News

Although summer in Berkeley means many students have gone back to their hometowns, restoration and upkeep of Strawberry Creek is still in session! 

In June, we had happy campers from Kids for the Bay learn all about Strawberry Creek’s history and everything that goes into maintaining this Berkeley landmark! With such a large group of children, the camp was split into two groups for the day. 

During the spring 2025 semester, Strawberry Creek intern Julia Lambert taught a DeCal course centered on Strawberry Creek. Twenty-two students spent the semester learning about the creek and its management from guest speakers, including Bob Charbonneau, the author of the original Strawberry Creek Management Plan for UC Berkeley, and Sharon Harichandran, Environmental Specialist with UC Berkeley’s Office of Environment, Health and Safety (EH&S). Students came from varying academic backgrounds, with some folks knowing nothing about restoration prior to the class.

This spring semester, Strawberry Creek Restoration Program (SCRP) Intern Julia Lambert will be teaching a DeCal titled “Restoring Strawberry Creek.” UC Berkeley students hear the gentle flowing of Strawberry Creek each day they walk to class, pass by natural areas shaped by decades of ecosystem restoration efforts, and often sit to enjoy patches of sun (or shade depending on the season) along this creek. Despite Strawberry Creek’s presence in the daily life of UC Berkeley students, the creek’s history and transformation throughout the past decades remain lesser known.

UC Berkeley's Green Gateways team, comprised of Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning (LAEP), College of Environmental Design (CED), students and a faculty advisor, received an Honorable Mention in a national competition known as the EPA RainWorks Challenge. Students were tasked with designing an innovative green infrastructure project for their campus that addresses stormwater pollution and provides additional benefits to the campus community and environment.

The student interns of the Strawberry Creek Restoration Program Alessandra Lucchesi and Loulou Ziegler will be teaching a DeCal course during the Fall 2024 semester. The DeCal, titled “Restoring Strawberry Creek: The Vital Role of Biodiversity in Ecosystem Rehabilitation,” will take students through the history of Strawberry Creek and its restoration story and work with students to complete restoration activities on campus. 

Strawberry Creek Restoration Program (SCRP) interns Alessandra Lucchesi and Andrew Glaros tabled with fellow UC Berkeley students representing a number of environmental and sustainability registered student organizations at the Student Environmental Resource Center (SERC) event on Monday afternoon.  Peer to peer outreach is one way the SCRP interns engage with students and recruit volunteers for creek restoration projects on campus.  For details on upcoming voluteer opportunities, join the SCRP email list by filling out the

For the last event of the fall 2023 semester, the SCRP interns planted natives at the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design (CED) garden, which now had space thanks to past weeding days, and at El Sol. A native sedge, Iris innominata, evergreen huckleberry, common yarrow, and a snowberry were planted at the CED garden. Baja fairy duster, deergrass, "Canyon Gray" California sagebrush, and a “Pozo Blue” sage were planted at El Sol. It was a sunny and successful day of planting on December 5th, and just in time for the rainy season to take over watering the natives over winter break.

Towards the end of the fall semester, numerous native plants on campus were producing seeds, including California wild rose, hummingbird sage, California buckwheat, coffeeberry, and Sticky Monkeyflower. On November 19th, volunteers gathered seeds at the pollinator garden near the Hearst Women’s Gym and at the natural area near the Women’s Faculty Club. The seeds were labeled and stored in envelopes for use in future semesters.

On Sunday, November 4, 2023, 35 Berkeley Project Day volunteers and 4 Strawberry Creek Restoration Program (SCRP) interns gathered on campus to help restore Strawberry Creek.  Together, they removed invasive plants, such as ivy (see photo of volunteers holding up removed ivy) and yellow star thistle and collected trash.  At the e

At another successful volunteer work day in October, around 20 students from Diablo Valley College’s Alpha Gamma Sigma came out to pull out the ivy and Himalayan blackberry (both are invasives) from around the edges of the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design (CED) garden. The day ended with a creek tour, led by interns Andrew Glaros and Alessandra Marie Lucchesi who showed the group El Sol garden and other natural sites on campus.

Many different mushrooms grow on the UC Berkeley campus, and several of them are poisonous. Check out the new Mushroom Safety page detailing the dangers of the most toxic mushrooms that grow here.

We're in the process of migrating all of the documents from the former Creeks of UC Berkeley website.  We hope to complete the migration within the next month.  Thanks for your patience!

We've officiallly migrated to the Open Berkeley platform.  The Creeks of UC Berkeley website is live today!  Please explore the new website - while things may have been rearranged, we have worked hard to preserve all the content and documents from the original website.

If you have any questions or concerns, we would love to hear from you!  Please send an email with your thoughts to creeks@berkeley.edu.

Thank you!

Thanks to everybody who filled out UC Berkeley's Storm Water Questionnaire in December 2018.

A few lucky people won the Creeks of UC Berkeley prize package. If you didn't receive a prize, never fear! We will release the same survey with prizes next December.