Hans Jannach of Monterey (left) and Kim Hayes, stewardship director of the Elkhorn Slough Foundation, plant oak trees in the slough on Saturday.

By the end of the day Saturday, little orange flags dotted the remote hillside within the Elkhorn Slough.

The morning started with small blue flags spread across the landscape, each flag representing a spot an oak tree should be planted. Ken Collins of the Elkhorn Slough Foundation had put the flags in on Friday so that volunteers would know where to put the oaks. Once a tree was planted, an orange flag went up and the blue flag was removed.

The planting was part of an effort to restore a hillside once used to farm strawberries. When the Elkhorn Slough Foundation acquired this parcel of land in 2004, deep gullies rutted the landscape and the topsoil had all been washed away. Invasive plant species of several varieties had also moved in. To restore the land and prevent further erosion, the foundation put out a call for volunteers to return the native plant species to the hillside.

“With certain cultivation practices, there are extremely big erosion problems in the Elkhorn Slough,” said Kim Hayes, stewardship director for the foundation. “Huge gullies can happen in a matter of hours with a significant rain event.”

This particular hillside has undergone a transformation in the past five years. Volunteers were excited at the prospect of seeing the hillside decades down the road when recovery is complete.

Dr. Gage Dayton, director of UC Santa Cruz’s Natural Reserve, brought his two young daughters. The girls, 4 and 8, helped water and plant while Dayton made gopher cages to keep pests from destroying the new plantings.

“Just four years ago this was a mess and now it’s recovering,” said Gage Dayton, “Ten to 20 years from now we’ll be able to see a complete change. It’s exciting.”

Bonnie Lockwood, who works at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, e-mailed her coworkers about the day and brought a small contingent of volunteers.

“Isn’t it gorgeous out here? Can’t you just imagine what this will look like in 10 years?” she asked.

Hayes said she’s been wanting to plant this hillside for a long time, but first the land had to repaired, garbage had to be removed and hill had to be restructured.

The plants were either grown from gathered seed or cuttings native to the slough. Patti Kreiberg, owner of Sunset Coast Nursery in Aromas, has been cultivating the oaks, grasses and wildflowers that are being planted — 2,000 plants of 17 different species.

Hayes said one of the biggest reasons to plant with native species is water. Invasive species, like the eucalyptus groves that dot the slough, use much more water. As the slough continues to dry up in spots, the foundation keeps looking for more ways to restore balance to the land and recharge the aquifer. Some of the slough is still being farmed, about 250 acres, but that is down from its peak of about 750 acres.

“We support cultivation, very much, but in some places it is best to the take the cultivation out just for water recharging purposes,” said Hayes, “So we’re getting more plants out here that aren’t so water draining. Part of this work will mean large-scale eucalyptus tree eradication.”

But Saturday the crew will be on the hillside again, planting — not eradicating. With the oak trees in place, volunteers will move further up the hillside and be planting more wildflowers and various maritime chaparral like sticky monkey plant and California sage. John Kenney, farmland manager for the foundation, said he also has some Pajaro manzanita trees to plant, a species native to just the Elkhorn Slough and Fort Ord.

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If you would like to volunteer for Saturday’s second day of work on the site, bring drinking water, a lunch and meet at the Elkhorn Slough Reserve at 1700 Eklhorn Road at 9:30 a.m. More information is available online at www.elkhornslough.org.

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