John Cardoza, Mayra Martinez, Fernando Flores, Emmit Pickering, Mike Mendoza, and Veronica Gaucin came to the project at 8 a.m. and first took a walking tour of the gardens before starting the hard work of weeding along Parkway Drive. The volunteers provided 48 hours of service to the environment.
The plants which were added to the Parkway will support butterflies, and other pollinators as well as provide a food source for local birds and visual beauty to the neighborhood and Parkway walkers. Seventy-one California native plants were added to the parkway plantings, along with wood chips.
There are 27 tree locations in this stretch of the parkway and each planting location was weeded, maintained, and trees were pruned as needed. There are five additional planting locations which are flowering plants only locations.
The 71 new native plants were provided through a grant from Xerces Society or were grown or purchased by Tule River Parkway Association for the project. There were 11 species of plants added to the planting locations, ranging from Valley Oak seedlings to bright yellow Desert Marigold and fragrant Black Sage.
After the locations were cleaned, maintained, and planted the group spread wood chips which had been donated by a local tree company. Together with the 10 hours donated by Tule River Parkway Association the total benefit of 58 volunteer hours yielded an improvement to the Tule River Parkway. The Tule River Parkway is a beautiful river corridor paved path which stretches along Parkway Drive from Cloverleaf Street to Main Street on the south side of the Tule River in Porterville. In addition to the work the group completed along Parkway Drive they worked on the Butterfly Garden in the Tule River Parkway Native Plant Demonstration Gardens.
The group weeded, trimmed a tree and many flowering plants, added wood chips, and 14 new plants to this one garden. Saputo employees discussed plans for volunteer time to be donated by other employees as part of Saputo’s commitment to give back to communities.
