Logo

Garden tour
Sunday May 31, 2020

Showcase Feature
Nancy, who has been attending the Tour since its inception in 2005, has long had an affinity for native plants, and it shows in the garden she designed and installed. The garden in front of this 1908 Queen Anne (note the irregularly shaped, steeply pitched roof, and the asymmetrical façade) features a stately Dr. Hurd manzanita with an understory of fescues, iris, and lower-growing manzanitas. Except for new plants that are getting established, this garden is not watered at all.

In the back garden Nancy created a peaceful, contemplative space—note the boulder-lined asymmetric garden beds, the charming, gently meandering path, and the sense of enclosure provided by the trees and shrubs. Stroll through the rose-arbor entrance to the wooded forest bathing area, which is ringed with three sweetly-scented California lilac, an elderberry, island mallow, lemonade berry, and fruit trees. Take a seat in this tranquil haven and “forest bathe” yourself—meaning, relax in the atmosphere of the forest, become aware of the beauty around you, enjoy the sunlight shining through the leaves, and reap the health benefits that come from being in nature.

Other Garden Attractions
• Note the series of large ceramic pots planted with yerba buena, lewisia, huckleberry, and succulents that define the arc of the curving, pebble-strewn garden path.
• The garden beds were raised, creating visual interest, and providing the drainage most natives need.
Lippia repens (aka Phyla nodiflora) functions as a lawn substitute.
• This garden contains a potpourri of fruit trees, including plum, peach, persimmon, lemon, apple, Asian pear, mandarin, and Japanese yuzu. Edibles scattered throughout the beds of natives include onions, collards, and other greens.
• Potted tree collards in 4” pots will be available in exchange for a donation to the Tour.
• Tom, who plays recorder, will perform in the garage intermittently throughout the day. Come on into the garage, take a seat, and hope that Tom will play the “Bird Fancyers Delight” for you—written in 1717, this piece contains melodies taken from eleven bird species songs. (Ask, if you would like to hear it!)

Gardening for Wildlife
Hummingbirds, Bewick’s wrens, California towhee, lesser goldfinches, Steller’s jays, monarchs and other butterflies fly and flutter through the garden.

Check out the catio, which keeps the family’s cats, and birds, safe.

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants—

Green Home Features
HVAC Heat pumps: This large home has two heat pumps for heating and cooling the house: a Fujitsu Airstage ducted system keeps the first two floors comfortable, and a Fujitsu ductless mini-split system was installed on the third floor. (This meant that ducts would not have to be installed in the attic room, which didn’t already have them.)

Heat pump for heating water: HPSX-66 State self-contained heat pump water heater.

Solar panels: The solar panels were installed about 20 years ago, and will be replaced with better-performing panels in the future.

Garden Talks
12:00 “The only constant is change: lawn replacement, tree removal, moving plants around, and surrendering to shade—join me to learn how the garden has changed over time” by Nancy Beckman

At least partially wheelchair accessible? yes

Showcase Feature
Doug Tallamy’s talk on the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour’s first virtual garden tour, in 2020, motivated Carol and Jeff to remove their recently installed “drought-tolerant” landscaping and replace it with California natives, in order to create a “caterpillar garden.” Many people don’t know that baby birds must have caterpillars—thousands of them!—while the chicks are in their nests, and even after they fledge. Baby birds do not eat berries, or seeds, or sugar water; they must have caterpillars.

Carol and Jeff’s goal is to increase food sources for chicks and adult birds, to try to reverse the very rapid decline in numbers and species of birds and butterflies they have seen in their yard. In addition to creating a garden for wildlife, Carol wanted a lush-looking landscape, and is very happy with the plant choices that designer Kelly Marshall, of Kelly Marshall Garden Design, made for the front garden. The shady back yard, dominated by a large coast live oak and other mature trees, was designed with a preliminary list of shade-loving plants suggested by Kelly: Carol and Jeff took it from there, and they installed the back garden themselves.

Other Garden Attractions
• Enjoy the variety of textures, colors and scents in this garden! Jeff and Carol enjoy sitting in the sunken patio or at the backyard dining table to watch the birds at the feeders, or just listen to the water and commune with the trees. They hope you will, as well! Take a seat and enjoy this lovely garden; you won’t want to leave.

Gardening for Wildlife
More than fifty species of birds have been seen in the garden. White and golden-crowned sparrows, cedar waxwings, Nuttall’s and Downy woodpeckers, northern flickers, bushtits, chestnut backed chickadees, both red and white-breasted nuthatches, oak titmice, robins, great horned and barn owls, and more all visit the feeders, fountain, and bird baths; they also forage in the trees and bushes.

The native plants also attract butterflies—buckeye, common checkered skipper, West Coast ladies and the great purple hairstreak were not seen in the garden when it was planted with non-native ornamentals—and it took a few years to attract them to the new, native plant garden. In addition to the butterflies listed above, hairstreaks, metalmarks and skippers spend time in the garden, as do many beautiful moths. Occasionally, a tiger swallowtail floats through. Leaves are left on the ground, as the pupa of butterflies and moths spend the winter attached to dried leaves, or nestled under leaf litter. Compost the leaves, and you are throwing away butterflies.

Baby lizards appeared in the garden last spring, along with lots of ladybugs and praying mantis, and many kinds and sizes of bees and wasps.

In order to enjoy their garden more, Jeff and Carol bought some close-focus binoculars so they could try to identify the many kinds of bees and butterflies that began showing up recently, when the plants were really established.

Carol notes, “The first day we started the fountain in the backyard, years ago, a flock of black headed grosbeaks showed up! We were delighted. We used to have huge flocks of cedar waxwings and robins coming to the fountain to drink and bathe—but we have seen the alarming decline in bird populations in our own garden. Sadly, the number of birds in our garden has dropped drastically over the past five years or so. We hope that providing plenty of native food sources for caterpillars and other insects will help reverse that loss.”

Garden Talks
11:00 and 2:00 “Chances are, you have never thought of your garden as a wildlife preserve that represents the last opportunity we have for sustaining plants and animals: join me to hear how you can help!” by Carol Garberson

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include coast live oak, Catalina cherry, aster, golden and red-flowering currant, California lilac, sunflower, manzanita, lupine, woodland strawberry, goldenrod, buckwheat, sages, and penstemon.

Green Home Features
Solar panels reduce the family’s PG&E bill. A whole house fan, which cuts the need for air conditioner use dramatically.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? Yes

The Graly’s Green Home Features
In a stroke of serendipitous good luck, Donna Mandel and Ken Jacobs’ next-door-neighbor Tom Graly, who has fully electrified his nearly 100-year-old home while maintaining its look and charm, is happy to show his electrified home’s green features and will be on hand to answer any questions you have about electrification.

Stop by to see the HVAC heat pump air handler, heat pump water heater, laundry to landscape system, and the electric vehicle charging station. After viewing the HVAC compressor from the ground, step inside the kitchen to check out the induction stove, see how fast it boils water, and talk to a knowledgeable and happy induction stove cook.

In the garden there will be a table with photos of the electrified systems, and literature from The Switch Is On, where you can learn what rebates are available.

Solar panels: This home has a 5 Kw, 19 panel system, which was installed by SunWork, a non-profit that specializes in installing solar on homes with low electricity bills. (Sunwork also installs heat pump water heaters at a highly discounted price: you can read more about that here.)

Electric dryer: In 2015 the Graly’s purchased a Samsung electric dryer.

Electric car: In 2016 Tom and Jane leased their first electric car, and Tom installed a GE 30 Amp Level 2 ECCS charging station himself. They later purchased VW eGolf which is, Tom says, “a wonderful city/commuter car which easily gets around the Bay Area.” The couple recently purchased a Hyundai Ioniq 5 EV, which they expect to be a great trip car—with the 305 mile range relieving any range anxiety.

Ducted heat pump system for heating and cooling the house: The ducted heat pump system that both heats and cools the house was added in late 2019. The system is a Carrier and includes a Carrier HEPA air filter. The work was done by a neighbor who had experience installing heat pumps. Unusually, the compressor is located on the roof of the house.

Heat pump for heating water: In 2016 Tom and Jane purchased a GE GeoSpring 55-gallon heat pump water heater, which Tom installed himself. (At that time, GE had decided to get out of the home electrification business and the heat pump water heater was heavily discounted. (Please note that Sunwork installs heat pump water heaters at a highly discounted price: you can get a price quote here.)

Electrical Service: Has been upgraded to 200 amps.

Induction stove: In 2020 the Graly’s bought a one ‘burner’ Duxtop 8100MC induction hob to see if they liked cooking with it. They did, and in 2021 they purchased an LG induction stove.

Insulation: Tom and Jane have had the old insulation removed, the last of the knob and tube wiring replaced, and insulation blown in to meet an R-44 standard. Blue Rock Home did the insulation work; Tom and Jane received a rebate from BayRen.

Laundry to landscape system: In 2022 Tom installed a laundry to landscape system to water their mostly-edible garden.

Light-colored roof: Reflects heat rays from the sun, keeping the attic and house below it cool during warm weather.
Marvin dual pane windows: Improve energy efficiency, and reduce noise.

East Bay Green Home Tour video
Tom and Jane’s home was featured on the 2021 East Bay Green Home Tour.

Tom’s heat pump was featured in this webinar
You can learn more about their heat pump in this heat pump webinar (at 27 minutes in).

At least partially wheelchair accessible?

Showcase Feature
There’s a lot happening on this large lot in Cherryland! The 14,000 square feet of landscaped area in this garden includes an eclectic collection of native plants, a cornucopia of exotic fruit trees, two charming Nigerian dwarf goats, a noisy African guineafowl, a large seating area with a charming gazebo, and chickens.

Toku and Keegan are among the founders of Plantify, a non-profit whose mission is to connect people with nature through a creative combination of gardening, art, science, urban farming, and outdoor experiences. Sign up at the Plantify table if you’d like to be notified about their free guided nature walks, plant-based workshops, and other events.

This Japanese-California native fusion garden was designed by Toku, and installed by Toku and his partner, Keegan. It combines the relaxing sound of water falling through the clasped hands of a kimono-draped woman and into a three-tiered fountain, a bamboo “mystery” fence – ‘kakine (垣根) — with an adjacent beguiling red bridge that guides one from an inviting seating area into a new garden room, the seasonal changes of deciduous plants, and the random sounds of birdsong.

The cornucopia of native plants in this garden include four kinds of sages (pitcher, white, Cleveland, and black), four types of buckwheat (bright yellow sulpher, pink rosy, and the cream-colored Santa Cruz Island and Santa Barbara Island buckwheats), and a collection of native trees and shrubs such as the California hop tree, box elder, Catalina cherry, madrone, and coast silktassle.

A cheerful array of wildflowers, including electric yellow buttercups, purple and white Chinese houses, pink clarkias, blue-lavender phacelias, blue flax, and orange poppies brighten the garden in spring.

Fragrant natives in this garden include the sages listed above, spice bush, mugwort, California lilac, California rose, wooly blue curls, yerba buena, yerba santa, coyote mint, and pink currant.

Among the fruits growing in this garden are cherimoya, finger limes, ice-cream-bean, tree tomatoes, guavas and passionfruit.

Other Garden Attractions
• Two friendly Nigerian dwarf goats, Mochi and Sakura, who were brought in to remove the “impenetrable mat of ivy,” Bermuda grass, and other weeds that had engulfed the back part of this large lot, can be petted.
• Drop down in one of the outdoor seating areas and take a rest!
• Kokedama is the Japanese art of growing plants in a ball wrapped and covered by moss. DIY Kokedama moss kits will be available for sale; check out the samples that will be on display.

Gardening for Wildlife
The sound of falling water attracts birds (and people!). Western bluebirds, finches, and hummingbirds nest in the garden. Barn owls have been spotted resting in the tall trees that border the garden, and hawks soar overhead. Monarch, swallowtail, sulfur, and checkerspot butterflies sip nectar from the plants. Ground-nesting bees make cozy, underground homes in dry parts of the garden, and hummingbird moths have been seen in the early evening, waiting impatiently for the fragrant desert willow – ‘Maggie’s Pink’ blossoms to open.

Dutchman’s pipevine has been planted, as it is the only plant the large iridescent blue-black pipevine swallowtail butterfly can lay its eggs on.

Garden Talks
12:00 “Bringing nature into the metropolis with native biophilic gardens” by Toku Hankins

1:00 “Edible and useful native plants from the gardens” by Keegan Pham

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include Catalina cherry, California lilac, currants, manzanitas, sage, buckwheat, lupine, aster, and penstemon.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? Yes

Parking
There is no parking on this narrow street; visitors will need to park at the intersections of Hampton Road and either Camden Avenue or Western Blvd., and walk the short distance to the house.

Showcase Feature
Inspired by the Tour, Christine, a garden tour attendee, volunteer, and YouTube garden tour channel browser, was ready for the lawn to go: she had never felt good about watering crab grass, and the front yard looked awful when it wasn’t being watered.

Christine received $1,700 from the Contra Costa Water District’s Lawn to Garden program for sheetmulching the lawn, and another $200 through the District’s Landscape Design Assistance program, which covered the cost of the front yard garden design, which was created by Kelly Marshall, of Kelly Marshall Garden Design.

This is a new garden, planted in the fall of 2023, and it is a great garden to visit f you’d like to ask about how the garden was designed and installed while the details are fresh in the owner’s mind. However, if you prefer to see mature gardens, this is not the stop for you.

The wide flagstone path at the entrance to the garden creates a welcoming feel. Follow the gently curving decomposed granite walkway past the California lilac, manzanita, rosy buckwheats and white, black and Cleveland sages, to the shady part of the garden, where monkeyflower, Island alum root and sweetly scented hummingbird sages flourish under the large mulberry trees.

Other Garden Attractions
• Purple, pink, magenta and orange were the colors of choice: they are provided by the flowers on the purple penstemon and coyote mint, magenta hummingbird sage, bright pink Western redbud, and orange monkeyflower.
• This garden should not need to be watered at all when it is established.
• Toyon and elderberry, small now, will create privacy screens when mature.

Gardening for Wildlife
The plants were chosen because they provide food, shelter, and nesting places for wildlife. Like us, birds must have fresh, clean water to drink—every day—and bathe in. The birdbath near the entry path provides a great opportunity for the family to see the birds it attracts.

Western blue birds, oak titmice, white-breasted nuthatches, and chickadees have been seen in the garden.

Alligator lizards, which weren’t seen in the garden before it was transformed, can now be spotted sunning themselves on boulders.

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include California lilac, manzanita, sage, snowberry, coyote brush, elderberry, and penstemon.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? Yes

Parking
Patterson is a really busy street, and the cars go fast. In order to keep the side mirrors on your car, it would be best if you parked on Monte Cresta, Monte Vista, or Santa Barbara.

Wondering what to make for dinner?
Try this pasta primavera recipe from Cooking Classy, which was submitted by Christine.

Showcase Feature
Inspired by the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour, Cheryl and Brandon designed and installed this charming, water-conserving, low-maintenance cottage garden. For the installation, they sheet mulched the lawn in stages, brought in soil and small cobble to create a berm, set flagstones for the path, ‘spotted’ (or ‘placed’) the plants, and then did the planting.

Plum, pear, apple, orange, and a stone fruit salad tree anchor the garden. The understory contains low-growing California lilac and manzanitas, which provide structure and stability throughout the year, and an exuberant array of sages (purple, white, Munz’s, and hummingbird), buckwheats (rosy, seaside, longstem, and Santa Cruz Island), and a colorful and rambunctious selection of wildflowers (gilia, clarkia, poppies, buttercups, baby black eyes, and grand collomia).

Other Garden Attractions
• The hardy groundcover Lippia repens borders the pathway near the house.
Be sure and view the garden from the flagtone path near the house; this ‘secret room’ gives an entirely different view of the garden.
• Buckwheat and goldenrod flower in the summer and fall, extending the bloom season.
• Check out the fun artwork in this garden! Cheryl made the glass pieces at the Alameda Art Lab.

Gardening for Wildlife
Milkweed attracts monarch butterflies, which can lay eggs only on this plant. Goldenrod provides the butterflies with nectar. Ladybugs lay their eggs on the buckwheat.

Garden Talks
11:00 and 1:00 “Slow and steady: creating your garden yourself, a little at a time” by Cheryl Chi

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include California lilac, sages, buckwheat, and penstemon.

Green Home Features
An array of twelve solar panels provides most of the energy this family needs, thus reducing their energy bill.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? Yes

Showcase Feature
Long-time Tour goer Lainie was ready for a change. Despite the difficulties she has experienced gardening on her lot—exposed, hot areas; dry slopes in baking sun; and browsing by deer—she has gone all-out in order to create a welcoming environment for birds and other wildlife. And, she’s on the right track, as oak titmice, Western bluebirds, nuthatches, and screech owls have all nested in the garden, deer and turkey wander through daily to drink, forage, and cool off in the shade, and fawns are an annual delight as they often are discovered hiding in the garden in the early spring.

The new garden was designed to contain year-round flowers and fruit; several fountains and birdbaths provide the water birds need. Birds—and people—love the sound of water falling through the tall, burbling fountain near the deck. Hummingbirds sip from and bathe in this fountain; Lainie has seen woodpeckers clinging to its side to drink. Take a seat on the deck, and enjoy this peaceful garden.

Other Garden Attractions
• Roughly fifty bird-houses, hand-made by Lainie, beckon to avian visitors, inviting them to raise their chicks in this welcoming environment, and creating a fun entryway to the garden.
• 265-gallon plastic totes are used to collect rainwater from the roof, allowing about 1,000 gallons of stored water to irrigate the garden.
• Check out the orchard, with its thirty-six varieties of fruit trees, including many heirloom varieties, such as Independence nectarine (1800s), Ananas Reinette apple (France 1800s), Rio Oso Gem Peach (CA 1926), Antonovka apple (Russia 1826), Magnum Bonum apple (1828), Governor Wood Cherry (1842), Egremont Russet apple (England, 1870s), Pink Sparkle apple (1900s), Ashmead’s Kernel apple (England 1700s), and White Pearmain Apple (England, 1200s).
• To control weeds and save water, Lainie has woodchips delivered (free from arborists!) and piles them about 12″ deep throughout the gardened areas and around the plants; watch your step, as they are a soft and uneven surface.
• Deer fencing protects part of the garden; outside the fence are the plants that the deer don’t eat (think sages).
• A $750 lawn conversation rebate from the East Bay Municipal Utility District helped pay for the transformation.

Gardening for Wildlife
Mature oaks, the plethora of native plants Lainie has planted, and several water sources have brought in oak titmice, nuthatches, Western bluebirds, and woodpeckers. Western fence lizards bask in the sun (when not snacking on insects), skinks are occasionally spotted, and garter snakes and fox pass through. Native bees, butterflies, and other insects are common sights.

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include valley and coast live oaks, currants, sages and buckwheats (eight kinds), manzanita (five types), California lilac (four varieties), coyote brush, and penstemon.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? No.

Showcase Feature
Inspired by the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour, informed by Doug Tallamy’s fascinating talk about the importance of native plants and caterpillars to birds, and desiring a garden that was both inviting and evocative of the woodlands near her house, Kathy set about transforming her small front garden.

Kathy’s interest in local native plants steered her toward yarrow, with its soft, ferny leaves, orange monkeyflower, which delights hummingbirds, California fuchsia, with its beautiful, tubular, fire-engine red flowers, fragrant yerba buena, and more. Lois Simonds, of Gardening by Nature’s Design, designed and installed the garden and new drip irrigation system.

This garden is both new (it was just installed in the fall of 2023) and small. If you are interested in talking with a homeowner whose memory of the garden make-over process is fresh, or if you have a small garden yourself, this is the stop for you.

The much larger side and back gardens are in the process of being converted to natives and edibles; you’re welcome to take a gander at them on your way to see the compressors for the heat pumps.

Other Garden Attractions
• Fruit tree fans will enjoy seeing the apricot, persimmon, pomegranate, lemon, plum, fig, and orange trees in the back yard, and apricot, kumquat, and apple in the front.

Gardening for Wildlife
This garden was designed to attract wildlife. Oak titmice, chickadees, bush tits, Bewicks wrens, yellow-rumped warblers and juncos visit the garden. Bird baths provide the water that birds need to drink, and bathe in.

Garden Talks
11:00 and 1:00 “How and why to turn off the gas! Resources to help you electrify your home” by Kathy Simon

2:00 “Designing a front entry garden with as many local California native plants as possible. See how the placement creates a flow and ‘architecture’ to the garden” by Lois Simonds

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include huckleberry, currant, goldenrod, manzanita, aster, sage, and coyote brush.

Green Home Features – Come On In This Fully-Electrified Home!
Solar panels: 18 panels, 7.2 kW system, out-of-pocket cost was $20,000; pay-off time will be approximately 6 years. Kathy and Susan’s total annual PGE bill is 0, aside from the small monthly fee for being connected to the grid. The panels were installed by a locally owned company, SaveALot Solar.

Electric vehicle: 2019 Chevy Bolt, plugged into regular wall outlet in the garage.

HVAC heat pump: Ducted system, installed by Ecoperformance Builders. This system provides quiet, steady heat evenly throughout the home.

Water heater heat pump: SanCo2 system, installed by Electrifymyhome. This is an extremely quiet system. The compressor sits outside, while the large storage tank is in the crawl space. It uses CO2 as the refrigerant, which is extremely efficient and has less global warming impact than other refrigerants.

Induction range: Bertazzoni. Unbelievably quick and responsive to cook on. The oven has convection capability, which allows it to function as an “air fryer. Kathy says, “It’s fabulous knowing that because I’m not using gas, I am not breathing in benzene and NO2 gases while cooking or baking—nor leaking methane in the kitchen or basement, as many gas stoves do!”

Dryer — Is a regular electric clothes dryer, no heat pump.

Heat pump for cedar hot tub: The third heat pump on the property heats the water for a small cedar hot tub (5 feet diameter, 4 feet deep, Alaskan cedar), in a closed system. Many times more efficient than electric resistance heat, the heat pump makes it possible to have a hot tub that is almost completely powered by solar.

Kitchen cabinets: As part of an (ongoing) kitchen remodel, Kathy and Susan purchased new drawers and doors for their 80-year old cabinets, rather than tearing out the whole cabinets. The old cabinet boxes are still perfectly good, so with new drawers and doors, they were able to get functional hinges and drawer slides with much less waste.

Rain catchment barrels: Two barrels attached to downspouts from the roof collect water that is used in the garden.

Electrical panel: Ask Kathy how her original, 1941 100 Amp electrical panel is able to support her fully-electric home.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? Yes

Showcase Feature
During the pandemic Donna heard Doug Tallamy speak, and was inspired to garden for wildlife—particularly for birds, as she and Ken are avid birders. When this house was being prepared for sale in 2020, the realtor put in sod. In 2021, with consultation from Donna Bodine of Beeland Farms, Donna M. and Ken sheet mulched the lawn, and designed the back garden. Donna B. checked their plan, made suggestions, and “spotted”—meaning, placed—the plants the day they were to be planted. Ken and Donna M. did the planting, and they have added many native plants to the back, front, and side gardens since then.

This garden has something in flower almost every month. The floral display begins in January, when the delicate, urn-shaped cream-to-pink colored flowers of the manzanita appear. It continues in early spring with purple-blue California lilac, the gorgeous (and fragrant) pink flower clusters of the pink flowering currant, silver bush lupine, and a colorful array of wildflowers, then launches into high gear in summer with the buoyant blossoms of yellow and magenta monkeyflower mingling with lavender sages, creamy yarrow, and orange poppies. In fall yellow goldenrod, bright red California fuchsia, and pink buckwheat brighten the garden.

Other Garden Attractions
• The attractive planter box was built by Ken.
• The parking strip has been seeded with wildflowers, and baby blue eyes, Chinese houses, and clarkia bloom, in succession, for about three months.

Gardening for Wildlife
This garden was designed to attract bees, butterflies, and birds. Donna and Ken have seen 19 species of birds in or above their garden.

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants—in this garden include pink-flowering currant, California lilac, lupine, sage, goldenrod, aster, manzanita, buckwheat, redbud, and penstemon.

Green Home Features
Donna and Ken have installed an 8 panel, 4 KW solar panel system and a heat pump for heating and cooling the house. You can see the compressor under the deck.

As a special bonus, on the day of the Tour next-door-neighbor Tom Graly, who has fully electrified his nearly 100-year-old home while maintaining its look and charm, will be on hand to answer any questions you have about electrification.

Tom and Jane’s home has a ducted heat pump system (with the compressor mounted on the roof of the house), light-colored roof, Marvin dual pane windows, blown-in insulation, electric dryer, HEPA air filtration system, electric vehicle and charger, and an induction stove. Their 13 solar panels were installed by SunWork, a non-profit that specializes in installing solar on homes with low electricity bills. (Sunwork also installs heat pump water heaters at a discounted price; you can read more about that here.)

Tom and Jane also have a laundry-to-landscape system to water their mostly-edible garden.

Tom and Jane’s home was featured on the 2021 East Bay Green Home Tour. You can learn more about their heat pump in this heat pump webinar (at 27 minutes in).

At least partially wheelchair accessible? Yes

Showcase Feature
The large lawn that was in place on the large corner lot when Glenn and David purchased this house in 2021 didn’t last long. Glenn, Executive Director of Golden Gate Audubon, envisioned a garden that would be beautiful, need a minimum of maintenance and little to no water once mature, flourish while being pesticide-free (of course!), and provide food, shelter and nesting areas for birds. Glenn sheet mulched the lawn away, and Glenn and John Bain, of Mariposa Garden Design, designed the garden.

The entrance to the garden is bordered by berms containing succulents such as canyon, fingertip, and chalk dudleyas, several types of sedum, and Lewisia. In spring and summer they are surrounded by an exuberant array of wildflowers, including pink, burgundy, and coral-colored clarkia, yellow and white tidy tips, and orange and cream-colored poppies. New this year are hundreds of native bulbs, including Ithuriel’s spear, blue dicks, and Mariposa lilies.

The meadow in front of the living room window—designed to keep the view open—contains the lush-looking and finely-bladed Point Molate red fescue, and graceful alkali sacaton, which has silvery-green leaves and a slightly reddish-to-purplish seed head. The fragrance of the sweetly-scented hummingbird sage drifts through the garden on warm breezes. A large redwood burl and boulders provide visual interest.

The garden is bordered by seven types of manzanita (‘Dr. Hurd’, ‘John Dourley’, ‘Sunset’, ‘Shatterberry’, ‘Baby Bear’, ‘Point Arena’, and ‘Monterey Carpet’), which provide stability and interest throughout the year with their beautiful burgundy bark and evergreen leaves. The manzanitas contrast in color, texture, and form with the amazing blue and fragrant flowers of three types of California lilacs (‘Concha’, ‘Yankee Point’, and ‘Joyce Coulter’), and the striking blue-green foliage of the ‘Canyon Prince’ wild rye and ‘Catalina California native fuchsia’. Penstemon and yarrow were planted in order to brighten the garden while the slower-growing shrubs are filling in.

Other Garden Attractions
• Browse the “Plants for Birds” display, which features beautiful, hardy, local native plants that are easy to grow and readily available in nurseries.
• Check out the bird-safe window information, and find out how you can prevent bird / glass collisions at your own home. (Did you know that one billion birds in the U.S. die each year flying into glass—you can prevent this from happening by treating the exteriors of your windows. Find out more here.)
• Take a seat in this peaceful garden and listen to the birds; you won’t want to leave!

Gardening for Wildlife
Interestingly there are no feeders in this garden; as Glenn says, he “Feeds the birds with his plants.” This strategy is clearly successful, as sightings of cedar waxwings, band-tailed pigeons, California towhees, and oat titmice attest. Great horned owls can be heard calling to each other in the evenings. Thrillingly, a California quail was recently seen! The meadow provides shelter for grassland birds, and rock piles were created as homes for lizards.

Green Home Features
This home contains solar panels, a heat pump for heating and cooling the house, and an electric vehicle and charger.

Garden Talks
11:00 and 1:00 “Bringing nature home: how you can create a beautiful garden that will attract birds, butterflies, and bees” by Glenn Phillips

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone speciesGreen Home Features
This home contains solar panels, a heat pump for heating and cooling the house, and an electric vehicle and charger.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? Yes

Note: This garden has steps of irregular height, many of which are made of stone with uneven surfaces; it should not be visited by those with balance issues.

Parking will be tight. Be prepared to park some distance away and walk to this garden. Watch for pedestrians walking to and from the garden. Do not block neighbor’s driveways.

Showcase Feature
The previous owner of this home was an avid birder who was interested in nature; Sherene wanted to continue that legacy.

The goal was to rewild this hillside garden by bringing back local native plants. The process began with clearing the dense thickets of ivy, Himalayan blackberry, cotoneaster, pyracantha, and other non-native, invasive plants that had enshrouded the property; the model was Knepp Farm in England, which transformed degraded farmland into natural areas, resulting in an astonishing return of wildlife.

Christopher Reynolds, of Reynolds–Sebastiani Design Services, designed and installed this beautiful garden. Christopher’s hardworking crew installed cobblestone retaining walls with Connecticut blue capstones; renovated an old tool shed—turning it into a sunny potting room and a welcoming farmstand/reading room; created an expansive flagstone patio that connected the house and garden; unearthed long-buried paths; and constructed the welcoming entrance gate.

Christopher used CalScape to research which natives were local to the site—and then the planting began. The cheerful meadow in the sunny front garden contains foothill sedge, milkweed (the only plant on which the monarch butterfly can lay its eggs), Douglas iris, pearly everlasting (on which painted and American lady butterflies—and the amazing hummingbird-sized sphinx moths—can lay their eggs), and a variety of other low-growing, sun-loving plants.

The lush, shady, and sloping back garden contains coast live oaks, manzanita, redbud, big leaf maples and redwood. In their shade is an understory of currants, coral bells, wild ginger, hummingbird sage, and sword and lady ferns, among other plants. Colorful wildflowers border the seating area, and a potpourri of happy succulents are tucked into crevices in the retaining wall

Other Garden Attractions
• Don’t miss the “before” photos!
• Drop down in one of the many seating areas in this peaceful oasis; you won’t want to leave.

Gardening for Wildlife
Bees, butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds frequent the garden. Peregrine falcons perch on the roof of the house, watching the avian action below with interest. As the pupa of many butterflies and moths over-winter in leaf litter, in this garden they “leave the leaves” to avoid throwing them into the green waste bin.

Garden Talks
12:00 “Be the change you want to see! Create a wildlife habitat in your own garden” by Christopher Reynolds

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants—in this garden include oak, redbud, big leaf maples, currant, California lilac, hummingbird sage, and woodland strawberries.

Green Home Features

At least partially wheelchair accessible? No

Showcase Feature
The lawn wasn’t cutting the mustard for Save Mount Diablo conservation biologist Juan Pablo, whose goal was to create a garden that would attract birds, butterflies, and native bees.

The stage for the garden of his dreams was set by the magnificent valley oaks that grace the front and back gardens, reminiscent of the time—not so very long ago—when enormous herds of tule elk and antelope roamed nearby hillsides and valleys covered with wildflowers and bunchgrasses, and drank from streams teeming with migrating salmon, as condors with nine-foot wingspans soared overhead.

This wildlife-attracting garden was designed by Kelly Marshall of Kelly Marshall Garden design free-of-charge, through the Contra Costa Water District’s Landscape Design Assistance Program, and Juan Pablo received a $750 rebate from the District through its Lawn to Garden program for replacing the lawn with natives. Juan Pablo sheet mulched the lawn away; the plants were planted and the irrigation system was installed by Juan Pablo and friends.

Perennials such as California lilac, manzanitas, buckwheat, and sages anchor the garden, providing greenery and stability throughout the year. Seasonal color is provided by the masses of bright yellow flowers on goldenrod, lovely blossoms of the purple bush lupine, striking red tubular flowers on the California fuchsia, and the cheerful lavender summer-through-fall blooms of the aster.

Other Garden Attractions
• Juan Pablo works for the land trust and conservation organization Save Mount Diablo, as does Antioch garden tour host Laura Kindsvater; information on Save Mount Diablo will be available at their gardens.

Gardening for Wildlife
The plants in this garden were selected to attract birds, native bees, and butterflies—and they have really done the job! You can see photos of the more than seventy species of wildlife photographed in Juan Pablo’s (still new) garden on his iNaturalist page.
In addition to the terrific selection of native plants, the venerable oaks, burbling pillar fountain and bird bath have attracted nearly thirty species of birds, including Downy, Nuttall’s, and hairy woodpeckers, sharp-shinned, Cooper’s and red-tailed hawks, barn and great horned owls, northern flickers, and cedar waxwings.

This bee-friendly garden contains plants that flower at different times of the year and provide pollen and nectar for bees both big and small. Research has shown that—not surprisingly—native bees prefer native plants over plants from the Mediterranean, Australia, and South Africa. Juan Pablo has seen fourteen species of native bees in his garden, including yellow-faced and black-tailed bumble bees, and leafcutter, golden-haired miner, mason, digger, and sweat bees. Recently, he was delighted to discover that a newly mated queen black-tailed bumblebee was overwintering in a small nest in a dry part of the garden. He noticed that, to keep herself safe in her tiny home, the opening was covered by leaf litter (remember, leave the leaves!). In spring she will emerge from her snug nest, and enjoy nectar from the plants in this garden—the first food she will had had for many months—before collecting pollen with which she will make her nest.

As the juvenile stages of butterflies and moths often spend the winter in leaf litter, leaves are left on the ground (where they also help improve the soil). Eleven species of butterflies and moths flutter about the garden, including monarch, gray hairstreak, and mournful duskywing butterflies; common checkered, umber, and fiery skippers; and mint moths.

Boulders, originally brought in to discourage free-roaming chickens from scratching out the plants, have attracted Western fence lizards, which bask on and shelter between the rocks. Brush piles provide additional safe spaces in which wildlife can shelter.

Garden Talks
12:00 and 2:00 “How I started and maintain my native plant wildlife habitat garden” by
Juan Pablo Galván Martínez

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants—in this garden include oak, hollyleaf cherry, California lilac, currant, manzanita, lupine, aster, goldenrod, sage, buckwheat, and penstemon.

Green Home Features
Juan Pablo drives an electric vehicle, and cooks on an induction stovetop.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? Yes.

Special notes:
There is no street parking anywhere on the narrow street near this garden—either before the house, or after it. So, visitors to this garden have three options:

1) Park on Circle Drive, El Sobrante, near the intersection with Oak Knoll and walk uphill about 6-8 minutes to reach the garden. (Watch for cars while strolling up and down this one lane road.)
2) Eight cars can park on the driveway of this home; thus, eight parking passes will be given out by the friendly Parking Volunteer in the order in which visitors arrive. Please return your parking pass to the amazing man who has agreed to be Parking Volunteer for the day (spoiler: it is actually his garden you’ll be visiting) and don’t forget to thank him!
3) We will set up a Casual Carpool stop at the Circle Drive and Oak Knoll intersection. If folks with parking passes are willing to take additional visitors up the hill, you can hitch a ride to the garden with them. Don’t catch a ride up if you cannot manage a 6-8 minute walk downhill walk, as we will not be coordinating downhill rides. Please be aware that drivers may require you to wear masks in their cars, and bring masks in case they are needed.

Once at the property the garden is accessed via a sloping and uneven driveway. Be aware of the cars entering and exiting the driveway.

When in the garden, watch your step. The garden, on a steep hill, has more than 1,000 hand-cast concrete steps; made in the 1940s, these steps are non-standard in height. Be careful, and watch your footing. This garden is not for those with balance issues.

Folks allergic to bee stings – be advised there are three beehives in the garden.

There is absolutely no bathroom access at this home; the nearest bathroom is at the El Sobrante Library, at 4191 Appian Way in El Sobrante. On Saturdays the library is open from 9:00-5:00.

Garden Description
In 1949 renowned garden designer and artist Harland Hand designed and installed this steep hillside garden. The design included more than one thousand custom-poured concrete steps which provide access to curving paths that lead to a series of garden rooms—allowing visitors to explore, anticipate, and delight in unexpected views from a plethora of terraces and patios. Lichen-covered and time-worn benches, designed and created by Hand, have provided resting places for visitors for more than seventy years.

The magnificent oak woodland at the back of the house contains a mature understory of spicebush, Oregon grape, and toyon. A venerable fallen oak, left in repose, is a dramatic living sculpture.

Some changes were made to the garden during the pandemic. Many pine trees were removed, creating open areas. Now, on the sunny, steep slope adjacent to the swimming pool a seventeen-foot waterfall, designed by Diana, plunges into a tranquil pond. On hot days flocks of delighted birds gather by the cascade to drink and bathe. At the base of the fall honeybees cluster together to sip water from damp stones.

More than a thousand native plants have been added to the garden since 2022. (Yes, it’s true; this is a large garden!) Garden designer Kelly McGuiness and Diana worked together to select the plants; Kelly created the design.

Blue-eyed grass line the paths; a lupine meadow was planted near the top of the garden. The back fence has been planted with alternative holly leaf cherry and coffeeberry shrubs; this hedge will create a privacy screen when mature.

Other Garden Attractions
• Honeybees from the three hives frolic about the garden.
• Weeds are dealt with by…persistent weeding. No pesticides are used in this—or any!—Tour garden.
• Drop down into any of the many seating areas in this peacful garden and rest a while; you won’t want to leave.

Gardening for Wildlife
“The number of birds visiting the garden has increased since the natives were planted,” notes Diana.

The native plants are allowed to go to seed, feeding birds throughout the year. Red-breasted nuthatches, orioles, Downey woodpeckers and quail visit the garden; mourning doves nest here. Red tail hawks soar overhead and, occasionally, through the garden. Owls can be heard calling to each other at night. Bats flit overhead in the evenings, noshing on mosquitoes. Jays and squirrels plant oaks, which then pop up all over the garden. On warm days, lizards bask in the sun; later they will take shelter in the dry stacked retaining walls. The steepest part of the garden is left untended, for wildlife to use, including a shy coyote, and deer, which visit the lower part of the garden often.

Garden Talks
11:00 & 2:00 “The process of transforming a thirsty Pacific Northwest garden into a low water-consuming California native plant garden” by Diana Marshall Mei

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include oaks, holly leaf cherry, huckleberry, California lilac, lupine, manzanita, buckwheat, sage, and penstemon.

Green Home Features
Blue jean, or denim, insulation was installed to make the house more energy efficient. Blue jean insulation is made from recycled jeans; it can be used in walls, ceilings, floors, attics, and crawl spaces. As the denim is treated with a flame retardant, it can be used instead of fiberglass insulation. Some of the advantages of blue jean insulation are that it is easy to handle—there is no need to suit up in gloves and long pants, or wear a respirator, as one would if handling fiberglass. In addition, denim insulation is both recycled and also recyclable, post-use. (Fiberglass must be sent to the landfill.)

A whole house fan cools the house during warm weather. At night, the whole house fan pulls in cool air through open windows and exhausts it through the attic. The exchange of air cools the house, as does flushing the attic (which holds a lot of heat). Whole house fans are inexpensive to install, and they are much less expensive than air conditioners to run. If you are not going to install a heat pump (which both heats and cools air), a whole house fan is a great way to cool your house.

The family gets around in an electric car.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? No

Showcase Feature
When long-time Tour-goer Laura and her husband bought the house in 2021 one of the first projects they tackled was the front yard, which consisted of a weedy lawn bordered by rosemary hedges and nandina (which bears cyanide-containing berries that are toxic to birds).

The garden was designed by Kelly Marshall of Kelly Marshall Garden design free-of-charge, through the Contra Costa Water District’s Landscape Design Assistance Program, and the family received a $600 rebate from the District through its Lawn to Garden program for sheet mulching the lawn away, installing drip irrigation in part of the garden, and planting with natives. The garden was installed by Laura and her family.

A pleasing variety of perennial California lilac, manzanitas, lupine, sages, buckwheats and bunchgrasses anchor this peaceful garden. Yellow goldenrod and sunflowers, purple penstemon and coyote mint, cream-colored yarrow, lavender seaside daisy, and fire-engine red fuchsia brighten the landscape at various times of the year.

Other Garden Attractions
• Weeds are hand-pulled; if that doesn’t do them in, hot water poured is on them, and, if necessary, rocks are piled on the ground where they would reappear. No pesticides are used in this—or any!—Tour garden.
• Laura works for the land trust and conservation organization Save Mount Diablo, as does Concord garden tour host Juan Pablo Galván Martínez; information on Save Mount Diablo will be available at their gardens.

Gardening for Wildlife
Laura asked Kelly design a garden that would attract birds, bees, and butterflies; as you can see from the photographs, Kelly did. Native bees love the native wildflowers; Valley carpenter bees—the largest bees in California—and small, shiny, green sweat bees frequent the garden.

Diminutive grey hairstreaks, reddish orange Mylitta crescents, and sturdy skippers flit about, sipping nectar and pollinating flowers. As many butterflies and moths overwinter beneath fallen leaves, leaf litter is left on the ground.

Hummingbird moths lay eggs on the native fuchsia—don’t miss the beautiful photograph of the beautiful black and gold hummingbird moth caterpillar on a native fuchsia in Laura’s set of photos. Moths, like butterflies, can only lay their eggs on specific plants; plants that the hummingbird moth can reproduce on include native fuchsia, buckwheat, currants, hollyleaf cherry, and clarkia.

Lesser goldfinches nibble the seeds of the California sunflowers, and hummingbirds sip nectar from the California fuchsia and chaparral currant.

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include California lilacs, currants, manzanitas, lupines, buckwheats, sages, California sunflowers, California rose, goldenrod, and penstemon.

Green Home Features
Come on into this fully electrified home! The climate crisis motivated Laura and her husband to take action to reduce their contribution to global warming.

Solar panels create the energy needed to power 108 percent of their annual electricity use. Their home now runs on 100 percent electricity, and both their cars are electric.

As a gas furnace can cost almost half of a home’s total energy usage, theirs was replaced by Eco Performance Builders with a Fujitsu ducted heat pump system, which both heats and cools the house.

The family received a $605 lawn-removal rebate and free landscaping design assistance from the District.

The Frigidaire Galaxy induction stovetop means the family is no longer breathing in dangerous chemicals produced by gas-burning stoves. (See this NY Times article “Study Compares Gas Stove Pollution to Secondhand Cigarette Smoke”.) Clean-up is a breeze with the stove’s flat top, and food and water heat up more quickly on an induction stove than on when that burns gas. Laura is also happy with her electric LG dryer.

The house has a cool roof, which reflects sunlight and disperses heat, and stay cooler than a conventional roof. This keeps the house cooler, of course, but it also saves energy and money. Laura’s roofer, A Better Roofing Company, was willing to install the cool roof for a very reasonable price and at the same cost as a conventional roof.

Between the solar panels and electrification efforts, the family is now saving money on their PG&E bill.

Laura and her husband got a below-market interest rate from the State of California through Go Green Financing to pay for the electrification work. The goal of Go Green Financing is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change. They got also a solar loan from Redwood Credit Union.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? Yes

NOTE: The stones in the back garden path are uneven; please watch your step on them, and also the steps that lead up to the seating area.

Showcase Feature
This charming garden contains a plethora of eye-pleasing features, from the native grape that climbs the trellis at the entryway to the house, to the cream-colored flowers of the buckwheats that mingle with the purple of the sweetly scented sages, and the wildflower meadow that brightens an area formerly encased in ivy. The child-friendly back garden contains a buoyant bed of lupines and yarrow bordering the path leading to the children’s play area (complete with a pebble “beach”), and the native groundcover Lippia.

The back garden was designed and installed by Miri Malmquist, owner of Beauty and the Feast; the front garden was designed by Sallie Bryan, owner of 4B Garden Design, and installed by Pamela, her mom, and a gardener.

Free native plant seeds will be offered (while they last). Take a seat at the dining table on the patio and enjoy this charming space; you won’t want to leave.

Other Garden Attractions
• Charcoal-colored CollideEscape screening was installed on the picture windows to prevent bird /glass collisions.
• Invasive Mexican feather grass was removed—see this information from Plant Right to find out why you should take yours out, too, if you have this plant in your garden.
• The downspouts drain into swales, which retain rainwater onsite. This keeps plants green longer, protects the local creek from scouring, and replenishes the aquifer.
• In the front garden a dry stacked retaining wall and large boulders provide visual interest.
• Check out the two Little Free Libraries—the tall one for adults, and the short one for children.

Gardening for Wildlife
The plants in this garden were selected because they were useful to bees and other pollinators, or people. (There is a small veggie garden in the back.) Monarch and swallowtail butterflies reproduce in this garden; attend Pamela’s talk to find out how she attracts them.

Native bees nest in the ground in the back garden. A bee house, bird house, and the cavities in the rock wall create homes for additional creatures.

Garden Talks
12:00 “Caterpillar tales: Stories of the monarchs and swallowtails that have grown up in our garden” by Pamela Fox

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include currant, California lilac, lupine, aster, manzanita, buckwheat, native strawberry. sages, cream bush, and elderberry.

Green Home Features
Pamela and her husband have installed a Frigidaire induction range, and a ducted heat pump system for heating and cooling the house. Prior to having the heat pump installed an energy audit was performed and insulation was installed in the attic. Pamela reports that the insulation “made a tremendous difference in keeping the house cooler in the summer; it has been wonderful having the air conditioner when it has been hot; and the filter that comes with the heat pump has kept the indoor air clean on smoky days.”

At least partially wheelchair accessible? yes

Showcase Feature
It’s all about the birds, butterflies, and bees in this charming, wildlife-friendly garden, which was designed and installed by Erin and Keith. Check out the photos of the birds they have seen in their garden, including nuthatches, oak titmice, chickadees, and Pacific slope flycatchers, to name a few. Bewick’s wrens nest in the bird box thoughtfully put out for them—don’t miss seeing last year’s cup-shaped nest, with its base of sticks and upper snuggly area lined with downy bird feathers.

But the garden was really designed to attract butterflies; the plants were carefully selected because butterflies—which can only lay eggs only on a few, very specific plants—could reproduce on the plants Erin and Keith included in their garden. Butterflies seen in the garden include the stunning iridescent blue pipevine swallowtail, which can only lay its eggs on the Dutchman’s pipevine plant (found in several places throughout the garden), and the diminutive Acmon blue butterfly, which lays its eggs on buckwheat and lupine, both of which were included in the garden just for this butterfly.

The beautiful painted lady butterfly flutters about the garden in search of thistle, which it needs in order to reproduce. The buckeye butterfly is attracted to this garden because it contains the groundcover Lippia, which borders the walkway on the south side of the house, and monkeyflower, which reseeds itself cheerily around the garden.

Take a seat and enjoy this tranquil garden; you won’t want to leave.

Other Garden Attractions
• Plan on spending some time viewing the photo gallery of butterflies that have been photographed in the garden.
• A 3,000-gallon water barrel behind the garage provided water for the garden when it was being established.
• A dead apple tree was left as a snag; carpenter bees drill nest holes in it and woodpeckers have hollowed out a nesting site.
• Seeds from the sunflowers, clarkias and melic grass that flourish in the meadow are gleaned by finches and other songbirds.

Gardening for Wildlife
This garden is a haven for wildlife: 25 species of birds and a dozen species of butterflies have been seen in the garden.

After witnessing bird collisions on one of their windows, Keith and Erin took steps to prevent that from happening again. They are happy to share what they’ve learned so far. There also will be a bird-safe window display with several different types of window treatments. For additional resources and information see:

American Bird Conservancy
Acopian Bird Savers
CollidEscape
FeatherFriendly

The birdbath, located in a shady corner under oak and coyote brush that provides birds with easy escape routes into nearby trees, is a “magical” spot—attracting winged and two-legged visitors alike. (The water is changed daily to provide clean drinking water for the birds.)

The dense planting of tall natives that create the privacy screen along the fenceline, such as hollyleaf cherry, California lilac, toyon, pink-flowering currant, and elderberry, attracts birds, which are drawn to the caterpillars found on these shrubs, as well as the berries and seeds they produce.

A plethora of native bees visit the garden, including bumble, long-horned, carder, leaf-cutter, and more. Female leaf-cutters have even been observed (and timed!) bringing cut-out bits of leafs to build the “nurseries” for their larvae in the tube-like nests in the ground. As the pupa of many butterflies and moths overwinter in leaf litter, leaves are left on the ground.

Garden Talks

11:00 & 2:00 “How to create a garden for butterflies and birds” by Keith Johnson and Erin Diehm

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include hollyleaf cherry, coast live oak, pink flowering currant, California lilac, lupine, buckwheat, aster, goldenrod, California sunflower, and penstemon.

Green Home Features
The Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association honored Keith and Erin an award for remodeling their 100-year-old home in an environmentally sensitive way, while preserving the character of the house and neighborhood. Instead of adding a second story by building up, the living space was doubled by going down.

In addition to remaining true to the design of the original bungalow, the new living space is easier to heat and cool than a second story would have been. Solar panels generate the energy needed to heat the water in their radiant system, which warms the floor and house.

During the remodel, insulation was blown into the walls; this family now has almost no PG&E bill.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? yes

Please watch your step as this garden has multiple levels, some stairs, and a narrow path with no rail.

Showcase Feature

The Copley’s had had enough of watering their lawn, and sheet mulched it away. In its place they imagined a bocce court with an adjacent seating area that would allow them to use and enjoy their front yard, and a low-maintenance, water-conserving garden reminiscent of nearby natural areas that would be easy to care for. Pat’s daughter-in-law designed this tranquil garden: installation was a family affair.

The original narrow porch, hemmed in by a sea of camellia and juniper, was replaced by an expansive and inviting porch and deck. A large overhang allows the family to sit comfortably outside in all weather, be it warm or wet—a feature Pat finds, “Delightful.”

The garden beds surrounding the bocce court contain a mixture of hardy natives: ’Bees Bliss’ sage mingles with sweetly-scented coyote mint. Deer grass provide structure and stability. Manzanita and prostrate coyote brush keep the garden green all year, and California fuchsia and buckwheat, which flower in summer and fall, extend the bloom season.

A charming seating area placed in the shade of a large valley oak and other mature trees is surrounded by shade-loving natives including bee plant, coral bells, hummingbird sage, and coffeeberry.

Now that the front garden is such a pleasant place to be, the family spends a lot of time outdoors. They chat with and wave to neighbors, making the neighborhood feel like a warmer and friendlier place to live.

Other Garden Attractions
• Dry-stacked boulders were used to create the shaded seating area.
• Decomposed granite paths border the bocce court.

Gardening for Wildlife
Bumble and carpenter bees are drawn to this garden by the clarkia that bloom in spring, and the sages. Lizards bask on the boulders. Hummingbirds are drawn to the manzanita and hummingbird sage.

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include oak, currant, California lilac, sages, manzanita, and buckwheat.

Green Home Features
The Copley’s have 16 solar panels and an induction range, which, Pat says, she “LOVES”. She is especially impressed with its responsiveness. (Meaning, when you turn lower or turn off the heat the dish stops heating immediately.)

At least partially wheelchair accessible? No

NOTE: This garden, which is on a steep slope, is reached after climbing 66 garden steps to the base of the garden, and another 16 steps to the top. There are no rails. This is not a garden for anyone with balance issues.

Showcase Feature
Until recently, the top of Denise and Caleb’s lot was a “no-man’s land” encased in ivy and Himalayan blackberry. They brought in a herd of goats to deal with the leafy material, and a couple of strong guys dug the plants out by the roots. Another method of removing ivy from a slope is to create a rolling mat of ivy, then sit on your bottom and kick it downhill. As the mat rolls, it rips the roots out of the ground—you’ll find a description of this method here.

The local native plant garden that transformed the space was designed by Glen Schneider, who started and manages the Berkeley hills Skyline Gardens Restoration project. Almost all of the plants in Denise and Caleb’s garden are native to their zip code (thanks, CalScape!) and most are native to Oakland and Berkeley. This garden, evocative of the lost landscapes of three hundred years ago, contains a woodland, in the shady part of the garden, and a meadow in the open and sunny area at the top of the lot.

The woodland plants, sheltered under the shade of a large coast live oak, include California hazelnut, snowberry, coffeeberry, honeysuckle, flowering currant, California wood fern, Douglas iris, several native grasses, and more.

A variety of plants flourish in the sun-splashed meadow. Drifts of the beautiful native bunchgrass California fescue, with its blue-green foliage and calming appearance, complement the purple of the lupine blossoms, massed yellow goldenrod flowers, the tubular orange monkeyflower, pink checker mallows, and the delicate white clusters of flowers on soaproot, yarrow, and yampah (the native host plant of the anise swallowtail butterfly).

In spring wildflowers burst forth, and the garden brightens with pink clarkia, orange California poppies, yellow and white tidy tips, and baby blue eyes.

The planting was done by Glen, Caleb, and Denise in the winter of 2022; the garden was watered that first summer and spring, but has been on its own since then. No irrigation was installed, as this will be a “rainfall only” landscape. Glen notes, “These plants have lived here for thousands of years, and they know how to handle that.”

Other Garden Attractions
• Designer Glen Schneider will be on hand all day to answer questions about local native plants, gardening for wildlife, and more.
• A series of terraces are home to an orchard containing apple, pear, plum, fig, and olive trees, among others.

Gardening for Wildlife
Bewick’s wrens forage through the garden for beetles, wasps, grasshoppers, and other tasty creatures. The wren’s nestlings wait eagerly for caterpillars, found primarily on keystone species, to be brought to them in their small, cup-shaped nest. Ornithologist Robert Ridgway noted, Bewick’s wrens“…pour forth one of the sweetest songs that ever was heard.” Plant local natives in your garden, and you might be able to see them in your own backyard as well.

The garden is also frequented by California and spotted towhees, chickadees, juncos, goldfinches, Steller and scrub jays, and hummingbirds. These birds are drawn to this garden by the insects found on the local native plants, the mature oak and elderberry trees, and the water in the bird bath—with its solar powered fountain, which helps keep the water fresh.

Native bees adore the lavender flowers of the phacelia.

Garden Talks
11:00 “Great local native plants for your garden” by Glen Schneider

1:00 “How we transformed our garden from a “nothing place” into a “something place”: weed removal, plant selection and placement, planting, and watering a local native plant garden” by Denise Bergez

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants—in this garden include coast live oak and elderberry (both native to the site), currant, lupine, aster, goldenrod, sage coffeeberry, buckwheat, and native strawberry.

Green Home Features
Solar panels help keep the family’s PG&E bill down.

Showcase Feature
It was a desire to recreate lost habitats of the East Bay—the wildflower meadows, grasslands, and oak savannas that existed here hundreds of years ago—and to provide food, shelter and nesting areas for the wildlife that depend upon native plants for food, shelter, and nesting areas—that started this project.

Rewilding the neighborhood started in 2005, when neighbors planted a coast live oak seedling and native plants, such as gumplant, manzanita, California lilac, and fuchsia, in the traffic circle at Russell and Fulton in Berkeley.

It continued 14 years later when tweens Leo and Joey Grossinger removed the scruffy lawn in the parking strip across the street from their house (at 2146), replacing it with manzanita, California sagebrush, Douglas iris, ceanothus, blue-eyed grass, and buckwheat. Curious and interested neighbors appreciated the improvement, asked what was happening, offered their parking strips and paid for the plants, and the boys planted natives in their neighbor’s parking strips, also.

The Grossingers’ front garden includes blue-eyed grass, yarrow, and lemonade berry in the former driveway, while Toyon and hollyleaf cherry create privacy screens between the street and adjacent houses. The Grossingers’ nextdoor neighbor’s front garden, at 2150, contains California lilac, coffeeberry, flannelbush, and a low-growing manzanita that functions as a groundcover, with sweetly-scented yerba buena in the shade.

Knowing that there is a remarkable increase in wildlife when native plant cover increases to at least 70% of an area, and that the habitat is still more valuable with patches or drifts of the same plant (as opposed to just one of this and one of that), the parking strips were designed to contain multiple plants of the same type. Spreading California lilac and manzanita ground covers mingle with clusters of lupines, red-flowering buckwheat, Cleveland sage, blue-eyed grass, and fuchsia.

Together the Russell and Fulton Street plantings add up to create more valuable habitat than each house could create on its own. The resulting pollinator path has benefitted not only birds, bees, and butterflies, but also people, as neighbors have gotten to know each other better through this project, sharing seedlings, tools, and lemons. They have also worked together to place bulk orders for plants and mulch. The parking strip project has spread throughout the neighborhood, leading some neighbors to include native plants in their front and back gardens, as well.

Your own garden can help bring back some of the lost landscapes in your city! Why not take a “Marie Kondo” look at the non-native plants in your garden; if you don’t love them, consider replacing them with native plants that will make a difference to the birds, butterflies, bees, and moths that are depending on all of us to include the plants in our gardens that they need to survive. What you plant makes a difference!

Other Garden Attractions (and Tips for Gardening for Wildlife)
• Gaps in the sidewalk strip plantings were provided to allow passengers to enter and exit their cars.
• Lights are one of the main drivers of insect decline; you can help by shielding your lights, so they shine down, not up (look for Dark Skies at Night-approved light fixtures—you can buy these at Home Depot); using motion sensors instead of leaving lights on all night; installing yellow bulbs, which are less harmful to wildlife then white or bluish lights, and drawing your blinds after dark. Ask about the bug-friendly bulb on the porch at 2146.
• Leave the leaves in your garden as the young of many moths and butterflies spend the winter sheltering in leaf litter.
• Eliminate pesticide use; rejoice when you see bugs are using the plants in your garden; they’re supposed to!

Gardening for Wildlife
In the 1990s more than a million monarchs overwintered in forested groves on the California coast. Now, only a fraction of the population remains—a decline of more than 99% has been seen in California, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed the Western monarch as endanger of extinction. But here in these Berkeley parking strips and gardens monarch butterflies flutter about, sipping nectar before laying eggs on milkweed—the only plant they can reproduce on. In late spring through early summer their yellow, black, and white banded caterpillars can be seen noshing happily on the narrow leaf milkweed leaves. In summer, the sharp-eyed among us might be able to spot the chrysalis of the monarch—bright green, with an amazing gold band, attached with a silk pad to a branch, which can be some distance from the milkweed patch.

Skippers and other butterflies are drawn to the clusters of blossoms on the red flowering buckwheat. Bumblebees roll like puppies in the poppies and gather pollen from lupines and California lilacs. Hummingbirds are attracted to the long, tubular flowers of the California fuchsia.

The plants in this project were chosen for their ability to support native butterflies and bees, and for also for their durability in a busy, urban setting.

The plants in this project were chosen for their ability to support native butterflies and bees, and for also for their durability in a busy, urban setting.

Keystone species in the Pollinator Pathway (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!) Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants — in the Pollinator Pathway include coast live oak, holly leaf cherry, California lilac, manzanita, redbud, lupine, sage, buckwheat, and penstemon.

Plant list

Showcase Feature
As a child working in his parents’ native plant garden, Scott was not drawn to the idea of gardening with nature. But as a new homeowner faced with a yard full of ice plant, roses and camellias, natives were what he chose for the garden he designed and installed—“Thanks, Mom!” This typically petite, densely planted and vibrantly colorful Albany garden contains a potpourri of natives. It is anchored by evergreen manzanita and California lilacs, sweetly scented by five types of sages (white, black, Cleveland, hummingbird, and California), and brightened by a plethora of wildflowers, particularly pink clarkia, orange poppies, and a variety of mostly-purple bulbs. In summer the white, red, and yellow buckwheat flowers fade slowly to a chocolate, or rust color, and the electric red fuchsias and yellow goldenrod put on one last show.

Other Garden Attractions
• Bring your children! They can crawl through the toddlers’ tunnel (planted with checkerbloom, with its inviting pink blossoms at the entrance) and play on the enviable play structure Scott designed and constructed.
• Stone outcrops and a dry-stacked stone retaining wall add to the natural feel of the garden.
• Scott uses a combination of drip irrigation and hand watering.

Gardening for Wildlife
Scott’s garden has something in bloom nearly all year, providing nectar and pollen for hummingbirds, butterflies and bees throughout the seasons. The colorfest begins in January when the manzanita blooms. Wildflowers and California lilac burst into color in spring, and the delectables for wildlife continue to be offered with the onset of flowers on buckwheats in the summer and fuchsia into the fall.

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include California lilac, manzanitas, sages, buckwheats (eight kinds!), native sunflower, currant, native strawberry, goldenrod, and penstemon.

Parking
Parking will be tight; do not block neighbors’ driveways.

Plant list

Showcase Feature
The lawn that was in place when Miriam purchased the house wasn’t cutting the mustard; it needed too much water, for one thing, and it also took too much time to maintain.

In 2012 Miriam sheet mulched the lawn away, and hired a designer to create the native plant garden she yearned for. Some things about the design were great! Manzanita and California lilac provide structure and greenery throughout the year. The perennial penstemon Margarita BOP lines the driveway, brightening the garden with its mass of purple flowers when in bloom. Native fuchsia borders the path, it’s firecracker-red blossoms providing color from late summer through fall. Coyote mint and prostrate manzanita function as groundcovers.

Upon learning that many the plants in the garden actually weren’t natives after all(!) Miriam removed many of them, and she is in the process of figuring out what natives will go in those spots. (Are you wondering if a plant is native or not? Go to CalScape.org; if the plant is not there, it’s not a California native. Hint: also, make sure you hire a designer who specializes in designing native plant gardens, so you don’t wind up with this problem. The Tour’s “Find a Designer” list is here.)

Other Garden Attractions
• Weeds are dealt with by…persistent weeding.
• This garden requires just 1 to 2 hours of maintenance a month.
• Miriam took workshops on how to convert the lawn’s sprinkler system to a drip system, and changed it over herself.

Gardening for Wildlife
The long, tubular, bright yellow, orange, and variegated monkeyflowers attract hummingbirds. Bees adore the California lilac.

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include Hollyleaf cherry, pink flowering currant, California lilac, hazelnut, manzanita, buckwheat, and sages.

Green Home Features
Miriam recently had 14 solar panels installed.

Talk in the Garden
12:00 “How to convert a sprinkler irrigation system to a drip system: I did this, and you can, too!” by Miriam Schalit

Great Recipe!
Submitted by garden tour host Miriam Schalit
Cilantro Pesto

Plant list

Showcase Feature
Until 2020, this large corner lot was landscaped with a large lawn bordered by non-native ornamentals. Tired of the water, chemicals, and time the lawn required and with a desire to garden for bees, butterflies and birds, the Collins’ were ready for a change.

The new garden was designed by Reka Foss, owner of Foss Garden Design, who used the lawn to create large, undulating mounds that provide both visual interest and the drainage that most natives need. This garden-in-transition is gradually replacing some of the remaining non-native ornamentals with native plants that support native wildlife.

Evergreen manzanitas, California lilac, low-growing coyote brush (‘Pigeon Point’), and penstemon keep the garden looking lush year-round.

A nearly $1,000 rebate from the Contra Costa Water District helped pay for the transformation.

Other Garden Attractions
• An attractive dry creek bed lined with cobble of varying sizes retains rainwater onsite, keeping the garden green longer, allowing water to seep into the aquifer, and protecting the local creek from scouring.
• The Collins’ water bill dropped dramatically when the lawn was removed and replaced with water-conserving natives that do well in Walnut Creek’s hot, dry summers.
• A Hydrawise Smart Controller ensures the garden is watered when needed.
• Dry-stacked moss rock boulders, bordered by a cheerful array of Mendocino reed grass, function as a retaining wall and, scattered throughout the garden, give a natural feel to the landscape.
• Find out how you can receive a rebate of up to $2,000 to remove and replace your lawn with a water-wise garden! At this garden, flyers will be available with information on the Contra Costa Water District’s Lawn to Garden Rebate and free Landscape Design Assistance Program. If you include 70% or more natives in your plan you can have your own garden on the Tour!
• Designer Reka Foss will be at the garden all day to answer questions.

Gardening for Wildlife
Three types of manzanita—‘Carmel Sur’, ‘Emerald Carpet’, and ‘Paradise’—provide nectar and pollen for hummingbirds and bees in winter and early spring, when few other sources are available. Buckwheats and ‘Bee’s Bliss” sage attract bees. Milkweed—the only plant monarch butterflies can lay their eggs on—was planted to provide places on which this endangered butterfly can lay its eggs.

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include fuchsia flowering gooseberry, California lilac, manzanitas, sage, and penstemon.

Green Home Features
Nancy and Bryan installed solar panels about 2007; the panels paid themselves off long ago in PG&E bill savings and have reduced the Collins’ electricity bill since then. Nancy and Bryan, who own two electric vehicles, don’t pay for gas, as their their cars are charged at home.

Planting plan

Plant list

Showcase Feature
This mature garden, designed by Sandra Nevala-Lee, owner of Green Thumb Works, was formerly lawn, on both terraced levels. Sandra and students from San Lorenzo high sheet mulched the lawn away. In its place Sandra chose a pleasing variety of prostrate to mid-sized manzanitas—‘Emerald Carpet’, ‘John Dourly’, ‘Howard McMinn’, ‘Carmel Sur’, and ‘Point Reyes’—and interspersed them with yarrow, irises, coyote mint, blue-eyed grass, sages, and more.

This beautiful garden requires just a few hours of maintenance a month.

Other Garden Attractions
• With their shiny red-to-cinnamon colored bark and evergreen leaves, manzanitas are lovely year-round. In winter and early spring their clusters of delicate, urn-shaped cream-to-pink flowers are a delightful sight to us, and they provide nectar and pollen to hummingbirds and bees when little else is blooming.
• Hummingbird sage flourishes in shady areas of the garden.

Gardening for Wildlife
Hummingbirds, finches, mourning doves, bluebirds frequent the garden. Cooper’s hawks watch the avian action below with interest.

Keystone species in this garden (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants—in this garden include California lilac, manzanita, sages, and buckwheats.

Green Home Features
Steve and Cecelia started their Green Home journey in 2017 by replacing most of the windows in their 1973 home with Simonton DayLight Max 7300 windows. These windows are energy efficient and have helped reduce their household energy bill.

In 2021 they installed solar panels and a battery. The 10.08kW solar system includes 28 Panasonic EVPV360 solar panels and an Enphase Exchange 10 battery backup. The solar panels have all but eliminated their electric bill, and the 10kW battery has given them both grid independence and peace of mind from the uncertainty of power outages. These panels produce more electricity between April and September than the family uses, with the excess energy sent to the grid. East Bay Community Energy credits them for this excess energy which covers the cost of any additional electricity they use during the winter months.

For the solar installation they received a 26% tax credit for the cost of both the panels themselves, and also for the installation. A PG&E program refunded practically the full cost of the battery. (The Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, tax credit for installing solar panels is now 30%.)

In 2021 they purchased an electric car. Thanks to the solar panels, Steve and Cecelia now pay nothing to keep their car running! “During last year’s gas price spikes we were glad to be insulated from those high gas prices,” said Steve.

Their anticipated future projects include evaluating their attic insulation and installing an HVAC heat pump system to replace their gas heater.

Garden Talks

11:00 byLinda Peach, Eden Garden Club and 100K Trees Hayward core group member

Ask a Designer
Do you have questions about native plant selection, layout, lawn conversion or any other aspect of landscape design?

Sandra Nevala-Lee (greenthumbworks.net) will be on-site at Cecelia and Steve’s garden to provide helpful information and guidance. Bring a list of questions and photos of your garden area to help guide your private consultation.

Cost: $25 for a 30 minute consultation. Proceeds will be donated to support Bringing Back The Natives Garden Tour.

Use this easy scheduling link to reserve your time. Make your $25 payment here with your credit card or PayPal, or Venmo @BringingBackTheNativesthen e-mail Kathy@KathyKramerConsulting.net and let her know your payment was to reserve a consultation with Sandra.

Plant list

Showcase Feature
Breaking news! Josh and David’s garden recently won the “Most Beautiful Yard Hayward” contest!

Leading up to that honor was this story…Undaunted by the Bermuda grass in the front and back gardens (well, maybe just a little), Josh collected cardboard boxes and sheet mulched—because of the Bermuda grass, he laid down cardboard and 6 or more inches of wood chips.

He then designed and installed the new—still-a-work-in-progress—landscape; the front brims with a potpourri of California natives in the parking strip and front half of the garden, with vegetables growing conveniently near the house, and fruit trees functioning as a privacy screen.

The collector’s haven in the front garden brims with an eclectic collection of natives that can withstand heat and wind, including a variety of wildflowers, such as buttercups, clarkia, gilia, and lupines, that brighten the garden in spring. Other plants were selected as certain butterflies need them in order to lay their eggs, such as narrow leaf milkweed for the monarch butterfly, Dutchman’s pipevine for the pipevine swallowtail butterfly, and yampah for the anise swallowtail butterfly. In spring the scent of a variety of sages—California, white, Cleveland, black, and hummingbird—drifts through the air. QR codes on the plant labels will allow you to pull up lots of information on the natives.

The shady back garden is planted with woodland plants, including columbine, ferns, yerba Buena, Douglas iris, redwood sorrel, and pink flowering currant. After removing a bottle brush tree, a young coast live oak and assorted understory, native plants are thriving in the northeast corner of the back yard.

Other Garden Attractions
• Check out the amazing green wall in the back garden! Planted with mostly natives, the wall contains a delightful mix of yerba buena, lewisia, native strawberry, monkeyflower, wild ginger, and more.
• Josh built the Little Free Library in the front garden, which has a living roof, planted with mostly California native succulents.
• A handy man indeed, Josh also built the chicken coop, now home to a happy flock of white leg horn, gold sex link, and speckled marans.
• Rain captured in ten barrels waters the veggie garden and backyard beds.

Gardening for Wildlife
Hummingbirds, finches, scrub jays, dragonflies, native bees, butterflies, and moths flit through the garden. Western skinks, small lizards with shiny, smooth scales and blue tails, spend their days in the garden basking in the sun, and when that’s over searching for crickets, beetles, spiders, and earthworms before snuggling under logs or tucking themselves into leaf litter for the night.

A solar-powered fountain provides water to thirsty birds. Brush piles create areas where small creatures can shelter.

Keystone species in this garden (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include pink flowering currant, California lilac, thimbleberry, manzanita, lupine, sages, native strawberry, buckwheat, and penstemon.

Green Home Features
Josh and David recently had a GE Profile induction cooktop and an 8 kilowatt solar panel system installed! Ask about contractors, price, or why they chose the systems they did.

Native Plants for Sale
The new Down by the Bay nursery grows mostly locally-sourced natives of important and beautiful species. This list is a small sample of the twenty eights species that will be available the day of the Tour.
Ihturiel’s Spear “Queen Fabiola”
Common Yarrow
Kellogg’s Yampah
Elegant Clarkia
Mugwort
California Fuchsia
Hummingbird sage
Lady fern
are among the plants will be available for sale, while supplies last.

Plant list

Showcase Feature
Inspired by the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour and Doug Tallamy’s talks, Janet and Ed asked Pete Veilleux to remove the non-native ornamentals in their front garden and design and install a low maintenance, water-conserving garden that would provide food, shelter, and nesting areas for birds, bees, butterflies, and other forms of wildlife.

This charming garden, just a year old, is filling in well. Evergreen shrubs provide structure and stability throughout the year. Eight types of manzanitas (Emerald Carpet, Sentinel, Sunset, Ken Taylor, Morrow Bay, Fort Bragg, Big Berry, and Austin Griffiths) that range from prostrate to large shrubs and everything in between, will be magnificent when mature. The purple-blue blossoms of four kinds of California lilac (Heart’s Desire, Centennial, Valley Violet, and Diamond Heights) delight native bees and passersby alike.

Lupines, monkeyflower, blue-eyed grass, coyote mint, and poppies brighten the garden in spring, and coast and rosy buckwheats provide color and interest in the summer and fall. Shady areas of the garden are lush with ferns, ocean spray, coffeeberry, currants, hummingbird sage and coral bells.

Check out the “Share Shack” (aka Little Neighborhood Library) Ed made from a farmhouse window and other reused materials—note the living roof, with its potpourri of succulents.

Other Garden Attractions
• Janet “Leaves the leaves!” as the caterpillars of many butterflies and moths tuck themselves into leaf litter for protection from predators and cold.
• This garden is grazed by deer.

Gardening for Wildlife
They arrived right away: Bewicks wrens nested in the garden almost as soon as it had been planted. Hummingbirds, drawn to the penstemon and monkeyflowers, sip nectar from their long, tubular flowers. Towhees search for insects in the soil, and finches glean seeds from the dried flower heads. Monarchs sense the milkweed and flutter through; bumblebees, other bees, grasshoppers, and damselflies also frequent the garden. In the quiet of the evenings fox frolic about, searching for rodents, insects, and berries.

Garden Talks
11:00 The challenges and delights of electrifying our seventy-five year old house” by Janet Parks

2:00 “My native garden: two years in” by Janet Parks

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include currants, California lilac, manzanitas, sages, buckwheats, and penstemon.

Green Home Features!
After buying the house in 2015, to conserve energy Janet and Ed insulated the attic, floor, and exterior walls, and replaced the windows. Then they installed fourteen solar panels; as they have an electric vehicle, they were insulated from the recent high gas prices.

“Wanting to reduce fossil fuel pollution” Janet says, in 2017 they purchased an induction range (“It’s so easy to clean, heats up so fast, and we’re happy to know we’re not breathing combustion products while we’re cooking,”) and in 2022 they hired EcoPerformance Builders to remove their inefficient gas heaters and install a Sanco heat pump for heating water and two ducted Fujitsu heat pump systems for heating and cooling—one system is for their house, and the second for the Airbnb unit on their property. Not only are Janet and Ed protecting the environment and their own health by getting gas out of their homes, but it’s paying off financially—the PG&E bill last year for their home and the rental totaled about $800—and that included charging the car.

Come on in! Check out the induction stove, and take a look at the air return and vents for the ducted high-efficiency heat pump system (which both heats and cools the house—the free air conditioning has been wonderful on hot days!) On your way into the house, go to the right side of the porch, look down, and you can see the three heat pumps.) Information on the Sanco water heater will be available.

All day: A friendly QuitCarbon staff member will be available all day to answer your electrification questions. Quit Carbon’s mission is to help homeowners transition to green energy; they can help you get a better, healthier, clean-energy dream home by giving you the confidence, information, and connections you need to go 100% electric. Chat with a QuitCarbon expert to learn how Quit Carbon can support you through every home upgrade—starting with a free electrification plan.

Ask them, the other volunteers who will be on hand, Janet, or Ed, any of your electrification questions!

At least partially wheelchair accessible? No

Great Recipe!
Easy Refrigerator Garlic Dill Pickles

Plant List

Showcase Feature
Do you live in a hot, dry area? Or, are you considering relandscaping your lot? If either of these questions resonates with you, come see the DeBoer’s garden to see what plants flourish in Walnut Creek, and how your garden might look one year after planting.

Starting at the beginning: when Beth and Bill bought this flat, one-acre lot in 2014 everything within ten feet of the property line had been scraped to bare dirt. Over the y¬ears hardworking Bill installed all of the hardscaping, built boardwalks, decks, patios, shade structures, wooden fences, the chicken coop, and a sheep pen.

During the pandemic Beth watched the virtual Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour, heard Doug Tallamy’s talk, which “changed my life,” and, on the “Find a Designer” section of the Tour’s website, and worked with Plantkind to create the landscape design. Beth and Bill did the planting.

The garden beds adjacent to the house contain a potpourri of lavender aster, red fuchsia, creamy yarrow, blue-eyed grass, and pink mallow, which bloom in riotous profusion from spring through fall.

Behind the house is a field of Hooker’s evening primrose; it’s showy yellow flowers, with their four heart-shaped petals, create a cheery entrance to Beth’s office—a vintage 1953 Spartanette trailer. (Note of caution; this primrose reproduces profusely.)

Around the far side of the house are two large buckeyes and an oak; the dappled shade they provide is punctuated with widely spaced toyon, elderberry, coffeeberry, buckwheat, lemonade berry, cream bush, bunchgrasses, and more. The open areas around these plants creates a calming, peaceful feeling in this secluded section of the garden.

Other Garden Attractions
• Moss rocks border the garden beds; larger boulders in the back of the garden provide a sense of stability and a natural, woodsy feel.
• Beth is learning to makes dyes from the plants in her garden for sewing and knitting projects.
• The orchard contains plum pear, cherry, and pomegranate trees.

Gardening for Wildlife
In July, hummingbird-sized sphinx moths visit the large yellow blossoms of the evening primrose—each flower opens at sunset, and lasts just one night. (Check out the real-time video of the flowers opening, and read about how the primrose bloomed in the thousands and were a major attraction in Yosemite here.)

Coopers hawks build nests of twigs and sticks high in nearby tall trees. In June and July, Beth, Bill, and their children love watching the chicks’ early flights.

Our local native narrow leaf milkweed has been planted to provide places on which the monarch butterfly, whose survival is a cause for worry, can lay its eggs. Milkweed is the only plant on which the monarch can lay its eggs. Dutchman’s pipevine has been included in the garden for the large, iridescent black and blue pipevine swallowtail butterfly, as this is the only plant on which the pipevine swallowtail butterfly can lay its eggs.

Lizards skitter through the garden, bask on the boulders, and search hopefully about for insects.

Keystone species in this garden (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include oak, holly leaf cherry, elderberry, currant, sage, manzanita, buckwheat, goldenrod, cream bush, lupine, and strawberry.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? No

Showcase Feature
In 2009 Diane and her hiking buddy, Sally, converted their gardens from solid lawn to water-conserving wildlife habitat gardens together. They took classes as a team, did their research jointly, and just generally helped each other along. Diane, who installed her front garden, cut the lawn into manageable chunks then flipped it over and piled it into mounds, which improved drainage and created visual interest. Plants that provide berries, seeds, and nectar, such as currants and manzanitas, buckwheats and phacelia, and coyote brush and penstemon, were selected. Masses of tansy leaf phacelia create a sea of color in spring. A forty year old buckeye helps keep the house cool in the summer. Diane loves to sit in the shade of the buckeye and enjoy the color and beauty of her garden.

The back garden was designed by Kat Weiss of Kat Weiss Landscape Design. A wide, curving wheelchair accessible path wraps around a raised central garden bed. The lawn was sheet mulched, and later planted with purple-flowering coyote mint, orange monkeyflowers, celestial blue sage, pink rosy buckwheats, and creamy St. Catherine’s lace buckwheat.

Other Garden Attractions
• Diane’s front garden is not watered at all. The native plants in the back garden will be watered by a drip irrigation system for the first two years while the plants are establishing, then they will not be watered, either.
• No pesticides are used in this—or any!—Tour garden. Diane reports that weeds are pulled early and often.
• In the back yard a veggie garden planted in raised beds makes gardening easier.
• Visit the back garden and take a look at Diane’s impressive rainwater catchment system—four 55 gallon barrels mounted on a sturdy rack that provides easy access to the water, which is used in the veggie garden.

Gardening for Wildlife
Multiple birdbaths provide much-needed water for birds. A log from an apricot tree provides shelter to tiny things that need a moist and cool home. Bluebelly and alligator lizards sunbathe on boulders. Scrub jays, mockingbirds, mourning doves, and hummingbirds frequent the garden, as do butterflies and ladybugs.

Rocks, logs, and brush piles provide hiding places for lizards. Ecstatic congregations of native bees gather at the phacelias, foraging for nectar and pollen. Skippers and ladybugs are frequently seen. Hummingbirds are drawn to the native fuchsia and penstemon. Flycatchers swoop through the garden, gracefully catching insects in mid-flight; house finches and goldfinches are welcome visitors. A birdbath and water-filled saucers attract birds and butterflies.

Keystone species in this garden (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include California lilac, pink flowering currant, manzanita, buckwheat, sages, and redbud.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? Yes

Green Home Features Summary
Inspired by the Green Home Features component of the garden tour, Diane installed solar panels, a Bradford White heat pump for heating water, and bought a used electric car.

After her free electrification consultation with Quit Carbon, she purchase a Splitvolt Splitter Switch, which allows Diane to share her dryer socket with her EV charger, giving her 7 times faster charging than a normal wall socket. Diane just plugged her Splitvolt Splitter Switch to the existing 220V – 240V dryer socket, then she plugged the dryer and EV charger into the Splitter Switch, and she got fast, L2 home charging. The Splitvolt Splitter Switch safely and automatically switches full power between the dryer and EV charger.

The Splitvolt was important to Diane, as her panel was maxed out at 100 amps. She can now charge two electric vehicles (Nissan Leaf and Prius PHEV) at once, and one of them charges fast.

Diane reports that it’s been great having an electric car, as she has been free of the gas station sticker shock that many people have been experiencing. As her solar panels generate the energy needed to power the car, she drives for free.

Also, Diane purposely purchased a solar panel system that would a generate more energy than she uses, saying, “I’m happy to be donating the excess energy the panels make to the grid; it makes me feel like I’m being a good citizen.” (Thanks, Diane!)

The oversizing of her solar system is paying off financially, as the energy generated on Diane’s roof last year fully covered her PG&E bill for the year. The cost to power her house and run her car last year was zero.

Plant list

Showcase Feature
Long-time Garden Tour hosts Jen and Dan had their beautiful Alameda garden on the Tour several times. Recently, though, the wide-open, sunny spaces of Livermore beckoned, and they relocated. With an abundant native garden in mind, they consulted Todd Gilens of Todd Gilens Design and Dale Gaff, a retired landscape architect, and Dan’s father.

Their beautiful new back garden in Livermore, which Jen and Dan installed themselves, includes heat-loving natives, such as several types of manzanitas, white sage, apricot mallow, and penstemons. . They will share with you how they planted successfully in Livermore’s heavy clay, and also how to keep your garden dog-safe. The front garden was sheet mulched in the spring of 2023 and planted in the fall of 2023. Come see two young gardens that are already thriving in the inland sunshine.
(You might also like to watch this video on on how to sheetmulch, which is on the Tour’s YouTube channel.)

Other Garden Attractions
• Did you know you can get paid to remove your lawn? Check out the materials on lawn removal rebates that will be available.

Gardening for Wildlife
Scrub jays, house finches, goldfinches, woodpeckers, mockingbirds, sparrows, black phoebes, doves, chickadees, and hummingbirds now frequent the garden.
This garden has also attracted a variety of butterflies; you might spot gulf fritillaries, painted ladies, buckeyes, red admirals, swallowtails, and gray hairstreaks fluttering about.

Garden Talks
12:00 “How to sheet mulch your lawn away” by Dan Gaff

1:00 “The best plants for a pollinator garden” by Jen Hurley and Dan Gaff

Keystone species in this garden (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include goldenrod, buckwheat, ceanothus, asters, sages, and penstemons.

Green Home Features
Solar panels were installed in 2022 and provide almost 100% of all electric power this home uses.

Wondering what to make for dinner? Try this recipe, which was submitted by garden tour host Jen Hurley!
Brussel sprout salad

Plant list back garden

Showcase Feature
Long-time Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour attendees and avid hikers Maria and David wanted to “bring nature home” and make their own garden a haven for pollinators. Through the Tour they visited numerous gardens designed by Kat Weiss, owner of Kat Weiss Landscape Design, and knew she was the one they wanted to transform their garden.

They removed excess concrete and a dull, straight concrete retaining wall, replacing them with attractive, gracefully curving stone-faced benches faced that offer visual appeal and increase seating capacity, while also holding back the slope.

The non-native ornamentals that offered little to no value to wildlife went the way of all things, and were replaced with widely-spaced native shrubs, which give the landscape a semi-manicured look, and emphasize the spaciousness of this large garden. Eight types of manzanita and three kinds of California lilac, as well as coffeeberry, buckwheat, and sage provide greenery and stability throughout the year, and food, shelter, and places on which butterflies and moths (whose caterpillars are the primary food for baby birds) can reproduce.

An attractive native “Mow-Free” bunchgrass meadow whose curving border echoes and complements the arc of the pool contains a trio of grasses; Point Molate fescue, Western Mokelumne fescue, and Idaho fescue. The deep roots of these perennial grasses help them tolerate Livermore’s hot, dry summers, while sequestering carbon up to twenty feet underground. (Did you know bunchgrasses were so deep-rooted? This makes them a great choice for erosion control.) It’s hard to believe this lush lawn is only watered twice a week for ten minutes each time. This three-fescue mix, which does well in full sun but can also be planted in areas with 50% shade, needs no mowing.

Drop down in one of the multiple seating areas and enjoy this peaceful haven.

Other Garden Attractions
• A compact veggie garden flourishes on the far side of the garden.

Gardening for Wildlife
Pollinator-friendly native plants invite wildlife into the garden. The bunchgrass lawn is visited by dragonflies, praying mantis’, butterflies and birds. Leaves and small branches are left to decompose on the ground, improving the soil and creating places for really tiny forms of wildlife.

Since the garden was transformed, a dozen types of native bees have visited the garden, as well as butterflies and moths. Bats fly overhead in the evening, snacking on mosquitoes. Black phoebes, chickadees, bushtits, western bluebirds, and cedar waxwings visit the gardens; a kite has been spotted hovering overhead and watching the action below with interest.

Keystone species in this garden Watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include California lilac, manzanita, currant, sages, and buckwheat.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? Yes

Green Home Features
Maria and David’s attic is newly insulated. Heating and cooling costs account for up to 50-70 percent of the energy used in an average home, so losing hot or cold air because of poor insulation wastes energy and money. The Department of Energy estimates that a properly insulated attic can shave up to 50 percent off your heating bill.

A 10-kilowatt solar panel system generates all of the energy needed to run the electric appliances in this household.
Since 2019, when the solar panels were installed, the Dawson’s electricity bills have been $0. In fact, each year they have received a check from East Bay Community Energy of between $300 and $800, compensating them for the excess energy produced by their panels that was sent to the grid. For their solar installation they received a 30% tax credit for the cost of the panels and installation. (With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the Federal tax credit is once again 30% of the cost of the solar panel purchase and installation.)

In 2022 the Dawson’s replaced their gas furnace and old air conditioning unit with a heat pump that both cools and heats the house; they also installed a whole house fan. The house is now both heated and cooled by the energy created by their solar panels, at no cost to them.

The whole house fan takes advantage of our cool California summer nights by quickly exchanging the warm inside air with the cool outside air in an extremely energy-efficient manner. The Dawson’s use their whole house fan instead of AC for at least 9 out of 10 nights during the summer, significantly reducing their dependence on air conditioning while keeping their house comfortably cool.

The Dawson’s new roof—Solaris, by Certainteed—can reflect up to 44 percent of solar heat, reducing roof temperatures and heat transfer into living spaces (and lessening the workload of the heat pump) to keep their home cooler in the summer months.

Check out photos of the Dawson’s green home features, and find out what they learned through their experience researching and installing these systems.
Note that rebates for heat pumps need to be planned before installation through BAYREN and performed by a participating installer. For more information: https://www.bayren.org/homeowners/heat-pumps

Wondering what to make for dinner? Try this recipe, submitted by Maria Dawson
Zucchini Fritters, recipe from Bon Apetit

Bird list

Dawson Back Garden Plant List

Showcase Feature
Note: This garden is on a steep lot and has many steps, some with no rails. It is not a garden for those with balance issues. If you are on crutches, use a walking boot or a cane, or have any trouble balancing, please do not visit this garden.

The cobblers’ children have no shoes, and successful landscape designer Valerie Matzger’s garden was scant on native plants—until she heard Doug Tallamy speak, and learned three things: that three billion North American breeding birds have disappeared since 1970: this population crash is due, among other factors, to habitat loss, pesticide use, climate change and predation from cats; and for the sake of our own survival, we all should—indeed, must—include native plants in our own gardens to create habitat; eliminate pesticide use; keep our cats indoors, and take action to reduce our contributions to global warming.

During the pandemic Valerie transformed her garden; her sense of artistry, knowledge of garden design principles, and creative placement of California native plants resulted in the creation of a spectacular, elegant, and natural garden.

Dry-stacked moss rock retaining walls were used to create hillside terraces, flagstone paths wend through the garden, and a series of landings and patios offer the opportunity to pause and admire the landscape.

Out went the lawn and most of the non-native ornamentals, and in came a delightfully diverse array of keystone species—native plants that provide the most value to wildlife—including holly leaf cherry, California lilac, manzanita, sages, buck wheats, goldenrod, wild rose, lupines, native strawberry, and more. (Check out Valerie’s extensive plant list.)

This garden was designed for color throughout the seasons—in spring the electric blue blossoms of the California lilac and a suite of wildflowers attract both winged and walking visitors; in summer the paths are bordered by exuberant drifts of pink rosy buckwheat, yellow goldenrod, purple phacelia, and lavender aster. And in fall red fuchsia, purple verbena ‘De La Mina”, cream-colored buck wheats and their chocolate-colored dry flower heads provide color and interest.

Drop down in one of the many seating areas in this lovely garden and rest a while; you won’t want to leave.

Other Garden Attractions
• Shady areas are lush with delightful combinations of columbine, ferns, coral bells, and redwood sorrel.
• California lilac, native fuchsia, and yerba buena spill over the retaining walls.
• Scattered throughout the garden are a plethora of trees and tall shrubs, including coast live oaks, redwood, elderberry, ninebark, toyon, and twinberry.

Gardening for Wildlife
Forty species of birds have been seen in the garden. They are drawn in by the insects they find on the native plants (Valerie considers chewed leaves a happy find); the seeds they glean from plants that have gone to flower, and the sound of splashing water in the burbling front garden fountain and back garden waterfall and pond. Hermit thrushes, ruby crowned kinglets, cedar waxwings, Western tanagers, and Nuttals woodpeckers flit about; red-tailed and Coopers hawks watch the avian action below with interest. Great horned owls can be heard hooting in the evenings from the tall trees that border the garden. The oak tree is a popular feeding and nesting site.

No feeders are set out in this garden; the native plants provide the food the birds need.

Keystone species in this garden (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include oaks, California lilac, currants, huckleberries, snowberries, manzanitea, wild rose, oceanspray, sages, buck wheats, lupine, aster, native strawberries, and more.

Backyard bird list

Plant list and Why natives?

Showcase Feature
Mary Ann and Richard have attended the Tour since its inception in 2005. Over the years they found not only inspiration but also Lois Simonds, owner of Gardening by Nature’s Design, who worked her magic for them, creating a beautiful garden with continuity and coherence, and also a dynamic relationship between the native plants she chose and the stone features—steps, boulders, dry creek bed, and the gently curving dry-stacked retaining walls that flow through the garden.

Eight kinds of manzanita grace the garden, providing structure, year-round greenery, and, with their gorgeous cinnamon-colored bark, a constant source of visual enjoyment. The first of our natives to bloom each year, the manzanitas also delight native bees, when, in winter, they produce lovely pink-to-cream-colored bell-shaped flowers that provide pollen for the bees when they need it.

This tranquil, lush garden provides color and interest throughout the year. When the winter display of manzanita blossoms is waning, wildflowers such as buttercups, tidy tips and poppies draw in the butterflies and bees. Their floral show is followed by the cobalt blue blossoms of the California lilac, and the lighter blue flowers of the Winifred Gilman sage (among others!). In late summer pink rosy buckwheat, blue-eyed grass, lavender coyote mint, yellow goldenrod, and bright red fuchsia create a boisterous riot of color that lasts into the fall.

Other Garden Attractions
• Got a parking strip you’d like to transform? If so, you won’t want to miss this one. Note how the plants and stone work in this attractive parking strip echo and complement elements found in the main garden.
• The dry creek bed captures rain water, and retains it in a small wetland. Retaining rainwater on-site keeps the garden green longer, and, as water slowly trickles into the soil, helps to replenish the groundwater.
• A potpourri of evergreen, low-maintenance groundcovers, including prostrate ‘Emerald Carpet’ manzanita, ‘Pigeon Point’ coyote brush, ‘Anchor Bay’ California lilac, and fragrant yerba buena keep the garden looking great all year.
• This garden is open to grazing by deer.
• Designer Lois Simonds will be available throughout the day to answer questions.

Gardening for Wildlife
Berry-bearing native plants, such as currants, coffeeberries, and manzanitas provide food for birds, and water is available in the seasonal wetland.

Endangered monarch butterflies lay their eggs on our local native milkweed, Asclepius fascicularis, the only plant monarchs can reproduce on. The bright yellow, black, and white caterpillars can occasionally be seen traveling about the garden, headed toward the Douglas irises, or perhaps a coffeeberry, where they will transform into a chrysalis.

Dark-eyed juncos hop about the garden, searching for insects and seeds. The dark-eyed junco is a once-common backyard bird whose numbers have declined steeply in recent years. As juncos are ground-nesters, the parents and their chicks are easy prey for cats. You can help protect these, and other birds by keeping your cat indoors (or contained), and taking any of these additional steps.

Garden Talks
11:00 “Designing a garden with California native plants and stone: Creating a sense of place and connection” by Lois Simonds

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include currants, California lilac, manzanitas, lupines, sages, buckwheats, and goldenrod.

Green Home Features
Mary Ann and Richard have two separate solar panel systems, with a total of 30 panels. The first system was installed in 2016, and the second in 2020. Together they generate 12.5 megawatt hours of energy per year. The energy generated by the solar panels covers all the electricity they use in the house, and also powers two electric vehicles. The newer system can bypass the electrical grid and directly charge the cars in case of a power outage.

Their panels produce most of their electricity between mid-April and mid-September. The credit that Mary Ann and Richard get from PG&E during that time covers their additional power needs during the rest of the year, so the Walsh’s have almost no PG&E bill. (And, of course, as they have electric cars they pay nothing for gasoline.)

Plant list

Showcase Feature
Are you new to gardening? Or, are you interested in the DIY model of selecting native plants and installing them yourself? If so, this is the garden for you! In the beginning Brian, a first-time homeowner, was such a novice that he didn’t even have a shovel, and was digging planting holes with a kitchen spoon. (Thankfully, a neighbor gave him a trowel.) He has done a lot of research (ask about his favorite sources of information); experimented with native plants; and been a keen observer and photographer of the tiny world of life in his garden.

When Brian bought the house in 2019 the garden consisted of “for sale” landscaping”—meaning, recently-installed non-native Home Depot shrubs in a sea of mulch that was shoveled over landscape fabric.

The garden has been through a couple of iterations since then—including one as a pumpkin patch—before Brian discovered native plants and designed and installed the garden you see today. Now, seventy species of natives selected because of their value to native birds, bees, and butterflies rub shoulders in the garden. Brian has enjoyed seeing birds, bees, butterflies and other insects that had not previously been seen in the thriving habitat he created— “many species I didn’t even know existed until I had the garden.”)

Wildflowers flourish in spring, when drifts of gorgeous, long-blooming pink-lavender ruby chalice clarkia and purple phacelia brighten the garden. In summer, fire engine red fuchsia, cream colored buckwheat, yellow gum plants, lavender aster bloom in profusion. Brian can often be found looking closely at the plants and insects in the garden, watching carefully and photographing the action.

Other Garden Attractions
• Bring a lunch and enjoy it under the majestic oak on the back garden. Or, just pop on back there to rest in the shade, have a glass of water, and check out the handouts and other information that will be available.
• Plants are only watered while they are being established.
• Most of the plants in this garden were bought in 4” pots! (Plants in small pots are cheaper, will grow in quickly, and are easier to plant.)

Gardening for Wildlife
On spring evenings diminutive Pacific chorus frogs have been seen hopping about searching for yummy bugs. Towhees nest in the garden; when not sitting on their eggs, they scratch about on the ground, looking for seeds and insects, and keeping a sharp eye out for berries. Goldfinches glean seeds from spent blossoms. Anna’s hummingbirds sip nectar from the long, tubular flowers of the fuchsia and penstemon. Monarch, swallowtail, buckeye, tiny blue butterflies and skippers are frequent visitors, along with honey, leaf cutter, sweat, and carder bees.

This lively and fascinating crowd of tiny creatures are drawn to the garden by the year-round blooming plants, berries, seeds, and nesting areas, such as hollow-stemmed plants and areas of bare earth that are left for solitary native bees to nest in, sticks, twigs, and thickets that encourage birds to nest, and logs, that provide damp, cool places for small things that need shelter from the heat.

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include California lilac, manzanita, blood currant, aster, lupine, buckwheat, goldenrod, woodland strawberry, and cream bush.

Garden Talks
12:00 Bring a sack lunch to enjoy in the shady back garden during the “How I created a habitat garden, and the wildlife I’ve seen” talk by Brian Teng

Music in the garden
2:00 Come hear a guitarist perform jazz (and other musical styles).

Plant list

Note: This garden is accessed via a steep driveway, and should not be visited by anyone who is not completely stable on their feet.

Showcase Feature
If you’re interested in replacing your lawn with an attractive, low-maintenance, and low-water-consuming native substitute, or need ideas for gardening on a steep slope, this is garden will be of interest to you.

When the Lewis/Rudraraju family bought their Lake Merritt-adjacent property the perimeter of the back garden was lined with a pleasing array of mature fruit trees (persimmon, pomegranate, apple, lemon, mandarin, and pomello), but the long-neglected lawn didn’t meet their desire for a native, biodiversity-enhancing garden their children could romp around in and establish a connection to nature through. Enter the landscape architecture firm Field Collective, which designed the 1,200 square foot meadow of native bunch grasses and flowers that now surrounds the fruit trees. The “Mow-Free” sod “lawn” does well in full sun to dappled shade, tolerates light foot traffic—and is punctuated with cheerful lavender aster, pink farewell to spring, yellow goldenrod, and creamy yarrow, which provide seasonal interest. To keep a path clear, some areas get mowed 3-4 times a year and then the whole meadow gets mowed once a year for maintenance.

The steep front yard was a mass of weeds, contained by a series of failing concrete retaining walls. The goal was an attractive, low water-consuming native plant garden that would stabilize the slope. When selecting the plants textures, colors, massing, and seasonality were all considered, with larger shrubs placed at the back and smaller, more finely detailed plants located along the edges, where there is more visibility. Low-growing, spreading plants were positioned in steeper areas to help prevent erosion. Napa basalt boulders provide visual interest. The new front garden, planted in 2022, includes black sage, Idaho fescue, common woolly sunflower, Pacific mist manzanita, salvia ‘Bees Bliss’, deer grass, big saltbush, St. Catherine’s lace, and coyote mint.

Parking at this garden will be tight; be prepared to park some distance away and walk in.

Other Garden Attractions
• The front garden is watered with a drip irrigation system; the back is on a sprinkler system.

Gardening for Wildlife
This urban meadow is a haven for local biodiversity, and is awash with insects, from tiny bugs only visible when the sun catches them, to butterflies and bees.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Garden Talks
11:00 “The Meadow-making Process” by Alexandra Harker

Keystone species in this garden(watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include manzanita, buckwheats, sages, aster and goldenrod.

Parking
Parking at this garden will be tight; be prepared to park some distance away and walk in.

Plant list

Showcase Feature
Though small, this inviting garden has it all; great plants for wildlife, water for thirsty creatures, and a seating area from which plant lovers can enjoy the colorful display of flowers and varying textures of the diverse array of plants selected by Donna Bodine of BeeLand Farms, in consultation with Lauren Jelks.

The gracefully curving gravel path is bordered by birch stumps, salvaged when a neighbor removed a tree, and drifts of rosy pink buckwheat, fire-engine red fuchsia, creamy yarrow, and low-growing, yellow coastal poppy. These low-growing plants are perfectly in scale with the size of the garden.

Other Garden Attractions
• The dense planting outcompetes weeds.
• Clustered field sedge, and two kinds of fescue—California and Idaho—create a sense of naturalness that is the perfect complement to the buoyant blooms on the more colorful plants.
• The garden is watered with a drip irrigation system.
• Stroll around the corner to Julie Benson’s garden on Hampel Street.
• Designer Donna Bodine will be at this garden throughout the day to answer questions.

Gardening for Wildlife
Hutton’s vireo, robins, and finches flit search about for insects and seeds, and drink from and bathe in the bird bath. Mourning doves, which mate for life, nest in the garden. Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on our own local native narrow leaf milkweed, Asclepius fascicularis—the only plant they can lay their eggs on—and their colorful caterpillars happily chawed down on the milkweed—the only plant they can eat. A log provides shelter for small creatures that need dampness and shade.

Keystone species in this garden (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include manzanita, sage, buckwheat, and lupines.

Green Home Features
When Alton replaced his roof he installed a light-colored one; light colored roofs reflect most of the sunlight that hits them, whereas dark-colored roofs absorb that heat. A light-colored roof will keep your house cooler and you more comfortable, lower your energy bills if you have an air conditioner, and last longer than a dark roof.

If installed throughout an urban area, light-colored, or “cool” roofs have the potential to mitigate the urban heat island effect—where heat is absorbed by dark roofs, making urban areas hotter than they otherwise would be.

Alton also has solar panels, which help reduce his PG&E bill.

Parking
Parking is available at the church on the corner of Hampel and Park; the parking lot entrance is on Hampel.

Plant list

Showcase Feature
Long-time Tour-goer Julie Benson didn’t love the lawn and the accompanying retinue of non-native plants that came with the house; over the years they were replaced with a pleasing array of attractive, water-conserving native plants that attract birds, bees, and butterflies.

In the front garden moss rocks were used to create gentle terraces on the front slope; these terraces help to control erosion and keep rainwater on-site. In front of the house a delightful combination of upright and prostrate manzanitas mingle with rosy buckwheat, coral bells, and irises. Native strawberry groundcover keeps the garden green year-round. Currants, columbine, and iris flourish in the shady side garden.

The parking strip contains a potpourri of yarrow, with its delicate, fernlike leave and cream-colored flowers, lavender-blossoming and fragrant coyote mint, and blue-eyed grass, among other plants. Fire engine red native fuchsia brighten the driveway garden bed, delighting hummingbirds and passers-by in from summer through fall.

The back garden is a quiet retreat from nearby busy Park Blvd. A boulder-lined gravel path, bordered by Santa Cruz Island buckwheat, manzanitas, wooly blue curls, sages, and coffeeberry leads to a peaceful seating area at the back of the garden. Drop down in one of the Adirondack chairs and enjoy this tranquil haven; you won’t want to leave.

Various designers have contributed to the development of this garden. The garden has evolved further as Julie’s knowledge of native plants increased over time, due in part, to what she has learned as a volunteer at the Tilden Regional Parks Botanic Garden, a 10-acre sanctuary that creates beautiful landscapes displaying California’s diverse plant life (free admission!).

Other Garden Attractions
• Persistent weeds are removed with… persistent hand-weeding. No pesticides are used in this—or any! Tour garden.
• Stroll around the corner to Alton Jenk’s garden on Park.

Gardening for Wildlife
Hummingbirds, Bewick’s wrens, chickadees, towhees and flocks of goldfinches, as well as butterflies and native bees, visit this wildlife-friendly garden. The occasional Cooper’s hawk can be seen soaring overhead.

The birds and bees are attracted by bird bath (made by Julie’s husband), the sound of water splashing into the fountain, and the many flowering plants that have been thoughtfully included in this garden for them—the long, tubular flowers of the California fuchsia and penstemon draw in hummingbirds, and California lilac and manzanita are magnets for native bees.

Flowers are left on the plants to dry and go to seed, and hungry birds can be seen gleaning seeds well after the blossoms have gone. Towhees nested in the garden this year, and Bewick’s wrens have nested in the garden in the past.

Keystone species in this garden (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include California lilac, manzanita, sage, buck wheat, redbud, and native strawberry.

Plant list

Showcase Feature
The garden was patches of scruffy grass separated by odd pavers with a sandbox on one side, that was overlooked by a tiny deck. What Dawn had in mind was a beautiful, peaceful, low maintenance, water-conserving, California native plant garden that had space for entertaining—and that is Cris Cruz and Peter Rohan of Landspaces, designed and installed.

An expansive deck overlooks this tranquil space, which is accessed via large, rectangular stepping stones surrounded by a sea of pebbles bordered by lush garden beds. A Dr. Hurd manzanita, Ray Hartman California lilac, and a redbud, now small, will anchor the space when mature. Spicebush and white sage soften the lines of the studio wall.

Elements of feng shui—the practice of arranging the pieces in living spaces in order to create balance with the natural world—were incorporated into the garden design. The central resting space is surrounded by a simple, repeating plant palette of cheerful orange monkeyflowers, pink rosy buckwheat, and purple penstemon. The meditation/reading/seating platform, tucked into a shady corner, invites one to rest. Take a seat and enjoy this inviting and serene garden; you’ll want to linger!

Other Garden Attractions
• Even in this small space there are microclimates, and plants were chosen to thrive in these varying conditions. Currants, island alum root, monkeyflower, and native strawberry flourish in the deep shade of an existing hedge. Extreme heat reflected from the rebuilt garage called for a suite of hardy, sun-loving plants such as buckwheat, strawberry, blue-eyed grass, and rushes.
• Garden designer Criz Cruz will be on hand all day to answer questions.

Gardening for Wildlife
Native bees adore the buckwheat. Additional frequent visitors include butterflies, damselflies, dragonflies, and hummingbirds.

Gardening for Wildlife
Native bees adore the buckwheat. Additional frequent visitors include butterflies, damselflies, dragonflies, and hummingbirds.

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include California lilac, manzanita, buckwheat, strawberry, and redbud.

Green Home Features
When the furnace needed replacing Dawn had a heat pump installed by A-1 Guaranteed Heating and Air Conditioning. She reports her heating bills are “super low”, she loves the “free” air conditioning that came along with the heat pump, and the system is very quiet. Come take a look at the compressor, check out her PG&E bill, and get your heat pump questions answered.

Plant list

Plant list

Showcase Feature
This garden has something for everyone; beauty for the homeowners and neighbors to enjoy, color throughout the year, habitat for wildlife—and it is also water-conserving and pesticide-free.

Chris Garcia and Shanna Mahan from Four Dimensions Landscape designed and installed this diminutive garden, including the gracefully curving paths of decomposed granite that wrap around wide garden beds, and a delicious suite of the “must-have” keystone plants that are the best at attracting birds, butterflies, and bees.

Happily, these are also the plants that provide great color in the garden. The show starts in January when the manzanitas produce their delicate, urn-like creamy-pink blossoms (which delight hummingbirds and native bees), continues with the purple-blue flowers on the California lilac and sages (which attract bees and butterflies), and ends in the fall with displays of cheerful yellow goldenrod, fire-engine red fuchsia, and lavender seaside daisies.

Other Garden Attractions
• Manzanitas frame the entry to the house.
• Swales planted with water-loving vine maple, rushes, spicebush, yerba buena, and snowberry retain rainwater on-site, keeping the garden green longer, and cleaning the water before it enters the Bay.
• Warm afternoon breezes carry the fragrance of hummingbird sage, currants, yerba buena, and spice bush across the garden.
• The parking strip is planted with fuchsia, buckwheats, yarrow, milkweed, and goldenrod.
• The wooden gates and stairs were built by Sebastian Francese, General Contractor (Richmond). The open design of the gate creates a welcoming and open feeling, and allows the sun to shine through to the small veggie garden in the side yard, while still providing security.
• Chris Garcia from Four Dimensions Landscape will be at this garden from 10:00-12:00 to answer your questions.

Gardening for Wildlife
This new garden has already attracted monarch butterflies, which laid eggs on the masses of local narrow-leaf milkweed (Asclepius fasicularis) provided for them; caterpillars can be seen noshing on the leaves. Skippers frolic about the garden, sipping nectar from the smorgasbord of blossoming natives. Solitary-living, ground-nesting sweat bees flit about the garden, collecting nectar and pollen.

The family’s cats are kept indoors to keep both the cats and birds safe.

Garden talk
11:00 “Choosing native plants for garden microclimates: How to design a successful native plant palette that responds to the microclimates created in small residential lots” by Chris Garcia

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants—in this garden include the sun-loving holly leaf cherry, California lilac, manzanita, buckwheat, beach strawberry, sages, and aster, and the shade-loving vine maple, currants, huckleberry, and snowberry.

Plant list

Showcase Feature
This now-inviting back yard had that weedy-lot look when PlantKind first arrived on the scene. What homeowner Amelia had in mind’s eye was an attractive garden that brought nature home for her young child to explore, and for the family to enjoy together.

Fast-forward to today. The neighbors’ magnificent coast live oak anchors the space, and provides a stunning backdrop, dappled shade, a rustic ambiance, and the perfect setting for the host of keystone plants—our local natives that provide the best habitat for birds, butterflies, and other winged creatures—that were planted in its welcoming shade.

Created with children in mind play spaces, playful structures, and comfortable seating areas from which adults can see their tots, were incorporated into the design, and tucked into and between lush plantings.

Purple verbena De La Mina, red fuchsia, pink currant, lavender sages brighten the garden; their blossoms offset by the greenish gray tufts of the hardy bunchgrass California fescue. The fragrant scent of sages and chaparral currant wafts on gentle breezes.

Other Garden Attractions
• No irrigation was installed; the garden is hand watered when needed.
• Permeable pebble walkways allow rainwater to recharge the aquifer—no concrete or restrictive hardscaping was used.
• Raised veggie boxes make it easy to tend and harvest produce.

Gardening for Wildlife
A number of keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include:
• Vaccinium ovatum, Huckleberry
• Quercus agrifolia, Neighbor’s Live Oak
• Ribes malvaceum, Chaparral Currant
• Salvia munzii, San Diego Sage
• Salvia clevelandii, Cleveland Sage
• Arctostaphylos ‘Emerald Carpet’ Emerald Carpet Manzanita
• Rosa californica, California Wild Rose

Above are plants that butterflies and moths can lay their eggs on. Check out this chart to see why native plants are so important to wildlife!

Plant list

Please note: Adults only at this stop.

Showcase Feature
Nancy Rodrigue, co-owner of this family-run winery (along with her husband), designed the garden from a former large lawn. An avid hiker, Nancy was inspired to create a natural area on the property that was reminiscent of walks she had taken in the hills.

In this rustic and tranquil garden decomposed granite and flagstone paths lined with river rock define garden beds containing a specimen garden of California native plants, including California lilac, fuchsia-flowering gooseberry, Douglas iris, sages, and more.

Please note: Adults only at this stop! Starting at 12:30 the charming Tasting Room—a former barn—will open, and for $10 you can sample wines outside, while relaxing at one of the umbrella-shaded tables for two to four people (first come basis; space is limited).

Bring snacks or a picnic lunch and savor the shady grounds while enjoying your refreshments.

Please note!
• No children, and
• No dogs, except official service dogs.

Other Garden Attractions
• What is now the native plant garden was formerly a very large lawn.
• Valley oaks grow quickly! These large trees were planted only 20 years ago.
• The patio is made of open-set flagstone, so water can drain into the soil. This helps keep plants green longer, and replenishes the aquifer.
• The quiet, long drive down the unpaved country road that leads to the winery will help you obtain a serene state of mind that matches the pastoral setting.
• Restroom is available!

Gardening for Wildlife
Bluebirds, orioles, phoebes, and hummingbirds frequent the garden. Barn and great-horned owls and hawks watch the smaller birds with keen interest. Foxes, skunks and bobcats find refuge on these peaceful grounds.

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include oaks, California lilac, pink flowering currant, sages, wild rose, and buckwheats.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? No

Great recipe! Submitted by Nancy Rodrigue
Wondering what to make for dinner tonight? Try this recipe, which was submitted by Nancy Rodrigue!

Winter Stew

Plant list

Showcase Feature

NOTE: This garden is accessed via a flight of stairs, and has sloping ground and uneven steps. It should not be visited by those with balance issues.

Around 1908, when their large farmhouse was built, someone planted a half dozen redwoods near the house. Or, perhaps the redwoods grew back after the area had been logged in the 1800s? No matter how they got there, at some point redwoods began to grow on what would later become John and Amy’s lot. Just downhill from the redwoods are four large oaks, two huge incense cedars, and a bay tree. It’s a very shady piece of property.

Fast-forward to 2016, when, inspired by the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour, John and Amy began to remove the seas of ivy, periwinkle, and oxalis that had engulfed the garden. Taking his cue from a gracefully curving, beautiful set of stone steps reminiscent of an earlier time, John built a series of complementary, dry-stacked, rock-walled terraces accessed by flagstone paths, and this hard-working couple tackled the project a little at a time by removing the weeds in sections, planting out a designated terrace, and not yielding back territory once it had been cleared of weeds. This has been a huge undertaking, and it’s not done yet; while enjoying seeing the fruits of this hard work, you will also note the areas of ivy and oxalis that are still waiting their turn.

A stroll through this hillside garden rewards one (at various times of the year) with glimpses of beautiful shade-loving plants, including the lovely and rare lily trillium, with its wine-red blossom, the delicate yet cheerful pink-flowering redwood sorrel, the graceful, airy, bell-shaped pink and cream-colored flowers on the coral bells, and more than twenty species of ferns, including maidenhair, five-fingered, coastal, lady, goldback, licorice, bird’s foot, and sword, among others.

This garden was designed and installed by John and Amy, who have learned from trial and error what works, and what has not.

Other Garden Attractions
• Weedy areas are addressed one section at a time, by sheet mulching and hand-pulling. No pesticides are used in this—or any!—Tour garden. (And if weeds could be cleared on this lot without the use of herbicides, it can be done on yours, as well. Just pull them!)

Gardening for Wildlife
An older neighbor told Amy and John that he once saw a mountain lion on their property. Mountain lion sightings on Estudillo Avenue are rare these days, but foxes and a large and adorable family of skunks have been spotted frolicking under the trees. Chickadees, juncos, wrens, Nuttall’s and hairy woodpeckers, Anna’s and Allen’s hummingbirds, and great horned owls flit through the garden.

Garden Talks
12:30 “How to attract birds to your garden” by Steve Wiley

2:30 “Gardening in the shadows” by John Olson

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include oaks—the most powerful plant of all—currants, asters, manzanita (Howard McMinn), California lilac (‘Ray Hartman’, and ‘Yankee Point’), lupines, ocean spray, eight kinds of sages (hummingbird, ‘Bee’s Bliss’, ‘Celestial Blue’, Munz’, Hearsts’, Canyon Gray, Clevelandii, and black), five types of buckwheats (California, red, silver, naked), and more.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? No

Green Home Features

Solar panels
In 2019 NorCal Home Systems installed 14 solar panels on John and Amy’s partially-shady roof. Even though their home is on the north side of a slope and surrounded by trees, they are able to produce enough solar power to bring the electric portion of their bill down to almost $0. They plan to convert their gas-powered furnace, stove, and water heater over the next few years to electric, and probably add a few more solar panels as well.

Electric car
John and Amy recently bought an electric car and had a charger installed in the garage. There hasn’t been a noticeable increase in the electric bill so far.

Plant list

Showcase Feature
Phyllis has long vacationed in the mountains; when she bought this house her goal was to recreate the ecological vibrancy of the meadows she saw in natural areas. Realizing that she didn’t know enough about the plants’ sun and water needs, and how big they would be when mature, Phyllis found Four Dimensions Landscape Company through the Tour, and they designed and install the garden. Out went the lawn and gingko (neither of which provides any value to our local wildlife), and in came red and Idaho fescues, which are accompanied by a potpourri of blue-eyed grass, fuchsia, coyote mint, hummingbird sage, monkeyflowers and more. Right behind them came butterflies, bees, other insects, and birds.

Phyllis, who enjoys the natural appearance of the garden, says, “The garden gives me joy all the time; I love how alive it is, and how much life it has attracted.”

Other Garden Attractions
• This garden is not watered at all.
• Deergrass, with its gracefully arching leaves, has a fountain-like appearance that people enjoy—and provides birds with seeds, nesting materials, and cover.
• a buckeye, which brightens the garden in spring with its exuberant masses of showy, cream-colored, six-inch long flowers.

Gardening for Wildlife
Hummingbirds, finches, mourning doves and jays frequent the garden, noshing on insects, sipping nectar, and gathering seeds.

Garden Talks
11:00 “Creating a Sierra landscape” by Phyllis Rothman

Keystone species in this garden (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include California lilac, aster, manzanita, currant, sages, and buckwheats.

Plant list

Showcase Feature
Joanna Reed and Paul Fine's garden

Inspired by the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour, Joanna and Paul sheetmulched the lawn away, took out the junipers, and replaced them with a potpourri of native plants that are a visual delight to passers-by, and a sanctuary to birds, butterflies and bees.

The thoughtfully-chosen combination of plants in this garden provide color most of the year. They include toyon—also known as Christmas berry—which produces bright red berries in winter (which birds love), and manzanitas, which bear cream-colored to pink urn-shaped flowers in December and January and provide nectar and pollen to hummingbirds and bees when it is in scarce supply.

The sweetly-scented California lilac bursts into flower in February or March; its purple-blue blossoms are set off beautifully by the jewel-like, showy flower clusters of the pink-flowering currant. Later in spring poppies brighten the garden. Buckwheats flower in summer; when their flowers are spent the dried flower head turn chocolate color, providing visual interest to people, and seeds to birds. Native fuchsia brighten the garden with their fire-engine red flowers in summer and fall, beckoning hummingbirds, which sip nectar from their long-tubular flowers.

This charming, low-maintenance and water-conserving garden was designed and installed by Joanna and Paul.

Other Garden Attractions
• Toyon, manzanita, spicebush flowering gooseberry and wild rose create a living privacy screen that also provides shelter and food for birds.
• Native strawberry functions as a ground cover in the parking strip (and, as more than fifty species of butterflies and moths can lay their eggs on this plant, is a great ecological asset).
• No pesticides are used in this—or any!—Tour garden.

Gardening for Wildlife
Amazingly, fifty eight species of birds have been seen in, or above, this diminutive garden. They are attracted to the smorgasbord of insects (which birds need to feed their babies), and to the seeds and berries found in the garden. Commonly-seen avian visitors include white-crowned sparrows, oak titmice, bushtits, and Downy woodpeckers. More unusual birds include barn owls, Killdeer, ruby-crowned kinglet, violet-green swallow, peregrine falcon, and red-breasted nuthatch.

Garden Talks
11:00 and 1:00 “It’s easier—and cheaper—than you think to transform your yard into a beautiful native plant garden. Come find out how we did it, and how you can, too!” by Joanna Reed and Paul Fine

Keystone species in this garden (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include an oak, wild rose, California lilac, manzanitas, native strawberry, and sages.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? Yes

Bird list

Plant list

Showcase Feature
In honor of her late wife, Victoria, Angela Fitzsimons asked Naomi Vinbury to create “Victoria Gardens” a block-long pollinator corridor for monarch and swallowtail butterflies. In the Jepson Herbarium Naomi researched what plants naturally grew in this part of Oakland, and referred to Xerces Society materials to developed a list of a dozen plants to reintroduce to the neighborhood. Nearly 700 plants were grown out specifically for this urban restoration project, many from seeds and cuttings taken from genetically local native plants.

Together, Angela and Naomi knocked on neighbors’ doors, requesting permission to plant any part of the neighbors’ front garden. Fifteen homeowners offered to participate in the project, yielding 2’ x 2’ patches around a utility pole in one case, entire parking strips in several others, or specific sections of their front gardens.

These tiny sanctuaries offer butterflies, moths, native bees, and other insects plants on which they can sip nectar, gather pollen, and reproduce—many butterflies and moths can only breed on specific native plants; the monarch butterfly, for instance, will only lay eggs on milkweed.

Come learn about great butterfly plants, where you can get them, and what butterflies are native to the Bay Area! Knowledgeable volunteers will be on hand throughout the day to answer your questions.

Other Garden Attractions
• As numerous butterfly and moth species, along with many other small creatures, overwinter in the leaf litter, fallen leaves are left as mulch. This natural (and free!) groundcover also smothers weeds, creates healthy soil, and retains water.
• Dried seed heads are left on the plants for birds to nibble at, and native bees to sleep under. (Really!)
• No pesticides are used in this—or any—Tour garden.
• Stop by Ashley and Matt Spinelli’s garden; their back and front gardens are both on the Tour.
• Landscape designer Naomi Vinbury will be at Spinelli garden throughout the day to answer your questions. Look for her in the pink hat.

Gardening for Wildlife
It’s all about the butterflies! A host plant is one that a butterfly or moth can lay eggs on. Monarch butterflies, for example, can only lay their eggs on milkweed; inclusion of our own local native narrow leaf milkweed, Asclepias fascicularis, in your own garden (along with eliminating pesticide use) could be the monarch’s salvation.

Yampah, or Perideridia kelloggii, is our own local native host plant for the swallowtail butterfly. See the “Find a Nursery” section of this website to locate a native plant nursery near you, and plant some patches of these plants in sunny areas of your garden today!

Included in the butterfly corridor specifically so that butterflies can sip nectar from them are the cheerful yellow flowering gumplant, cream-colored flowers of the hardy evergreen yarrow, and the cheerful lavender and violet blossoms of the Pacific aster and seaside daisy. See the plant list for more ideas!

Music in the Garden
11:00-2:00 Tim and Mairead will play guitar and violin and singing pop and a few Irish folk songs

Keystone Species in these Gardens (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)

At least partially wheelchair accessible? Yes

Plant list

Plant card (with plant photographs)

Seedling photographs

Showcase Feature
Would you like to have an attractive, low-maintenance native plant garden at your own home, but need garden design ideas and plant suggestions? Or, do you wish your own library, or other local government building was landscaped with California native plants? If so, stop by the El Sobrante Library!

The demonstration garden at the rear of the garden is an oasis for wildlife, and was planned with an eye for aesthetics, as well as habitat. Meandering paths wend sunny openings into shady corners, providing the opportunity to discover plants that thrive in various conditions.

Mature live oaks and buckeyes overhang this inviting garden, with its varying colors and textures, which is also surrounded by coastal redwoods and huge black walnuts, likely descendants of those used by native peoples.

The entire area behind the library was once an ecological desert of English ivy and Himalayan blackberry. Today, thanks to the efforts of community volunteers and the restoration group SPAWNERS (San Pablo Watershed Neighbors Education and Restoration Society), this streamside site is now an inviting parklet with a plethora of local native plants that attract wildlife and people alike. Volunteers from SPAWNERS maintain the demonstration garden with hand weeding, limited pruning as needed, and no supplemental water once plants are established. Volunteers will be on hand during the tour to provide the history of the garden and practical tips for growing natives.

The Library’s entrance features an extensive native plant garden that contains mostly sun-loving plants. This beautiful, low-maintenance, and water-conserving garden—which, in addition to its other great features also provides habitat for wildlife—is a model for public spaces. Completed in 2017, the library landscape contains a simple but delightful combination of mostly native plants that is attractive year-round: massed low-growing, fragrant sages line the gently winding path; drifts of fuchsia brighten the garden in summer and fall; rushes stay green all year; and deergrass provides visual interest with its tall, delicate, fountain-like blades.

The entrance garden was created by a partnership between Supervisor John Gioia’s office, the Contra Costa County Public Works Department, the El Sobrante Library, the San Pablo Watershed Neighbors Education & Restoration Society (SPAWNERS), and local community members. (Congratulations, all, on a job well-done!)

Bring a picnic lunch, take a seat in the amphitheater at the back of the library, and enjoy this peaceful setting.

Other Garden Attractions
• The terrific new wooden plant signs in the demonstration garden behind the library contain information on what pollinators each plant supports. Thanks to Eagle Scout Group #24 for creating them.
• Check out the mature riparian (streamside) forest, which features buckeyes, black walnuts, oaks, and sycamores with native understory species.
• A children’s garden is right across the parking area, with space to run around and a simple climbing structure for tots.
• Restrooms are available in the library!

Gardening for Wildlife
Pipevine swallowtail butterflies lay their eggs in the extensive patch of Dutchman’s pipevine. Dark-eyed juncos nest in dense plantings near the ground, while red-shouldered hawks noisily mate and raise their young overhead. Bird boxes installed by another Boy Scout project host chattering chestnut-backed chickadees and titmice. Bumblebees feast on the fairy-like soaproot flowers in the late afternoons. Deer, woodpeckers, ducks, flickers, and many other kinds of songbirds, butterflies and bees frequent the gardens and restoration site.

Garden Tours and Activities
10:30 and 12:30: Guided tours of the demonstration gardens.

10:00 – 12:00 Art project for children (of all ages). Leaf rubbings are a fun and easy way to create art with native plants, and they can be a great tool to enhance your plant identification skills as well.

Plant List

Showcase Feature
Ashley, Matt, and their toddler inherited the lovely, mature native plant garden—and a relationship with the garden’s landscape designer, Naomi Vinbury—when they purchased the home in 2021.

The inviting front garden, with its delightful combinations of exuberantly colorful natives, cobble-filled and river rock-lined dry creek bed, and mature manzanitas, shows what can be done with a small space. In addition, this charming entrance garden is both beautiful throughout the year, and low-maintenance.

The back garden, designed and installed by Vinbury Garden Designs, contains a miniature woodland, tiny meadow, and an espaliered pink flowering currant, which provide places for people to enjoy, and refuge for the smaller creatures that make the world go round. The delightful plant palette ranges from elderberry, thimbleberry and ferns to California spicebush, local milkweed and native bunch grasses.

Most of the plants in the back garden were chosen because of their value to butterflies. Some of the plants, such as the California aster and goldenrod, among others, are descended from plants that would have been found in this area hundreds of years ago. As these plants are adapted to the East Bay, they will grow better here than other members of the same species that come from other places.

Other Garden Attractions

• In the front garden two boulders with concave surfaces furnish water for wildlife. They are located near the manzanita to provide protection to birds.
• Irrigation is installed on the whole property, though it is used minimally.
• Designer Naomi Vinbury will be at this garden all day to answer your questions—look for her in the back garden, in a pink hat.
• Stroll next door to see Angela’s native plant garden.

Gardening for Wildlife
This garden provides a safe haven for butterflies, as it contains many “keystone species”—the best plants for butterflies to reproduce on, and no insecticides, herbicides, or fungicides are used in this—or any—Tour garden. Year-round nectar sources are available for the pollinators, seeds are left to ripen and dry for the birds, and a bird bath provides water to winged creatures. Our local narrow-leafed milkweed has been planted for the monarch butterfly, as milkweed is the only plant the monarch can lay its eggs on.

Garden Talks
12:00 Backyard biodiversity: How to select native species for your urban garden” by Naomi Vinbury

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include pink-flowering currant, California lilac, manzanita, woodland strawberry, aster, buckwheat, and goldenrod among others.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? Yes

Plant List

Showcase Feature
When Oliver bought this house two years ago, the mature garden had been in place for many years; in it, native and non-native ornamentals mingle happily. A large redbud provides shade for the coral bells beneath it, and drifts of rosy buckwheats line the walkway leading up to the house. Super-hardy natives, such as buckwheat, fuchsia and chaparral mallow, flourish in the parking strip. Manzanita, sage, and a perennial lupine provide structure and stability throughout the year.

Other Garden Attractions
• This garden has a long bloom time; red fuchsia, pinkich chaparral mallow, cream-colored buckwheats, and lavender seaside daisy bloom well into the fall.
• No pesticides are used in this—or any!—Tour garden.
• Stroll 2 minutes to the east to see Paul Glodis and Mary Jo Sander’s garden.

Gardening for Wildlife
Bees, butterflies, and birds are attracted to this garden by the diversity of plant heights, the variety of plants, and the bounty of blossoms. Hummingbirds adore the bright red, long, tubular blossoms of the native fuchsia and the aptly-named hummingbird sage. Butterflies appreciate the large landing pads (aka) blossoms of the native buckwheat, and bees happily buzz the sage.

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include manzanita, sages, lupine, and buckwheat.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? Yes

Plant list

Showcase Feature

NOTE: This garden is accessed via a flight of stairs, and has sloping ground and uneven steps. It should not be visited by those with balance issues.

Like many of our gardens, Ilene’s began as a drought-tolerant landscape, planted with Mediterranean, Australian, and South African plants. Inspired by years of attending the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour, long-time Tour attendee Ilene had long harbored the dream of having her own garden on the Tour.

In the spring of 2020 Ilene, along with garden designers and installers Steven Cochrane and Tara Parker-Essig, began working collaboratively to re-imagine and re-plant much of the garden. They removed the sea of ivy that had engulfed a full third of the back yard and, and, in its place, created a peaceful, meandering, natural dry creek bed lined with woodland plants that thrive in the shade of the Douglas firs. An additional benefit—besides the lovely forest-y atmosphere—is that the creek bed captures rainwater, allowing it to percolate down to the aquifer, and helps to protect Temescal Creek from scouring.

The team also created a spiral garden surrounded by dry-stacked stone retaining walls which is specifically planted with only natives found naturally within five miles of the house.

Ilene’s garden journey began over two decades ago when the back yard, which had become overgrown with weeds was re-imagined. California native plants are now being consciously integrated into the more established parts of the garden that contain mainly non-native succulents and other ornamentals. Ilene noted, “The garden is constantly evolving as we incorporate natives into our mature landscape. These days, natives are the only new plants we are bringing in. The natives, started from seeds and cuttings, or bought from native plant nurseries, are used to fill in gaps and moved around if they aren’t happy.” (Note that plant labels with copper edges identify California natives, and plant labels with white edges identify non-native ornamentals.)

Wear comfortable walking shoes, and watch your footing, as some of the steps and pathways are uneven. (And do watch your head around the mature apple tree.)

This artistic, inviting, and tranquil garden contains multiple seating areas; drop down in one and rest a while—you won’t want to leave!

New! “Climate-Friendly Cooking: 111 recipes to Help Save the Planet” will be available for sale
Visit the cookbook table, browse through (and purchase!) the just-published, locally-produced cookbook, Climate Friendly Cooking—111 Recipes to Help Save the Planet, and enjoy a taste of some of its delicious recipes. The introduction to the book explains how the global food system is a major contributor to climate change; following are delicious recipes that will help you incorporate more climate-friendly and healthy recipes into your everyday life. (A percentage of the sales will go to support the Tour.)

Grant’s Glassworks: Grant Van Epps, a local glassblower who creates functional and whimsical blown glass plant stakes and marbles for use in planting containers, will have a variety of pieces for sale on the day of the tour. Check out the ones that have mini-glass mushrooms inside! (A percentage of the sales will go to support the Tour.)

Lemonade Stand: Ilene’s grandsons will be selling home-made lemonade (with proceeds going to the Lindsay Wildlife Experience, a museum and wildlife rehabilitation center in Walnut Creek)

Test your knowledge of Native Plants and Habitats – Ilene has created a mini quiz you can take as you stroll around the garden (feel free to ask for clues if needed:)

Note: Parking will be tight; park on Evirel (the cross street), not Thornhill, if possible. If you do park on Thornhill, be careful not to block the road, and look carefully before crossing the street. There will be a volunteer on-site to help guide you into a parking space, if needed.

Other Garden Attractions
• Children are welcome to entertain themselves on the play structure while you enjoy the garden (with one eye on them, of course).
• Look for the metal fish sculptures that “swim” down the creek.
• Native bent grass “lawn” is adjacent to the semi-circular seating area.
• NextDoor and the Buy Nothing Network have been sources of many of the free and low-cost materials that are found in the garden, such as the beautiful black metal arbor, flagstone, paving stones, cobble, and more.
• An admirably productive veggie garden is tucked into the sunniest part of the garden. You will also see persimmon, apple, native plum, and lemon trees.
• Check out the tidy, efficient, and attractive composting and worm bin systems that Ilene, a Master Composter (certified through Alameda County), has set up. This allows the household to most efficiently reduce and re-use kitchen and other compostable materials that would normally go into the waste system. Note: Finished compost is used mainly for the veggie and herb garden.

Gardening for Wildlife
Ilene’s office overlooks the garden, and she loves seeing and hearing the birds that visit. These include sapsuckers, woodpeckers, chickadees, hummingbirds, juncos and more. The birds are drawn in by the sound of water falling from the bubbling rock fountain, the birdbath, and the insects, berries, and seeds found in this wildlife-friendly haven. Butterflies flit through the garden, and native bumble and carpenter bees buzz by. Lizards bask on the boulders, and salamanders can be found in a natural habitat created by logs. And, very recently, a red-breasted nuthatch has been building a nest in the mature elderberry tree – see if you can spot the action!

Garden Talks
11:00 “How to select understory plants for a coastal forest setting” by Steven Cochrane, FCI Fine Gardening

12:00 “Got clay? Learn to understand, love, and use it to your advantage” by Tara Parker-Essig, Restoration Gardening

1:00 1:00 “Conscious integration of California natives into an existing landscape” by Lupe Peru, Alegre Landscaping & Design

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include Douglas fir, maples, California lilac, manzanitas, dogwood, huckleberry, gooseberry, thimbleberry, pink-flowering currant, native strawberry, and (native, of course!) sunflowers.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? No

Plant list

Wondering what to make for dinner? Try this great recipe!
Moosewood Cookbook Spanakopita
Note from Ilene, who provided this recipe: “The spanakopita recipe from the original Moosewood Cookbook has been one of my favorite go-to recipes ever since I first discovered this vegetarian classic back in my college days in New York. I learned how to properly work with filo dough when I worked in a Greek restaurant, and having that skill definitely helped me master this recipe. But of course that was way before YouTube videos (which now provide endless opportunities to learn this delicate but definitely manageable skill). For added interest and texture, I like to add finely chopped walnuts or pinenuts between layers of filo (every 4-5 layers). An excellent dish for a group, this recipe makes a generous 8 servings.”
Spanakopita

Showcase Feature
When Linda, a long-time Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour participant, bought this house the front garden contained 10 palm trees, 13 huge oleander bushes, a large lawn, and tons of river rock.
As native plant gardens require much less maintenance and water than lawns, and the oleander has no ecological value here in California, over the last 5 years Linda and her husband have sheet mulched the lawn, removed the non-native ornamentals, and replaced them with a potpourri of native plants that attract hummingbirds and songbirds, native bees, and butterflies, and can tolerate hot, dry, and windy summers, with minimal upkeep.

Other Garden Attractions

• Hardy sulphur buckwheats, with their showy yellow flowers, border the front of the garden.
• The beautiful wooden and glass panel fence was hand-made by Linda’s husband.
• This water-conserving garden is watered for 20 minutes just 2 to 3 times a month in the summer.

Gardening for Wildlife
Black phoebes, Anna’s hummingbirds, and finches flit through the garden. Leaf-cutter bees buzz the sages, buckwheats, and poppies, collecting pollen, and take half moon-shaped nibbles from tender spring redbud leaves to form nests. Hummingbirds sip nectar from the long, red, tubular blossoms of the California fuchsia and the iridescent purple/blue flowers of the penstemon.

Garden Talks
10:30 “DIY lessons learned” by Linda Williams

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include lupines, sages, buckwheats, and penstemon.

Plant list

Showcase Feature
When Patricia purchased the house in 2019 she knew the front and side lawns would have to go. In their place she wanted an attractive, low-maintenance, water-conserving garden that would provide habitat for wildlife. Kelly Marshall, of Kelly Marshall Garden Design, created this peaceful garden, which contains evergreen shrubs such as manzanita, California lilac, lilac verbena ‘de la Mina’, and coyote brush, which provide structure and stability throughout the year. In summer the profuse cream-to pinkish-white or intensely yellow blossoms of four types of buckwheat (Warriner Lytle, St. Catherine’s lace, Santa Cruz Island, and Shasta sulfur), attract butterflies, then turn a beautiful rust-to-chocolate color in the fall. Three kinds bunch grasses—the hardy foothill sedge, handsome Pacific reed grass, and stately California fescue, with its graceful, fountain-like blue-green foliage—flourish in the understory of the large trees that border this lot, providing visual interest throughout the year, and seeds for birds in the summer and fall. Drop down into one of the Adirondack chairs and rest a while; you won’t want to leave!

Other Garden Attractions
• A burbling rock fountain attracts birds and two-legged visitors alike.
• This is a new garden; if you’d like to see what a recently-installed native plant garden is like, this is the stop for you!

Gardening for Wildlife
Oak trees—the ecological workhorses of the garden— provide shelter for birds, and places on which butterflies and moths can lay their eggs. Berries on the pink flowering and chaparral currants, fuchsia flowering gooseberry, manzanita, snowberry, and coffeeberry attract birds. Hummingbirds sip nectar from the long, tubular flowers of the California fuchsia, penstemon, and monkeyflower.

Our own, local narrow-leafed milkweed, Asclepius fasicularis has been included in the garden as milkweed is the only plant the endangered monarch butterfly can lay its eggs on

Nuthatches, hummingbirds, jays, butterflies, lizards and myriad insects have been seen in the garden.

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include oaks, currants, California lilac, manzanitas, sages, buckwheats, and penstemon.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? Yes

Front garden plant list

Side garden plant list

Showcase Feature
It will be hard to believe, when you see this charming garden, that not long ago it had a weedy lawn, a failing retaining wall, and a concrete parking strip. Peter Rohan and LandSpaces designed and installed the new attractive, low maintenance and water-conserving garden.

The petite “lawn,” is the “Native Preservation Mix” from Delta Bluegrass, which was put down as sod. The “Preservation Mix” contains four types of native bunchgrasses (Junegrass, nodding needlegrass, Point Molate fescue and purple needlegrass, our state grass). This mixture of fine-textured grass yields a beautiful rolling meadow effect. Interested in replacing your lawn? This mix withstands full sun, and will tolerate partial shade.

California lilac, manzanitas, rushes, buckwheats and yarrow add stability to the landscape, and keep the garden green throughout the year. Three lovely California lilac ‘Ray Hartman’ placed in the parking strip function as street trees.

The soil, a rocky hardpan, doesn’t faze the natives, many of which are local to within a short distance from Paul and Mary Jo’s home. (Check out this neat new feature on CalScape, where you can see what plants are super-locally native to your area.) Among the hyper-local natives in this garden are the chaparral currant, California fuchsia, and monkeyflower.

Other Garden Attractions
• Treasure hunt! How many plant fossils can you spot in the flagstone stairs and stepping stones? (Hint; there are at least 9!)
• The blueish stone used for the retaining walls is Kryptonite, and was purchased at American Soil Products.
• There are natives everywhere on this block! Look to the right of Paul and Mary Jo’s garden to see buckwheat, sage, manazanita and California lilac. Look to the left to see a very large California lilac, and a deer grass and verbena ‘de la Mina.”
• Saunter down the block (toward the Bay) for two minutes to see Oliver Lo’s garden.

Gardening for Wildlife
California bluebirds visit the garden, as do native bees and butterflies. Monarchs are a common sight, fluttering about the garden in search of nectar.

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include California lilac, currant, manzanita, buckwheat and native strawberry.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? Yes