $300,000, from San Francisco's general fund allocation for capital improvements to the Civic Art Collection. A fence and scaffolding went up around the monument in late June and the work will continue through August.

Redwood pruning gives the southeast corner a new look

The coast redwoods in the southeast corner of the park were pruned of most of their low branches last week, resulting in a significant change of appearance. Long a focus of community stewardship efforts, the coast redwoods at the park's eastern edge exist in a few different clusters - at the two eastern corners of the park and behind the McKinley Monument. This ambitious pruning is a sign that the city is increasing its efforts to take care of the trees in the Panhandle. 

From inside the park, the facade of Mt Zion Baptist is more visible than in recent history.

With the low-hanging branches removed, the massive trunks of the redwoods make an even more dramatic statement.

Still shady, but less gloomy at the southeast corner.

By contrast, the north-side redwoods haven't been recently pruned, and branches dip within reach. 

Walkway rebuild at the east end of the Panhandle

Work began last week on the paved walkway on the eastern edge of the Panhandle. As of Friday, Bauman Landscape, a go-to company for construction in San Francisco's parks, had removed the portion of the path that was previously asphalt. During the construction, car parking along Baker Street is suspended and a wall of bright orange barriers is in place so that people are able to walk in the street.

Midblock at the eastern edge of the Panhandle

A smaller portion near Fell is also excavated

The walkway along the eastern edge of the Panhandle has long had inconsistent design, part asphalt and part cement.

From the archives - prior to re-orientation of parking on Baker St

The area next to this path, between Baker Street and the McKinley Monument, has seen improvement, starting about seven years ago when the city planted an orderly, symmetrical arc of cherry trees and horse chestnuts. The parks department's tree crew and volunteers from Panhandle Park Stewards have put a considerable effort into helping those trees grow tall and strong.

From the archives: 2011 workday

2014 workday

October Workday Report

During yesterday's community workday at the Panhandle, neighbors split into two separate groups to take on projects at the east end and at the center of the park.

Panorama of the redwoods at the east end

In the eastern end near Baker Street, we spread a large mound of woodchips as mulch around the redwood trees, to protect the shallow roots, prevent soil compaction and conserve water. This beautiful grove of trees is ours to enjoy, so if you want to beat today's heat, take a walk beneath the canopy of the redwoods around the McKinley Monument.

Jogging under the redwoods

 

The other group tackled end-of-summer maintenance of the flowers and perennials that grow around the playground and in our rain garden, near Ashbury. The spent blooms were removed to make room for fresh starts that will come with the rains this fall and winter.

After promoting the Panhandle Park workdays for nearly six years, I feel very happy to have increasing support from the neighbors who take part in our community workdays - one time, dozens of times, or somewhere in between. Having sufficient numbers to split into two groups and take on a variety of projects in cooperation with the Rec and Park staff is also a huge mark of success.

As the drought continues,  portions of the park are growing increasingly bare of grass. However, big portions of our meadows remain green and welcoming. Meanwhile, the elms have sprouted abundant new leaves in the last month, despite my worries that the changing climate was having severe effects on them. The timing is a little odd, since we are also beginning to see fall color foliage on other trees.

Elms

Early fall color

Barer and barer

May workday report

At the community workday on May 9, volunteers planted a bunch of new plants provided by Rec and Park for both the rain garden and the plots surrounding the children's playground. Two years after initial planting, our rain garden appears more filled in as the plants mature and we continue to bring new plants in. 

Guillermo organized a special snack for us at breaktime: organic fruit and juice smoothies blended by bicycle. Delicious, and healthy, with second servings for all! 

Rain garden filling in

Anna and Guillermo at work on our snack

Conversations at the park often turn to California's extreme drought, and how to manage parklands to reduce water use. As watering is cutback further, some sections of the park have turned dry. To protect the soil from drying out completely and blowing away, one tool in the toolbox is to amend the soil and spread woodchips. Piles of compost fines and wood chips, sourced from the compost yard in Golden Gate Park, were situated around the Panhandle, and Guillermo explained that he would have help from the sixth graders of San Francisco Day School during the coming week to spread the material around the trees of the Panhandle. The timing is excellent, since a couple hundred thousand of runners, walkers, and partyers will be out in the Panhandle for Bay to Breakers on Sunday, May 17. The park always gets wear and tear from this event, and spreading woodchips will help protect the turf around mature trees, which can be a sensitive spot. 

Many of the park meadows are resilient and are still green, due in part to our late spring rains. The horse-chestnuts (near Shrader) and the cherry trees at the eastern edge (by Baker) are also in bloom. Get out to the park to enjoy them this month.  

New Park Rules

Two sets of signs were installed in and around the Panhandle this month. 

The first set of signs is directed to those arriving at the park pathways from Oak and Fell Streets. They advise visitors that park hours are 5 a.m. to midnight. The new park hours were codified this year in Park Code 3.21, a change that was approved amid a great deal of controversy. The legislation specifically permitted travel through and across the Panhandle, though that exception is not noted on the signs. 

The second set of signs was installed over the weekend by SFMTA. Although they are much greater in number, they'll mainly be noticed by people parking their vehicles on the park's perimeter. They impose No Parking for vehicles over 22 feet long or 7 feet high, from 12:01 a.m. to 6 a.m., everyday. The "oversize vehicle" rule restrict people's ability to park campers, RVs, and other large vehicles overnight next to the Panhandle. While overnight habitation in vehicles was already prohibited, enforcement was never very effective. The no parking rules for oversize vehicles have been implemented in specific locations around the city, and the Panhandle is part of the second batch of locations.

May workday report

At the east end of the Panhandle, a double row of Cherry trees and Chestnut trees have grown large and healthy since being planted in 2010. The focus of last week's community workday was to give these young trees some routine maintenance. 

Step 1: cut and place cardboard

In order to supplement their soil, protect their roots from trampling, and suppress weeds, our basic method was sheet mulching: laying down a layer of cardboard, followed by composted fines, and then a layer of wood chips.

Step 2: many wheelbarrows full of soil

Step 3: Spread wood chips

Our small group of dedicated volunteers wrapped up that project and went on to give the same treatment to a few more trees, too, going on to the magnolia, one of the redwoods, and the Giant Sequoia.

Meanwhile, cyclists gathered nearby for a tour of dim sum

Saturday's workday and pictures from today

During our workday on Saturday, a couple of willing volunteers stayed near the park's central area to rake leaves from the sand in the playground and trim the hedges around the borders. The larger part of our group traveled east to the area between Lyon and Baker street to offer some help to the park's gardener with managing the area. Besides raking leaves, this also meant weeding a bed of perennials - mostly California natives - planted last year by students.

The first graders from SFDS and their families turned out in good numbers to lend us a hand. Besides weeding and raking, another big task was to remove mud from the bike path and from below park benches. That's a pretty challenging job for folks of any age, especially when tree roots are infiltrating the mud. Volunteers also trimmed the burl growth from some of our redwoods on the east end.

I didn't take any photos during Saturday's workday, but here are a couple taken today during some free time on this Veteran's Day Holiday.

It's the time of the year to see full-grown orb-weavers. Here's one that had its web in a yew tree. 

Soulmates forever

The fall drought continues, but the park has been amply irrigated and is green and puddly.

Stadium seating

Clayton Street curb ramp project, month 3

Park lovers 

A walk in the woods

Clayton Street accessibility work in gear

The Clayton Street entrances to the Panhandle are undergoing a rebuild to improve accessibility, and signs posted on the site indicate the work will continue through September. Once the work is done and the grass grows back, most of us will probably take the yellow, accessible curb ramps for granted.

In May 2012, new curb ramps of this type were installed at Lyon Street. With this project and the curb work that came with the repavement of Stanyan in August 2012, the curb ramp infrastructure of the Panhandle is about a complete job with at least one major exception: Baker Street, across the street from Mercy Terrace, where most cyclists enter and exit the park. 

On each side, North and South of the park, a single crosswalk leads from the east side of Clayton Street to the Panhandle's pathways. The north path (approaching Clayton @ Fell Street) used to skirt alongside a large eucalyptus, but the tree was removed as a hazard in December. The north side job looks complicated, with digging, removal of roots and reconstruction of a stretch of curbside along the park.

Clayton @ Fell - some digging and removal of roots

Clayton @ Fell - re-build of the curb

The work on the south side of the park at Oak Street appears less complicated. However, this access point is important because it serves as an entry point for Park and Rec's vehicles that need to reach the dump.

Clayton @ Oak

Grand jury recommends city start tracking results of outreach to homeless in Golden Gate Park

There was a surge of camping and littering near the McKinley Memorial earlier this summer, and fortunately it seems to be waning. Besides what I can see for myself when I visit the park, each week when I get the email newsletter from Park Station - which contains a list of the week's citations - I open up the document and search for "Panhandle." The times of enforcement varied, but often showed that police were out in the middle of the night to roust campers in the Panhandle. For a while, the citations, for camping, nighttime sleeping (not allowed 8pm-8am), and alcohol use were increasing in frequency, and now they are tapering off.

Camping in the park has a long history, and areas beyond the Panhandle are even more severely affected. Now a new report by the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury offers recommendations for how San Francisco should change its response to "park dwellers" in Golden Gate Park. See the list of current reports to find a link to download the report, published June 20 and called "Golden Gate Park’s Homeless Population: Are San Francisco’s Policies Serving Us Well?"

The Grand Jury's report examined what these individuals need, how the city enforces park rules, and how to address litter accumulation that results from camping. The report has little descriptive information about park dwellers, though it characterizes population of park dwellers in the eastern edge of the park (Panhandle, Alvord Lake, McLaren lodge area) as younger and more transient. Not having been here long, they are less likely to be familiar with city services than typical park dwellers in western end of the park.

 The report delivers a straightforward description of the recent history of San Francisco's homeless outreach strategies. The Homeless Outreach Team (HOT) initially started up in the downtown are and then expanded to the park since about 2007. Their tactic was to drop in on encampments at 4 am to engage park dwellers. It has been successful, at least as judged by the fact that the percentage of the homeless living in parks or on the streets, which used to stand at over 50 percent, is now down to about 28 percent. However when the success of HOT plateaued, it became inefficient to continue the same outreach strategy month after month. There is now a shift to a new outreach model, Engagement Specialist Teams (EST) and the EST's aren't yet serving the park yet. Instead, SFPD and Park Patrol have been handed responsibility for outreach and enforcement. Homeless outreach has been incorporated into SFPD officers' training (but not park patrol training), so when they approach park dwellers, they issue citations and offer homeless services information. However, one of the report's conclusion is that citing people for camping or nighttime sleeping isn't an effective deterrent. The report recommends that the city have a system for gathering information on the characteristics of park dwellers and for tracking its outreach efforts to park dwellers.

 The report also examines the litter left in the park at homeless encampments, quantifying it and describing the processes in place to remove it. Since shopping carts were found to facilitate moving personal items into the park, a recommendation of the report is that the San Francisco Park Code should ban shopping carts in Golden Gate Park in order to discourage living in the Park and to reduce litter.

McKinley graffiti removed; also curb ramp underway at Lyon St

After being hit with several waves of graffiti, and after many calls and 311 reports from annoyed members of the community, the McKinley Memorial was finally cleaned up on Wednesday. This 1904 artwork by Robert Ingersoll Aitken is among artworks listed by the San Francisco Arts Commission as most in need of immediate attention & restoration.

Nearby, Precision Engineering company has work underway at Lyon Street to build a curb ramp connecting the park to the crosswalk across Fell. That was one of the last intersections around the Panhandle Park without an accessible curb ramp.

Oak & Fell bikeway proposal unveiled

Today the SF MTA presented a proposal for improvements on Oak and Fell, including bikeways (see previous post). Although the plan does not modify Panhandle pathways, transitions to and from the park could be much improved. Neighborhood concerns about parking removal have led to proposals for angled, head-out (rear-in?) parking on several blocks, including Baker Street from Oak to Fell. The angled parking is proposed for the west side of Baker, directly on the front end of the Panhandle Park, to keep the flow of traffic from the adjacent blocks of Baker in alignment.

Baker at Oak (the upper left is the Panhandle Park). Proposed angled parking appears upper left. Proposed bulbouts would shorten crossing distances. Proposed bikeway appears lower right on south side of Oak. 

Additional blocks of Baker Street (up to Haight St) would also get angled parking on the west side. Baker Street north of the Panhandle already has perpendicular parking to maximize spaces.

Proposed angled parking appeared in orange. 

My concern is that angled parking on Baker Street would make the entrance to the Panhandle less attractive, from the vantage point of anyone traveling along Baker St or approaching from the east. The proposal also represents a missed opportunity; while making this change and the proposed bulbouts, we should also make a coordinated effort to address the overall neglect of the park's eastern edge. The lack of attention to detail (especially on the walkway) makes visits to the edge of the Panhandle utterly unremarkable. 

Walkway on the Panhandle's eastern edge. Asphalt, cement, asphalt, cement.

Pictures from February Workday

At our Saturday work day on Feb 11, volunteers from the community worked on some projects at the east end of the park. We spread some healthy composted soil around the redwoods at the southeast corner of the park, we removed weeds and soil from the pathway along Baker Street, and we raked a bunch of leaves from beneath the huge eucalyptus trees on the north side of the park.  

While raking up the leaves, the first graders found some wriggly worms. 

Some of our regular repeat volunteers took on the job of clearing the path along Baker Street

Snacktime happened on the back side of the McKinley Monument