Over the past few weeks I have had several in-depth conversations about plant names. Specifically, why I chose to include scientific plant names across the front of Jewellgarden’s new note cards and how these names are determined - why are they so confusing? All of these conversations got me thinking about plant names - what purpose they serve, why it is important to me to learn them and thus why they proudly embellishing my new cards. Photo: A black and white note card depicting the California black oak acorn (Quercus kelloggii) from my Natives in the Garden series. (more…)

“We had to use all those words,” Kristen del Real explained to me, “Each one was really important to our mission with this project.”

Eat. Learn. Grow.

Together these words are part directive and part blessing - which in many ways is what Chico. Eat. Learn. Grow. is. A hoped-for directive and a blessing for the Chico area, where del Real and Laurie Niles and others working on the initiative saw a strong “need for our area’s food to be more present in our children’s lives, especially at school” where “if a child is on free or reduced fee lunch, they may eat two to three meals at school,” del Real told me. So if school provided food is not particularly healthful, then those children might never eat healthful food. Photo: Kristen del Real (front), co-coordinator of Chico. Eat. Learn. Grow., introducing Bridgette Brick Wells to a recent presentation on the program ot interested community members. (more…)

This story begins with a shared passion. Shared passion and a collegial friendship between a man and woman, conducted from opposite coasts of North America in the 1980s.

Francis H. (or Frank as he is known) Cabot, an avid gardener in Cold Spring, New York and Ruth Bancroft, an avid gardener in Walnut Creek, California, share a profound love of gardening and plants. Despite many differences between these two gardeners in space, age, climate, hardiness zone, stylistic inclinations and gender (which as we know can lead to very different gardening tendencies), it was Frank Cabot and his wife, Anne’s late-1980s visit to Ruth Bancroft’s legendary cacti and succulent garden that inspired Cabot’s founding of the Garden Conservancy in order to help guarantee the conservation of “exceptional” gardens such as Bancroft’s. Photo: Frank Cabot, courtesy of Garden Conservancy website. (more…)

Lunch began with a warm bowl of palest green cream of spring asparagus soup (created from a combination of local asparagus and Berkeley Farms cream), green onions from the garden garnished the top as well as a swirling line of red smoked paprika from Sawmill Creek Farm in Paradise. Crunchy bread from Chico’s Tin Roof Bakery was passed around for dipping, and plates of regional goat cheeses and soft butter filled out the first course. A hearty salad of tender, multi-colored spring greens from the garden was tossed in local olive oil and balsamic vinegar, accompanied by some more goat cheese served as the entrée. Homemade chocolate chip cookies (the carmel-brown, thin crisp kind, which I like) were dessert. Photo: Home grown blueberries.
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