Back in 2023, we shared how your feedback helped us make changes to our volunteer events to create an even more gratifying experience for all participants. But the process didn’t end there; we are continually listening to and learning from your input. 

Over the past year, we have been working to develop our next strategic plan, thinking carefully about where we need to focus to bring our vision of healthy ecosystems and engaged communities that much closer. 

With support from the City of Mountain View, in 2023 Grassroots Ecology was awarded a four-year Valley Water, “Safe, Clean Water and Natural Protection Program” grant for the Mountain View Tidal Marsh Restoration Project!

Our new project sites in Redwood City aim to increase native plant habitat along urban creek corridors. 

The monkeyflowers are a diverse assemblage of plants, with flower colors ranging from golden yellow and pinkish purple to pale orange and bright red. Their ecological roles are equally varied, with each species having unique habitat preferences and pollinator interactions.

Perhaps you've heard it at a workday, or maybe it was through an email you received after your volunteer event. Regardless, we hope it rings true: Grassroots Ecology values your feedback.

Before Grassroots Ecology, I was a newly educated AP Environmental Science student who wanted to help the earth, but one who didn’t know where to start. I found out about the organization through a Cupertino newsletter advertising about Grove Guardians, a summer stewardship program for teenagers. After my first summer morning at Redwood Grove, I knew this is what I was looking for: an interactive experience with nature that furthered my education. 

Bees invoke a broad spectrum of feelings: horror, fear, awe, adoration, or perhaps a combination of these. Yet, what if I told you most of these feelings are elicited by one species of bee out of roughly 400 different bee species in the Bay Area and about 1,600 in the state of California?

Somehow it feels predictable that after years of drought, we are now facing flooding, mudslides, and damage to dams and levees from the heavy rains this season. California doesn’t have many “average” winters.

Locally, we have been asked pretty frequently how our project sites are doing with all of this rain. The answer varies a bit from site to site.

“And now, the moment of truth… Will we see water at Terman today?!” How frequently this question has crossed my mind in the past three years as we prepared to visit Adobe Creek at Terman Middle School in Palo Alto, one of our most notoriously dry locations for water quality monitoring. Ever since we began our Palo Alto water quality monitoring program in December of 2013--right in the middle of the drought-ridden, sun-soaked winter--we have played this guessing game.