Shonduel and Don Duel’s Garden
Hayward
22574 6th Street, Hayward
Gardening experience: lifelong
Years gardened at this location: 3 years
Size: 5,100 square feet
Showcase feature: A wildlife habitat garden, designed and installed by the gardeners, has been created from the former rock-covered front garden and Astroturf-covered back garden. Over the course of three years, this garden was been transformed into a haven for native plants, insects, birds, and animals. Knowledgeable about insects, native plants, and various uses of plants, the gardeners designed the garden with the intent that nature would do most of the work and provide entertainment and wonder on a daily basis.
Other garden attractions:
- Coast live oak, bay tree, coyote bush, pink flowering currant, and California grape are volunteers.
- Ask the see the 'before' photos.
- Grey water system from the laundry waters the avocados. (The gardeners recommend using Oasis Soap to avoid salt build-up.)
- A variety of wildflowers reseed themselves each year. Initially some of the wildflowers, including lupine and clarkia, were planted from seed collected from the remnant roadside patches of natives.
- Eighty-five plant families are represented in this garden.
Gardening for Wildlife: Logs, rock, and brush piles provide shelter for wildlife, and a small pond provides water. Leaf-cutter bees nest in the garden, and skippers and bumblebees are frequent visitors. Deer, squirrels, moles, alligator lizards, California towees, jays, bushtits, dark-eyed juncos, Nutalls woodpeckers, titmice, black-headed phoebes, and mourning doves have all been seen in the garden. The gardener happily reports that letting the aphids go on the kale brought in an army of lady bug larvae and soldier beetles, and letting vegetables go to seed brought in flocks of sparrows. A bat house waits hopefully for inhabitants.