After ‘Heartbreaking’ Vandalism, Sausal Creek Plant Nursery Volunteers Pick Up the Pieces
When Ella Matsuda got to the Friends of Sausal Creek nursery in Oakland’s Joaquin Miller Park around 3:45 pm on Jan. 20, it looked as if a natural disaster had blown through.
Tender seedlings lay strewn across the ground and crushed beneath overturned workbenches, and pipes had been yanked out of place. During the four hours Matsuda had been away, a vandal or vandals had apparently clambered over a downed tree on the back fence and scattered the nursery’s 4,000 plants in broad daylight.
“It was heartbreaking,” says Peter Van der Niellen, a regular FOSC volunteer who came the day after to help re-pot plants. “This must have been a group of people, because those benches are heavy, and it was total destruction.”