Lot size: 450 sq. ft front garden, 120 sq. ft. parking strip, 3,825 sq. ft. back garden, 95% native
Garden Age: Garden was installed in stages, beginning in 1980
Years on the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour: New this year!
The coast live oaks, bays, and big leaf maple that were on-site and native to this area set the stage for the beautiful mostly-local native plant garden that Delia and John designed around them. Ask Delia, volunteer extraordinaire of the East Bay Chapter of the California Native Plant Society and the Society’s own Native Here Nursery, why she likes gardening with local native plants. (Hint; they’re beautiful, create a sense of place that is unique to the Bay Area, provide the best habitat for wildlife, and are used to our five months of rain and seven months of dry weather.) In 2013 David Bigham re-imagined the garden, bringing the seating area closer to Blackberry Creek, which flows year-round through the garden.
Other Garden Attractions
• In spring the garden contains a cheery mix of wildflowers, including meadowfoam, redmaids, buttercups, clarkia, and lupines; native bulbs, such as mariposa lilies and Ithuriel’s spear, and trillium.
• Check out the lawn of native bunchgrass (Agrostis pallens) and self-heal (Prunella vulgaris), which is tucked behind the center mound.
• Drop down onto one of the many seating areas and enjoy this lovely garden; you won’t want to leave. • Stroll west around the block to David Loeb’s garden.
Gardening for Wildlife
The local native plants in this garden attract numerous types of birds, including Western bluebirds, lesser and American goldfinches, golden- and white-crowned sparrows, dark-eyed juncos, Townsend’s, yellow-rumped, and orange-crowned warblers, cedar waxwings, hermit thrushes, ruby-crowned kinglets, wrentits, Bewick’s wrens, chestnut-backed chickadees, oak titmice, black phoebes, Anna’s and Allen’s hummingbirds, and Cooper’s hawks.
