Update: Date was printed incorrectly. It should be 1924, not 1934.
Early on an April morning, I was hiking through Hillcrest Park. Following park trails northwest of the fountain facing Harbor, I made my way to the duck pond, which dates back to 1924. Now a much smaller body of water, it is surrounded by thriving riparian vegetation and a network of walkways. Benches and informational signs line the edges of this earthy embankment, but oddly enough, there are no ducks in this pond. While this part of the park has been fixed up significantly since I started coming here in the early 2000s, I decided to ask around the Fullerton community to see what people remember about the duck pond’s past, and find out how it is being maintained today.
On my morning walk, I navigated the pathways that loop around this pond, and learned more about the different types of plant life growing here just by reading signs installed by the city’s Parks and Recreation Department. There are California Sycamore trees, White Alder, Arroyo Willow, and Coast Live Oak around the pond as well as ornamental grasses and shrubs, such as Purple Three Awn, California Gray Rush, Small Cape Rush, Dwarf Coyote Bush, California Buckwheat, Island Bush Snapdragon, Cleveland Sage and California Fuchsia.
I was curious as to how Fullerton maintains this pond, so I emailed the city and received a response from David Bishop, Landscape & Tree Manager for the City of Fullerton’s Public Works Division, who wrote via email, “The Duck Pond is visited weekly by our landscape maintenance staff. Work activities vary and may include trimming shrubs, weeding, and trash pickup. Each year, after the winter rains have subsided, staff also enter the center water area to remove silt and debris that accumulate among the rocks and soil. This area can be labor-intensive due to the water and rocks that staff must work around.”…