The Cataldi Park Native Garden Project is working to create a habitat for native plants and pollinators including monarch butterflies, and to spread awareness about native plant habitats and pollinators among volunteers and visitors at Cataldi Park, a 39-acre park in the Berryessa area of San Jose. We have regular Saturday morning work sessions at the park. Current activities include mulching the remaining area, weeding and setting up irrigation. If you are interested in volunteering, please sign up on our chapter's meetup group.

History

A large portion on the western end of the park is barren and not maintained by the park staff. Starting in 2023, this volunteer-lead project sponsored by our chapter and supported by the City of San Jose’s Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services Department is converting a part of this barren area into a native garden. The Adopt-a-Park program of the Department organized a volunteer event in March, 2023 to kick off the project. 25 volunteers prepared around 1,500 square feet of the site for fall planting. During the event, volunteers laid down cardboard for sheet mulching, wheelbarrowed wood chips from existing piles in the park and spread the mulch on the cardboard.

The project obtained a Wildflower Grassland Kit from the Xerces Society. The kit contains 600 small herbaceous transplants (mostly ‘plugs’) including milkweed, flowering forbs, and some grasses. In the first phase of the project, we will plant these plugs between early November – December 2023. The project is also a recipient of a BeautifySJ award from the City of San Jose which will fund other supplies for Phase One of this project.