Agenda 2024 Online Tour

Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour and Green Home Features Showcase

A tour of fifty five Alameda and Contra Costa county gardens and twenty green homes

Four days of inspiration-both online and inperson.

Two days of online garden tours and talks.

Two days of inperson garden tours and green home visits.

Free.

Please join us for any or all of these events, which will be held on the following dates:

2024 Online Tour – see the agenda below
Saturday and Sunday April 6 and 7, 10:00-3:00

2024 In-person Tour
Saturday and Sunday May 4 and 5, 10:00-5:00

Registration is required

Register for the 2024 Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour 

Your confirmation email will contain links to join the live events.

One registration covers you for all four events.

If you don’t receive an immediate registration success e-mail, check your spam box.

If you can’t find your confirmation e-mail for the garden tour, on the mornings of Tour days check the garden tour website for the links.

No one will answer the phone and there will be no computer support on event days.

The virtual programs will be hosted on Zoom, and livestreamed on YouTube.

Donations requested!

Please help support the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour and Green Home Features Showcase by making a donation here or mailing a check to:  Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour, 1718 Hillcrest Road, San Pablo CA 94806


2024 Overview and Agenda coming soon!


Overview of the 2023 Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour

In a series of live garden visits passionate garden owners and the talented designers of the Bay Area’s most beautiful and inspiring landscapes will take us on private tours of their gardens.

In addition, this year you can learn about the must-have plants for your garden, how to create a pollinator pathway, how to garden for birds, butterflies and bees, which native street trees you might want in front of your home, and more!

Keynote by Doug Tallamy!


Renowned ecologist and best-selling author Doug Tallamy will open this event on Saturday, April 15, at 10:00.

2023 Live Schedule (Subject to change; check back for updates.)

Saturday, April 15, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm (Pacific Daylight Time)

 

10:00-10:10 Welcome, Kathy Kramer, Tour Coordinator

10:10-11:15 “Restoring the little things that run the world: Why it matters, and what you can do” by renowned ecologist Doug Tallamy, author of “Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens” and the New York Times bestseller “Nature’s Best Hope

Recent headlines about global insect declines and three billion fewer birds in North America are a bleak reality check about how ineffective our current landscape designs have been at sustaining the plants and animals that sustain us.  Such losses are not an option if we wish to continue our current standard of living on Planet Earth. The good news is that none of this is inevitable. Tallamy will discuss simple steps that each of us can­—and must—take to reverse declining biodiversity and will explain why we, ourselves, are nature’s best hope.

11:15-11:45 “Tour of Susan and Bill Teefy’s Castro Valley garden” by Susan Teefy (Visit this garden on Sat., May 6, 2023)

11:45-12:30 “Tour of Kathy Kramer and Mike May’s native plant garden” by Kathy Kramer followed by a Q and A with Kathy and Mike

12:30-1:00 “Tour of Kathy Kramer and Mike May’s green home” with a Q and A with Kathy and Mike + Green Home Features in this year’s Tour: Why you should care, & where can you see them.

1:00-1:15 Preview the Sunday, April 16 online garden visits and talks

1:15-1:45 “Creating a pollinator pathway in Berkeley: 1 traffic circle, 2 front gardens, and 7 parking strips” by Joey Grossinger and Robin Grossinger (Visit these gardens on Sat. May 6, 2023)

1:45-2:00 Preview the Bayside Gardens on the in-person Tour (Visit these gardens Sat., May 6, 2023)

2:00-2:30 “Keystone species for sunny areas—must-have plants for your garden that are not only beautiful, but also support insect and bird life” by Jennifer Dirking, with introduction by Glenn Phillips, Executive Director of Golden Gate Audubon

2:30-3:00 “Monarch-Friendly Gardens: Designing, managing, and maintaining a monarch-friendly garden goes beyond just planting milkweed!” by Rei Scampavia

3:00 End

Sunday, April 16, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm (Pacific Daylight Time)

10:00-10:10 Welcome from Kathy Kramer, Tour Coordinator

10:10-11:00 “Tour of Barbara Leitner’s Orinda garden and green home” by Barbara Leitner; video by Rachel Styer (Visit this garden on Sunday, May 7, 2023)

11:00-11:30  “Tour of Mary Ann Walsh and Richard Carter’s garden: “A permaculture approach to California native plants and hillside erosion: retaining rainwater on site, creating a wetland and dry creek bed, and plant selection”in Oakland” with Q and A designer by Lois Simonds, Gardening by Nature’s Design; video by Tam Starita (Visit this garden on Sat., May 6, 2023)

11:30-12:00 Preview of the Inland Gardens on the in-person Tour (Visit these gardens on Sunday, May 7, 2023)

12:00-12:30 “How to choose shrubs for your native plant garden: California lilac, manzanitas, sages, toyons, and more” by Pete Veilleux, East Bay Wilds

12:30-1:00 “Keep your garden green longer with a rain garden: Rain gardens absorb and retain water, keep your garden green longer, prevent flooding and add interest and beauty to your yard. Learn how to plan and build a rain garden and see examples from gardens on this year’s tour.” by Stefanie Pruegel (Visit some of the featured gardens on Sat. and Sun. May 6 and 7, 2023)

1:00-1:30 “Keystone species for shady areas—must-have plants that are not only beautiful, but also support insect and bird life in your garden” by Jennifer Dirking

1:30-2:00 “Native street trees provide the best habitat for wildlife. Join us in learning how to choose the best native street tree for your garden” by Lawrence Abbot and Brett Desmarais

2:00-2:30  “Life and death on lupines” photographs and text by May Chen

2:30-3:00 “The beauty of new life: spring in the native plant garden” by Al Kyte, Moraga
#4 of the six videos in the “Dimensions of Beauty” series Al Kyte has made on gardening with California native plants. Join us in visiting Al’s garden in March and April, when the garden comes to life with poppies and ceanothus, that lead a parade of colorful blooms. Pipeline swallowtail butterflies, native bees, and emerging lizards again become active.
 

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Two Ways to View the Program (and a Third, to Learn More)

1) Join via Zoom
We are using the webinar function of Zoom to host the events. You will need to download the free Zoom software to your device to be able to join the event using Zoom. For a seamless experience, we recommend that you download Zoom in advance.

Having trouble? Zoom has amazing support to help you learn how to use it, quite quickly. Here is a great help page, where you can choose getting started either from a desktop (e.g. home computer), or mobile device, and follow the instructions for downloading the software and sign-up.
Here is another very helpful section of the website to troubleshoot and learn more about Zoom:
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us

2) Join via YouTube
To view the events on YouTube, all you need is your web browser.

3) See garden photos, read garden descriptions and print plant lists of Tour gardens

Leading up to the tour and during the live events, check out the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour’s View the Gardens page to see beautiful photographs of each garden, read garden descriptions, and view the plant lists for each of the Tour gardens. (Both the gardens featured on the virtual tours and another twenty gardens are available on the Tour’s website.)
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More on the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour!

Since 2005, the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour, together with passionate native plant gardeners located throughout Alameda and Contra Costa counties, has set the standard for sustainable landscaping in Northern California. The Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour shows that native gardens are beautiful, can be designed on any budget—and conveys the idea that each of us plays a critical role in supporting biodiversity.

The exemplary landscapes on the Tour hope to inform, inspire and motivate you to incorporate native plants into your own gardens.

Since the Tour’s inception more than 200,000 garden visits have been made to native plant gardens showcased on the Tour. This year’s Tour features 55 gardens, which can be seen on the Tour’s website. You can view photos of each of these gardens, read a description of the garden and print out its plant list at View the Gardens. This year 20 of these homeowners are sharing their green home features; ask these hosts about their solar panels, batteries, heat pumps, induction ranges, insulation, and more!

The gardens on the Tour contain at least 70% native plants, are pesticide-free, water-conserving, and provide habitat for wildlife.

Do You Have a Garden to Offer to the Tour?

If you have a garden to offer, the application is here, and now is the time to submit it. Garden visits will begin in late spring, and they will end in June.

Thank you

We are grateful for the community of people that make this event possible. A very special thank you to the garden hosts and designers for opening their wonderful gardens to the public, and to our volunteers for sharing their knowledge and enthusiasm with visitors.

We are deeply grateful for the support of our sponsors—including local businesses, government agencies, and non-profits and individuals.