Lot size: 2,700 sq. ft. front garden, 95% native
Garden Age: Garden was installed in the spring of 2017
Years on the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour: New this year!
Showcase Feature
Linda and Ken had their large lawn sheetmulched away in one of the Tour’s “How to sheetmulch your lawn away (and get paid for it, too!)” workshops. The garden they envisioned, which Kathleen Olson of Kathleen’s Garden Landscape Design designed, and a rebate from the East Bay Municipal Utility District helped pay for, was to be colorful, and attract native bees and butterflies. (Great news—it is, and does!) Combining art and nature, Ken designed and built a brick spiral—with inspiration from the spiral jetty in the Great Salt Lake. Children love to follow the brick path from the street to its terminus near a spiral-cut drilled rock fountain.
Other Garden Attractions
• Prostrate manzanitas (‘Emerald Carpet’) and sages (‘Bees Bliss’) function as evergreen groundcovers.
• California native fuchsia blooms throughout the summer, and into November.
• Linda was astonished as the clay became a soft, crumbly soil after it had been sheetmulched and a lot of wood chips had been added.
• This garden is open to grazing by deer.
• The EBMUD rebate comes as a credit; the Hargreaves’ have not paid a water bill in a year and a half.
Gardening for Wildlife
Carpenter, bumble, and honey bees buzz the sages; hummingbirds adore the tubular flowers of the penstemon and monkeyflower. Linda and Ken report they now spend a lot of time at their kitchen window, watching the bees and butterflies gather nectar and pollen from the blossoms in their garden.
Garden Talks
12:00 “Designing for lawn replacement” by Kathleen Olson