GROUP KEEPS RURAL VALLEY BEAUTIFUL.

Byline: Michael Coit Daily News Staff Writer

Wherever a public works project is started in the Santa Rosa Valley, Virginia Rogalsky and her band of green-thumb volunteers are never far behind.

Santa Rosa Valley Re-LEAF was responsible for planting nearly 300 trees along six miles of Santa Rosa Road when the thoroughfare was widened three years ago to include shoulders, turn lanes and bike lanes.

And just last month, Rogalsky and other volunteers converted a patch of dirt along a concrete flood channel into a modest oasis of native shrubs and ground cover. The project followed the installation of equestrian ramps along the Arroyo Santa Rosa.

"We started out saying, 'Let's get the trees back in there,' " Rogalsky said of the Santa Rosa Road project. "They've grown. Now, we're looking for other work."

A proposed 23-acre park on the north end of Hill Canyon is expected to be the next project for residents of the rural community, which stretches from the outskirts of Wildwood Regional Park in Thousand Oaks to Camarillo. The park likely would include softball and playing fields, hiking trails and even an equestrian center.

"We have a bunch of really good people out here who aren't afraid to roll up their sleeves and get involved," said Dan Peyton, president of the Santa Rosa Valley Community Association.

Peyton said there is no coincidence that residents began pressuring county officials to develop a community park about the same time that Rogalsky sparked the tree-planting effort along Santa Rosa Road.

"When those trees came out, she got very upset and she started talking to people and getting things going," Peyton recalled. "It (got) all kinds of people thinking and got people busy."

Three years after its founding, Santa Rosa Valley Re-LEAF has more than 100 members. There are some two dozen active volunteers who look for projects and raise money.

Rogalsky is modest in accepting praise, saying the ditch-digging, planting and watering - her green watering trailer has "Re-LEAF" painted in gold on the side - just need to be done.

"You can't just put a tree in the ground and walk away," she said.

Allied with the statewide California Re-LEAF agency, the Santa Rosa Valley group received a $4,600 grant to buy about 20 kinds of trees, most of which feature bright blooms. The group raised $3,000 more from community donations for a drip line to water the trees.

Rogalsky said the trees - which include Chinese pistache, liquidambar, tristania, holly oak, evergreen elm and golden rain - eventually will make up for the loss of oaks and other shade trees that bordered the old road.

"They had to widen the road. Eventually we will have a nice roadway," she said.

Although not as grand in size as the trees, the project to landscape the border of the flood control channel is similarly ambitious.

"It was kind of tough because it was all rock," said John Kent, a Thousand Oaks High School freshman who volunteered two hours to satisfy a community service requirement for one of his classes. "We had to dig holes and fill it with water and dig them again. Then we put netting down to hold the plants."

The project taught Kent a little about xeriscaping - planting native vegetation that doesn't require much water. He also learned a lot more about people in his own community.

"I'll probably do more volunteering," he said. "It's pretty neat. I didn't know there was a group around here like that."

For more information about the group, phone [phone].

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Photo (color in SIMI and CONEJO editions only) Virginia Rogalsky of Re-LEAF waters native plants along Santa Rosa Road north of Thousand Oaks. John McCoy/Daily News