Restoration of a quarry in a California Chaparral ecosystem.

This a mitigation we did in conjunction with California Polytechnic University. The task was to prove that the Union Asphalt Quarry could be restored to a Chaparral-Oak Woodland Site. We were given a pile of decomposed granite road base 100-200 ft. wide and about 700 ft. long to 'restore' into a native site. We covered the site with boulders, patches of shredded redwood mulch  and planted the site with Quercus agrifolia, Quercus lobata, Quercus dumosa, Arctostaphylos glauca, Ceanothus cuneatus, Adenostoma fasciculatum, Diplacus(Mimulus) longiflorus, Salvia mellifera, etc.. The site was watered 2-3 times by a water truck by overhead spray,(like they were washing a road off.) The planting was 'washed' off for the first month, only. No water after first month, no maintenance. This is an interior climate and is commonly 100 deg. F. in summer. The last pictures are after 7 years.  After 20 years there is recruitment of oaks and shrub Baccharis.

A large mound of road base, make it a native site.

 A landscape crew of 4 guys planted this whole thing in one day. We had the quarry throw rocks over top the road base, we planted next to each rock.
This picture is why we moved from a camera to digital, sorry about the quality. The restoration after tree years These pictures were taken in the early 1990's, before digital. The better pictures were taken about 7 years later.

The dead looking stuff in the bottom photo are grasses and deer weed, both were seeded in by the 'management' against our advice. BTW, scanned photos really, really do not work, the bottom ones are digital.

After a few years the restoration appears to have worked.The large bushes are Arctostaphylos glauca, the dead stuff was a hydroseed mix that was forced upon us. It looks like a 'normal' hydroseeded site, dead.