Aug 5, 2024 – Alondra Park Island w/ Jeanne Bellemin 6PM (snacks served, please RSVP)

We’ll get a tour and history of Alondra Park Island (GPS) – a native plant preserve in the middle of Alondra Park by its founder and the Director of the Alondra Park Island Native Plant Garden, Jeanne Bellemin!  Alondra Park Island is located in the City of Lawndale in the middle of Alondra Park.  Find your way by Googling “Alondra Park Island” or use the map at the end of this blog post.

We’ll meet at 6 PM to allow some daylight time to look around and have some light snacks (fruit, vegetables, cheese, crackers).  RSVP suggested but not required to SouthCoastCNPS@gmail.com.  There are newly painted picnic benches on the island for snacking and sitting.

Alondra Park Island is maintained as a habitat refuge and is gated except during specified hours.

The South Bay Parkland Conservancy has recently stepped up to provide continuity of care for the native plant garden.  The story is related here and excerpted and edited below:

The Lake at Alondra Park was created in the late 1940s by digging a large depression in an area near the Dominguez Channel that had collected water. The excavated earth was left in the center to create the island, what is known today as Alondra Park Island.

As part of  Professor Jeanne Bellemin’s Environmental Biology class at El Camino College (located adjacent to Alondra Park), Professor Bellemin decided to include a hands-on requirement – a volunteer project working five hours during the semester in a park or natural area like Madrona Marsh near the campus, improving the local environment by helping to build trails or in the local mountains or picking up trash on the beaches.  In 1998, she explored the possibility of a California native plant garden on the closed island in the lake at Alondra Park. She made it official with the Torrance County Parks and Recreation Department. Eventually, word spread and we began to grow and maintain a sizable garden.

Naturespeace.org reproduces a Daily Breeze article from March 19, 2006 (excerpted and edited below) and one from the LA Times.

“The idea was to make it more accessible and inviting” said El Camino entomology teacher Jeanne Bellemin. “We convinced the county to let us do it,” she said. “They thought we were crazy, but gave us permission. “

The island is only 50 years old and there is no native habitat to restore. Instead, Bellemin and Roy van de Hoek, who supervises the surrounding 83-acre park for the County of Los Angeles, are using many plants that can be found some 30 miles away on Catalina Island.

For van de Hoek, the piece of greenery is a local version of the Channel Island and one of the South Bay’s hidden treasures.

“This like an island within an island,” he said.

Wild animals that roam the enclave range from a wide variety of birds to gifts from Easters past. “The worst part is the abandoned chickens and rabbits,” van de Hoek said.

The best place to park would be the lot paralleling Redondo Beach Boulevard.  The entrance to the lot is on the south side of Alondra Park at Yukon.  The Island is impossible to miss when you are in that lot. The entrance bridge to the Island is on the east side.