July 16, 2004

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Palo Alto Online

Green thumbs up

by Ann Duwe

L ike modern-day Johnny Appleseeds, Master Gardeners devote themselves to the green world. In Palo Alto these volunteers worked for more than a year creating two colorful, showcase gardens -- a "Water-wise Garden" of ornamental plants and an "Edible Garden" with beds of Asian, Latin and Mediterranean vegetables. On July 31 between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. the public is invited, free of charge, to see their handiwork and talk to the experts.

Master Gardener demonstration gardens are located in Eleanor Pardee Park at the corner of Channing Avenue and Center Drive in Palo Alto. The event features tastings of produce from the garden and activities for children. All the plants will be labeled, and hand-outs will be available on plant names, resources, cultivation techniques, water conservation and composting.

Master Gardeners are not casual volunteers. Each person completes a minimum of five months of course work through the University of California Agricultural Extension and 125 hours of related volunteer work to qualify for the title. They attend monthly advanced training sessions and continue to volunteer in enough garden-related activities to make a full-time job seem like a vacation. Their goal is to teach pleasing design and best practices to home gardeners.

In the Edible Garden, bursts of color from ornamental plants punctuate irregularly shaped growing beds. The Asian bed features bamboo cages to support the tomato plants. Bitter melons dangle from a bamboo trellis, and tepees of bamboo poles support Japanese sword beans, yard long beans and Asian cucumbers. Other Asian varieties found here are Malabar spinach, Shishito peppers, Indian red peppers and several kinds of eggplant. Low borders of tightly woven twigs help define the edges of the bed.

"The vegetable beds are shaped like a paisley," said Roberta Barnes of Los Altos, who designed the beds and established the shapes of planting mounds in the Water-wise Garden. Looking at the trellis of melons in the Asian garden, she added, "The melons are an experiment. We're not sure there's enough heat here to make them thrive." She said the same about the okra.

Periodically the Master Gardeners send information on the success or failure of these varieties and other experimental crops to the University of California Cooperative Extension. From there the information can go to growers and seed companies.

"We had a hard time choosing flowers for this garden. Many Asian flowers are tropical and don't thrive here, so we decided to go with intense colors," Barnes said about the Asian garden.

Celosia, signet marigolds, zinnias and straw flowers bloom profusely in deep shades of red, orange and yellow. A planting of holy basil is surrounded by bricks painted white in order to suggest the traditional custom of planting this herb in red-and-white striped pots.

The centerpiece of the Edible Garden is a circular bed with 30 kinds of culinary herbs in pie-shaped sections. This summer there are six varieties each of basil, thyme, sage and oregano. Dill, lovage, bronze fennel and clary sage provide height, while perilla, epazote and lemon grass hint at the international flavor of the vegetable beds.

Rosalie Shepherd of Palo Alto is justly proud of the photo labels she made for plants in the Mediterranean garden. Half the plants in the bed were started from seed in trays on her kitchen floor.

"Starting with seeds is the key to success," she said, noting that she favors Renee's brand seeds. "Starting with plants is expensive, and often with a plant you don't know exactly what you've got."

One unusual variety in the Mediterranean bed is the cardoon, a relative of the artichoke. For color there are zinnias next to the zucchini and lisianthus among the eggplants. Shepherd planted feverfew "to keep away the nasties." Many chewing insects don't like the scent. The Mediterranean garden has a small stand of red grain amaranth to keep cucumber beetles from eating the cucumbers planted nearby.

Planting combinations of plants for mutual benefit is a principle Master Gardeners like to demonstrate. For decorative effect the support tepees in the Mediterranean bed are made of curly willow. Lyngso Garden Materials donated shards of slate and flagstone for borders.

The Latin bed is the most colorful of all. Painted ceramic flower pots decorate the line of blue tile fragments along the borders of the bed. Small tree branches painted in primary colors support the bean plants. There are red nasturtiums next to the epazote and yellow sunflowers near the quilquiña, a relative of cilantro. There is even an edible variety of purslane, a plant many gardeners recognize only as a weed.

Unlike the Edible Garden, the Water-wise Garden is not fenced and can be visited whenever the park is open. One mound of particularly dark soil is set aside for plants destined to grow without any water.

"We would water those plants only if we had a very unusual, intense heat wave," explained Sheri Bakun of Menlo Park. When complete, the Water-wise Garden will contain more than 80 varieties of plants. Already taking hold are small fig trees, purple penstemons and white gaura.

Palo Alto's demonstration gardens were begun in summer 2003 in what started as a weedy meadow. Master Gardeners, who may devote as many as 20 hours a month to the effort, first had to get rid of weeds. The group covered the entire growing area with a thin layer of compost from the City of Palo Alto. Next they added a thick layer of cardboard sheets, which were topped with a thick layer of wood chips. Cover materials were available at no charge, and eventually much of the material was worked into the soil.

"Our system has been generally effective in smothering weeds," said Caroline Zlotnick of Palo Alto, for whom weeding is an avocation. On a sunny afternoon when she could have been sitting in the shade, she was under a hat, a small, forked spade in hand, carefully digging out bindweed. "If you keep digging it out, eventually it dies back," she said.

Like model homes, model gardens can jump-start your enthusiasm for sprucing up your growing beds with new varieties of vegetables or drought-tolerant ornamentals.

What: Master Gardeners Palo Alto Demonstration Gardens Open Garden When: Saturday, July 31, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Where: Eleanor Pardee Park, entrance off Center Street at Martin Avenue Cost: Free Info: (650) 493-1257 or waxwing04@yahoo.com. Visit www.mastergardener.org.

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