Through the Garden Gate: Spring happenings

There is lots going on in the gardening world during March and April. So get ready! Find your gloves and sharpen up your shovels and trowels! March 20 not only features the first day of spring, but also our local California Native Plant Society’s March program! Eliza Shepard will discuss her work on a “Locally Rare Plant Project.” Folks may bring photos of plants they believe should be included as rare plants.
Tom Robinson of the Sonoma County Agricultural and Open Space District is the second presenter. He is a conservation planner and will talk on the upcoming Public Review Draft of a Voluntary Oak Woodland Management Plan for Sonoma County. This management plan is important, because, due to many factors, oak woodlands are experiencing a reduction of regeneration.
The lectures are at the Luther Burbank Art & Garden Center, 2050 Yulupa Ave., Santa Rosa at 7:30 p.m. Call Leia for more information at 322-6722 or email: le*****@gm***.com.
The Windsor Garden Club holds its monthly meetings at the Windsor Senior Center at 9231 Foxwood Drive in Windsor, next to the Hembree House Museum. P.S. You do NOT have to be a senior to attend! Meetings start at 6:30 p.m. Contact Cindy Fenton at cf*********@gm***.com for more information.
The March 20 General Meeting’s guest speaker will be Jan Tolmasoff of the Russian River Rose Company. She will discuss General Rose Care.
The April 17 General Meeting will feature guest speaker and Master Gardener, Sandy Metzger. She will discuss “Gardening for Butterflies and Bees.”
And on Sunday, April 22nd, Earth Day, check out the annual Plant Sale at the Windsor Community Garden, located at the Charlie Brown Corner. The sale is from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m.
You’ll have more opportunities to buy plants at the wonderful Spring Plant Sale at Occidental Arts & Ecology on both April 14 and 15!
With all these plant sales and plant information available, now is a great time to think about taking out a lawn that you really don’t want! As Michael Pollan says in his book, Second Nature: “A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule.” Spring is on the way. We don’t know if we’ll get more rain, but spending your money, time and energy maintaining and watering a lawn may be what you can no longer want or even afford to do.
If you are one of those folks who just cannot imagine giving up your lawn, but are tired of comments by well-meaning friends or family, and dread the upcoming season of mowing, fertilizing, pesticiding, or fungiciding your lawn, you could look at removing MOST of the lawn. You could leave a patch large enough to sit to watch clouds or just doze, or a place for your kids to wrestle, or for your dog to spread out on a warm summer’s day. There is really no advantage to a huge lawn, only disadvantages. A huge tract of grass is a throwback to our past. It is not appropriate to the reality of California’s, even the world’s, growing water shortages or supply.
Worst of all, in these times of loss of wildlife habitat, lawns support no birds or other wildlife. A yard full of herbs, salvias, ceanothus, manzanitas, zinnias, milkweeds, toyons, monkey flowers—there is no end to the beauty of a garden planted for wildlife. If you have a strip of grass in front of your house, or between the street and the sidewalk, dig it up and plant it with a low-water shrub such as Salvia ‘Bee’s Bliss.’ Interplant it with our lovely native iris, Iris douglasiana. Iris means rainbow in Greek, and you can find this iris in a rainbow of colors. Barberry (Berberis sp.), a shrubby little perennial that requires little water and is a good ground cover, perhaps interplanted with CA poppies and our native yarrows.
So have fun and support our independent local nurseries, garden clubs and farmers’ markets.
Contact me at: jo*******@co*****.net.