On a rainy morning this past April, a killdeer sat guarding three eggs on the bank of Corte Madera Creek beside the College of Marin. The eggs sat close to newly planted coast gumplant that was already thriving. A crow walked nearby looking for breakfast. Cormorants and geese had already moved onto the new banks, and sky lupine was dropping its purple and white petals and setting hairy seed pods.
Thirteen months ago, that bank was a concrete wall. Alycia Matz recorded the scene for the Friends of Corte Madera Creek Watershed newsletter, Creek Chronicles. Read closely, her account shows that the people who planted this marsh are no longer the only ones deciding what it becomes.
A channel wall, until last September
The Corte Madera Pathway runs about 3.5 flat miles along the creek from Larkspur to Ross. Through Kentfield it passes the College of Marin campus, where the creek has run between concrete for decades. The County's official name for the project here is the Corte Madera Creek Lower College of Marin Restoration Project. Its reach covers 575 linear feet, starting just downstream of the Stadium Way pedestrian bridge. Plans called for removing the concrete channel walls and grading the earthen banks into tidal wetland slopes planted with native vegetation.
The County Flood Control and Water Conservation District led the work. Its partners were Friends of Corte Madera Creek Watershed, College of Marin, Marin County Parks and County Service Area 17. Construction cost $2.97 million under the County's June 2025 breakdown: $1.66 million from the California Coastal Conservancy, $750,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds and $555,000 from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service coastal wetlands grant. According to the Marin Independent Journal, Friends president Sandy Guldman had championed the effort since 2017. Klaus Christiansen, the college's director of facilities and maintenance, described working with the County to coordinate it.
Work began September 1, 2025. Friends' photo bulletins show how it went:
- A cofferdam unrolled across the creek, "essentially a large water balloon," as it was pumped full of creek water, keeping the tide out of the work area.
- A temporary road upstream carried heavy equipment to the work site so the multi-use path could stay open.
- An excavator broke off the top of the wall along the downstream 350 feet of the right bank. The rest of the wall was saw-cut, capped and buried below even the lowest tide.
- Boulders, the largest weighing about 2 tons, were set along the right bank with logs bolted to them so fish have somewhere to shelter from fast water.
- The cofferdam came out October 13, two days before the mandated date.
The 350 feet in Friends' account covers one stretch of wall. The County's 575 feet describes the whole project reach.
What 5,800 plants met on the far side of the path
Crews installed more than 5,800 native plants over last fall and winter and sowed seed of blue wildrye, California brome, small fescue, common yarrow and sky lupine. Planting was paid for separately, through a $155,674 National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant that Friends secured for wetland plant salvage and revegetation.
After that, the local wildlife got involved. Here is how Matz's spring report scores the plantings:
| Plant | Source | How it fared by spring 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Coast gumplant | Planted | One of the big successes |
| Common yarrow | Sown from seed | Green carpets of seedlings over bare soil |
| Sky lupine | Sown from seed | Bloomed and set seed by April |
| Sticky monkeyflower | Planted | A few doubled or tripled in size, but most died |
| Pickleweed | Nursery-grown | Ducks ate nearly all of it before it could take hold |
| Saltgrass | Nursery-grown | Canada geese uprooted it |
| Pickleweed, saltgrass, jaumea, bulrush | Salvaged from the site before construction | Growing |
Matz wrote that the Conservation Corps North Bay crew who did the planting was "distressed to see their efforts so quickly undone."
The old plants did better than the new ones
The table's last row is the surprise. Before construction started, the team dug up old, tough pickleweed and other marsh plants from the work area so they could be replanted. Matz wrote that they initially doubted the salvage effort was worth it. The ducks ignored the old pickleweed and it kept growing, while the tender nursery stock got eaten. Seeing that, Matz wrote, "we have changed our minds."
The weather tested the plantings too. Matz describes a historic heat wave this March, and the team responded with supplemental irrigation. Deer cages went around selected oaks and toyons to protect them from browsing and burrowing rodents, and weeds were cleared next to the new plantings to cut competition for space and water. Beyond that, she wrote, "we have to let time pass and nature do the work of healing itself."
The weeds the volunteers left in place
Friends held a volunteer weeding morning at the site on April 11, 2026. According to Creek Chronicles, many of the volunteers were College of Marin students. The timing mattered, because invasive plants such as Italian thistle and sweet clover spread quickly on freshly disturbed ground and need to come out before they go to seed.
Partway through the morning, the crew found at least half a dozen sphinx moth caterpillars feeding on two nonnative plants, triangle orache and hyssop loosestrife. The volunteers decided to leave those two plants in place for now and pull other weeds instead.
So in the marsh's first spring, ducks, geese and caterpillars each changed what grows on this bank. None of those changes were in the planting plan.
A five-year scorecard sets the rules
All of this gets measured against permit terms. As Creek Chronicles summarizes them, the regulatory permits for the revegetation require:
- At least 80 percent survival of planted trees and shrubs
- At least 70 percent coverage in the marsh and transition zone plantings
- No more than 5 percent coverage by invasive plants that the California Invasive Plant Council rates as "high"
- Five years of monitoring to document survival and coverage
If the site misses those targets after five years, more planting, weed control or other measures are required until it meets them. Friends is counting on pickleweed and saltgrass spreading naturally to make up for what the ducks and geese took. If they don't, the group plans to transplant plugs from wetlands downstream of the project.
That is why a single good spring doesn't settle anything. October 2026 is roughly one year into a five-year check, and the bank beside the path changes from season to season while the target stays fixed.
Reading the bank on a fall walk
Most of what matters here is visible from the pavement. If you start near the Stadium Way pedestrian bridge and walk downstream, the restored reach is on your side of the trip.
- The logs. They were placed irregularly on purpose, and by design they disappear at the highest tides. Seeing them one afternoon and not the next is the creek working as planned.
- Caged trees. The wire cages mark the oaks and toyons the team decided were worth guarding.
- Gumplant and yarrow. These were the spring's two clearest successes, so they are the easiest plants to follow from one season to the next.
- The low marsh plain. This is where pickleweed has to spread on its own for the bank to hit its coverage target.
- Buckeyes. Matz noted that their leaves wither by summer, so bare buckeye branches in fall are normal.
The County's design documents also show a path-side rest area just south of Stadium Way, with benches, trash receptacles, a dog-waste bag dispenser and landscaping. The IJ's 2025 coverage named migrating steelhead, coho salmon, river otters, seals, marsh wrens and avocets as species the work could help, and said the woody material was placed to shelter migrating fish. Those are hoped-for beneficiaries, not confirmed sightings at this reach. The animals actually recorded at the site so far are the killdeer, crow, cormorants and geese in Matz's April notes.
Farther down the same path
Downstream at the Greenbrae end, the plans also changed in walkers' favor. Caltrans approved construction of the US 101 Corte Madera Creek Bridge rehabilitation for fiscal year 2026–27. The revised scope dropped the bridge-column and in-water work, and with it the temporary impacts on the Corte Madera Pathway described in earlier plans.
Separately, the County paused its broader Corte Madera Creek flood-control work in February 2026 for a full review. The Lower College of Marin reach was built before the pause, so the planting, weeding and monitoring continue here.
If you'd like to help with the scorecard, Friends of Corte Madera Creek holds board meetings at 7 p.m. on October 15 and November 19, 2026. They meet in the Club Room at 82 Camellia Circle in Larkspur or on Zoom, and the newsletter says the restoration sites "still need care," with habitat events posted on the group's calendar. A County newsletter from this May also described volunteer restoration every Wednesday at Hal Brown Park in Greenbrae, with sign-up through Marin County Parks. That schedule may have changed since, so confirm it before you go.
Some of what makes Kentfield special is right along this path, in the stretches that change from one season to the next. I'm Holly Welch, and when friends and clients ask what's new around the College of Marin, the creek is often the first thing I mention. If you're curious how places like this fit into daily life across Kentfield and Greenbrae, Holly Welch is always glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.