The University of California’s famed Berkeley campus, frequented by hundreds of thousands of people every year, is an exceptional commemorative platform, evident by the abundance of memorials, statues, plaques, and more that grace the grounds.
In the spring of 2014, UC Berkeley students began to create a tribute that was sorely missing from the grounds.
With the sponsorship of The Green Initiative Fund, the support of campus landscaping crews, and the kindness of encouraging mentors, students began to convert a small field of weedy non-native grasses into a patch of native coastal prairie.
Prairie was the most extensive landscape of the indigenous campus land, yet its past abundance and its widespread devastation remain largely unrecognized parts of the university’s natural and cultural heritage and history. Commemorative ecological restoration seeks to address this.
The patch of restored prairie is a living tribute—both a biological representation of the plant community, and a participatory landscape which requires and inspires continual and direct engagement with the subject of commemoration.
This effort is incomplete, ongoing, and it will always be so. Only a handful of the grasses and wildflowers that used to grow in the prairie are present at the restoration site, and only a modest number of people are aware of the prairie’s story.
Ideally, prairie biodiversity and consciousness will increase over time.