BUT WAIT! There's Another Sharing Garden To Look Forward To On May 2, In Poway...

Ida Rigby and John Sturla's Poway garden is returning to its roots. The original vision was to have as natural a garden as possible with a distinct sense of place and to have it blend with its setting, a borrowed landscape of a disturbed, but native, hillside. In the fall of l992, Tree of Life Nursery brought down a truckload of California natives. The Englemann Oaks, Toyons, mountain mahogany and buckwheats are from that original shipment. Then, of course, as Australian and South African plants, along with Mediterranean natives, became more available they lured Ida into expanding her vision. It became a Mediterranean latitudes garden. The aging garden now needs editing and replanting, so last fall Ida returned to focusing on natives. 

A unique feature of the garden is the use of rocks excavated on the property or wheelbarrowed in by Ida from neighbors' properties. These local stones line the gravel paths and form the wall behind and coping around the pond. 

Another feature of the garden is an emphasis on aromatic plants. You can brush by a Southwestern Tagetes limmonii, a California artemisia or a South African salvia or just nip a leaf and crush it. 

The garden welcomes wildlife. Great blue herons, egrets, raccoons and mallards visit the pond. Coyotes enjoy the loquats. Buckwheats and bladder pods attract local insects. Dragonfly larvae leave their exoskeletons on the stems of water lilies. A Nuttall's woodpecker visits a massive, 30-year-old palo verde. The Cooper's hawk leaves a perfect ring of mockingbird feathers under pomegranate boughs. 

So, come and wander the gravel paths of this evolving garden.

Registration opens two weeks before the event.