Daffodils Signal Resilience in Santa Cruz Mountains, Almost 5 Years After CZU Fires

Today, Michael Geluardi still chokes up a little bit when he talks about why sunshine-yellow daffodils bloom in his garden in Bonny Doon.

After the CZU Lightning Complex fires devastated this Santa Cruz Mountain community in 2020, residents planted thousands of the cheerful flowers to express their resilience and hope for recovery. Now, every March, the daffodils emerge sprinkled across gardens and framed in driveways amid the rural area’s towering redwoods, still charred black in spots, and vacant lots. The Bonny Doon Community School Foundation spearheaded this project after the fires, selling the bulbs to benefit the local school.

“The ravages of the fire and of COVID were all around us, and I had this idea that there could be daffodils,” Geluardi said, who organized the effort during his time as both a school and foundation board member. “The vision was that we would plant them in the winter, after the fires, and they would come up in the spring as a symbol of renewal.

The CZU fires ignited in August of 2020 and burned for more than 40 days, scorching north of 85,000 acres across San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties, killing one person and destroying about 1,500 structures. In Bonny Doon, many homes survived, but some people had to embark on the painful, costly process of rebuilding or they relocated permanently.

Geluardi, who has lived in Bonny Doon for 15 years, organized a shipment of discounted flowers from a generous distributor on the East Coast. In the winter between 2020 and 2021, residents bought more than 60,000 yellow trumpet daffodil bulbs, showing their support for the Bonny Doon Union Elementary School District students trying to learn amid the pandemic. The program continued the following year, too.

Today, daffodils surround the entry sign at the local school. Students also splashed a painted daffodil mural across one of the school buildings in commemoration.

The Bonny Doon endeavor echoes a much larger, ongoing effort from the New Yorkers for Parks’ Daffodil Project, which began distributing free daffodils in 2002 as a living memorial after 9/11. It now also honors those who died from COVID-19.

Shannon Robbins, a landscape designer who has lived in Bonny Doon for two decades, said her house was the only one in her immediate, ridge-top neighborhood still standing after the fires. She planted daffodils in her garden and helped her neighbors do the same.

“I think because the fire knocked us down at our knees, most people just needed something for hope,” she said.

Although there was widespread support for the uplifting project, some members of the community would have preferred a native California species over the non-native daffodils.

Karen Holl, an ecologist from nearby University of California Santa Cruz, weighed in that a species like California poppies would have been her first choice, though daffodils are not listed on the California Invasive Plant Council’s problem invasives list. “Daffodils should be confined to gardens,” Holl said.

Robbins understood the ecological concern, but she said she had not seen the daffodils spreading. She actually planned to remind her neighbors to give them some fertilizer so they don’t disappear.

“Now, when you drive by, you see these little, tiny random clusters of daffodils, and it’s like, ‘Oh yeah,’” Robbins said. “It’s cheery.”