During the summer months, this had been a butterfly garden, full of dozens of different pollinators. Now, with late fall turning into winter, it was time to cut back and shape the garden for next year's pleasure. One of the Verbenas needed to be moved out from under the shade thrown by a huge Salvia karwinskii. There was never a better day for a sharp pair of pruners.
Read MoreThe new growing season also means an abundance of seedlings in the garden soil. In well-tended old gardens, many or most of these seedlings will be desirable plants, cool season annuals emerging from last year’s seeds. But just as reliable are the weedy seeds. Good gardening calls for an organized strategy to combat the new weed season.
Read MoreLast month, this column covered some tips on design and care of the late summer garden. A month later and we are still in the same late summer weather pattern, with mostly foggy days on the western side of the city, dry soils, and cool temperatures. As each week of late summer passes, the summer-dry garden looks more and more disheveled and dreary, unless the gardener follows a few simple rules.
Read MoreFor summer dry gardens, August begins to separate the fabulous gardens from the rest. It's relatively easy to make a garden gorgeous in the late winter, spring, and early summer. There are a multitude of plants to choose from, all of which thrive in the cool moist soils and sunny warm days between rains. But by August, our foggy season is well advanced, and plants have already suffered through weeks of cool moist air and warm dry soil.
Read MoreLate June and early July means Summer Sprouts is blooming in the garden. The Summer Sprouts are high school and middle school youth who come to learn outdoors for three weeks of garden-based programs, and they are blooming brightly. The youth are learning leadership skills, biking, building compost piles, and eating huge salads and kale dishes from our veggie beds. They are making new friends, and learning about plant care.
Read MoreFor me, every year there’s a moment in May when the garden is suddenly just too much. All the irrigation has to be troubleshot and turned on after winter. All the weeds are as high as an elephant’s eye. All the winter crops suddenly bolt so all the vegetable beds have to be turned over and planted for summer. All the spring blooming ornamentals need deadheading, while the cool season annuals are already finished and need to be composted. Yikes!
Read MoreMay Day is like Christmas for gardeners except all the packages are opening themselves simultaneously. There is so much to fall in love with. Here are a few of my heartthrobs this month.
Read MoreFrom now through July the beautiful and vigorous native plants in our native garden will bloom in turn. This is their active season, with water in the soil from winter rains, and warm days ahead. By July, the soils are dry and the fogs roll in. Our native garden quiets down, because the dry late summer months are the dormant time for California native plants.
Read MoreMaybe the best kept secret at GFE is our Harvest Program. Every Saturday morning, a small band of dedicated volunteers harvests fruits and vegetables from all over the garden, makes a beautiful bouquet and an herb bundle, and packs everything into a spicy fragrant box of freshness. So far, we have delivered over 400 lbs. of food through this program.
Read MoreAs environmentally responsible gardeners, one of the most important advocacies we can engage in is to create change in the predominant garden aesthetic. The thirsty lawns, clipped hedges, Japanese maples, rhododendrons, roses and annual beds which defined a beautiful California garden since the dam-building era cannot define beauty for the future.
Read MoreWhat makes a garden beautiful in winter? Although our mild climates let some blossoms from late summer and fall hang on plants into January, it is not flowers that make a beautiful garden in the dead of winter. In winter, the shape and structure of the garden is unclothed. Here are some factors to consider as you look out your window at the wet or chilly garden this month.
Read MoreOpen daily from dawn until dusk every day of the year!
Garden address: 1590 7th Avenue, San Francisco
info@gardenfortheenvironment.org
Mailing address: 2150 Allston Way, Suite 460, Berkeley, California 94704
Garden for the Environment is a fiscally sponsored project of Earth Island Institute.
