This article originally appeared in the Butte Rose Society’s October 2011 Newsletter. Love roses? The Butte Rose Society’s annual rose show - A Festival of Roses is Oct. 22, 2011 from 1 - 4 pm at Our Divine Savior Social Hall, 566 East Lassen Avenue in Chico. Admission is free. For more information contact: www.butte-rosesociety.org.

Roses are like people – some just have nicer hips than others. Some have pretty faces, some have great legs, great shoulders. Some have good hips - especially in October. And I like good hips. To me, they speak of strength, fertility and beauty. (more…)

How the Northern California Regional Land Trust works with Farmers and Ranchers to protect the agricultural heritage and future of the North State with agricultural conservation easements. Twenty-one such easements have been achieved in the organization’s 21- years of hard work. (more…)

Even with the rain of the past few days, the ornamental grasses in the garden are lovely this time of year - stately and painted in warm, light catching hues. The McConnell Arboretum & Botanical Gardens at Turtle Bay in Redding is hosting a class on the planting and care of ornamental grasses in the garden on October 29th. Thought revisiting this interview with Lisa Endicott was timely.

They catch the light - especially the low, soft slanting light of Autumn; they dance in the slightest breeze; they hold dew drops and rain drops like pearls, winking on a string; they arch and drape and cascade, adding both vertical and horizontal beauty and interest to any garden; they are often drought tolerant and deer resistant, and many of them provide both forage and shelter for native and migrating song birds. They are ornamental grasses, and with more varieties, colors, shapes and sizes (and native choices) available to home gardeners every year, there is one (or 30) to brighten and dress-up just about any garden throughout the seasons. Photo: Deer grass under planted with blue fescue in the California display garden at the McConnell Arboretum & Botanical Gardens. (more…)

Autumn’s arrival for me is accompanied by a renewed sense of community. Perhaps it is the return of regular school schedules, and the return of regular monthly meetings for garden clubs and organizations. Perhaps it is the primal sense of oncoming winter and a need to come together and prepare. Perhaps it’s the anticipation and energy of the harvest – from the vast chartreuse rice fields and the statuesque almond, olive and walnut orchards running through our region, to the end-of-summer tomatoes, peppers, beans, and squash finishing up in our home gardens and now filling our kitchen counters, freezers and shelves. Cool, even cold, nights and days with a prospect of rain are returning. We are gathering, and we are planning and planting for the seasons to come. Photo: Rice fields, Central Valley in October. (more…)

“Eat your weeds,” is a comment you might hear in conversation with regional author Alicia Funk. This struck me as humorously ironic given that last week’s interview taught us more about ways to effectively eradicate troublesome weeds, but never did we consider eating them. This week, Alicia Funk suggests just that: we should eat our weeds. (In most cases the plants to which she is referring are not truly weeds, rather edible and medicinal native plants that thrive in our region.) Photo: Bright red ripe toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia) berries ripe in winter. “Living Wild” includes cultivation information for toyon as well as a recipe for a tasty toyon cider.

Alicia, who lives and gardens in Nevada City, off the grid with her husband and their three children, is the co-author most recently of “Living Wild: Gardening, Cooking and Healing with the Native Plants of the Sierra Nevada,” (2011, Flicker Press. Available locally at Lyon Books in Chico). She believes passionately that if we as families, as gardeners, as foodies, indeed, as a culture, are going to move sustainability to the next level, we need to learn to engage with our local landscapes more intimately and more knowledgeably. “With our children watching some sort of screen for an average of five hours a day or more, this need to re-acquaint ourselves with the outdoors is ever more urgent,” she insists. She founded the LivingWild.org project as way to open and encourage conversation and sharing of knowledge and experience about engaging with the great outdoors around us.

Sustainability is not just about eating food labeled organic, or about eating locally grown food, even, Alicia expressed to me by phone recently. Indigenous people have lived - and thrived - in these very environments of the North State for thousands of years, they have learned how to responsibly and thoughtfully use the many native plants around us for food, for shelter, for medicine, for art. If we want to take sustainability and healthy living to a higher level, we can learn how to as well. And Northern California is just the place to take this step, Alicia pointed out, as we are blessed with more edible and healthful native plants than almost anywhere on the planet: “When I first moved to the North State in 2004, I realized that many of the native plants I was seeing were the sources of the nutritional and medicinal supplements I had studied.” Photo: The un-ripe, green berries of manzanita. According to studies conducted by Alicia, when ripe, manzanita berries, which are naturally sweet, also contain three times the antioxidants of blueberries.

Alicia Goldberg Funk first learned plant-based medicine in 1990 from an indigenous grandmother in Ecuador’s rainforest. Upon returning the US, she lived and worked in the Santa Cruz area where she studied with leaders in the field, Christopher Hobbs and Michael McGuffin, at the American School of Herbalism. Her subsequent research has focused on the science behind plants and their medicinal or nutritional uses. Safety is a primary focus to her research as is opening a conversation between the herbal world and the medical world. She is the editor of six books, including “The Botanical Safety Handbook,” “Herbal Medicine-The Expanded Commission E Monographs” and “The ABC Clinical Guide to Herbs.” Her passion is creating everyday wellness for individuals and the planet. Photo: A selection of acorns, which Alicia likes to call oak nuts, emphasizing their edibility. In her workshops, she teaches how to make oak nut flour.

Alicia Funk in Chico - October 1st, 2011

Alicia will be teaching a class entitled “Native Plants for Food and Health” on Saturday October 1st from 9 am - 12 noon for the Friends of the Chico State Herbarium’s workshop series. The fee for the class is $45; to register please contact the CSU, Chico Biology office at (530) 898-5356 or jbraden@csuchico.edu.

Class Description:

Connect with our local landscape by learning how native plants provided a sustainable source of food and medicine for local inhabitants for thousands of years.
Learn how to prepare and enjoy backyard fall and winter edibles such as Oak Nut (acorn) Bliss Bars, Beyond Cranberry Wild Berry Sauce, and Toyon Cider.
Discover how native plants such as Yerba Santa and California Bay can help address common winter colds.
Take a walk outdoors to identify the uses of plants in the field.
Workshop Outline Food: Backyard Edibles for Fall
• Prepare and taste Oak Nuts (acorns), Madrone berries, and Toyon berries.
Health: Natives for the Common Cold • Integrate Yerba Santa and California Bay into the natural medicine cabinet for common winter colds and flu.
Field Walk: Exploring Nature with Ethnobotanical Eyes (indoor slideshow if raining)
• Identify plants in nature and learn common uses.

Please register in advance; class size is limited to 20 participants (class cancelled with- out a minimum of 8 participants). For more information about workshop content please contact Alicia Funk at alicia@livingwild.org.

Following the morning class at the Chico State Herbarium, Alicia will be at the Gateway Science Museum for a hands-on activity for school-aged children and a book signing:

Plant Adventures: 1-3 pm
Gateway Science Museum on the Esplanade in Chico
Cost: free with admission

Have you tasted manzanita sugar or an oak nut (acorn) bliss bar? Our local landscape offers many plants that are useful for food and health and these plants sustained indigenous people without grocery stores for thousands of years. Come explore native plants through a treasure hunt, create a native plant journal and learn to turn acorns into delicious desserts.

Join visiting instructor and author, Alicia Funk, in an interactive program for all ages:

• Go on a treasure hunt to identify native plants.

• Learn to turn acorns into food.

• Create a native plant journal

• Taste wild food desserts and drinks.

• Signed copies of the new local guidebook: Living Wild—Gardening, Cooking and Healing with Native Plants of the Sierra Nevada, will be available for purchase.

Photo: The temptingly plump hips of California rose (Rosa californica). “Living Wild” includes cultivation information for this rose as well as recipes for Rose Hip Tea and Rose Hip Jelly.

More of my environmental writing can be found in the Chico News & Review, and Pacific Horticulture. Follow Jewellgarden.com/In a North State Garden on Facebook.

To submit plant/gardening related events/classes to the Jewellgarden.com on-line Calendar of Regional Gardening Events, send the pertinent information to me at: Jennifer@jewellgarden.com

Did you know I send out a weekly email with information about upcoming topics and gardening related events in the North State region? If you would like to be added to the mailing list, send an email to Jennifer@jewellgarden.com.

In a North State Garden is a weekly Northstate Public Radio and web-based program celebrating the art, craft and science of home gardening in Northern California. Made possible in part by the Gateway Science Museum - Exploring the Natural History of the North State and on the campus of CSU, Chico, In a North State Garden is conceived, written, photographed and hosted by Jennifer Jewell - all rights reserved jewellgarden.com. In a North State Garden airs on Northstate Public Radio Saturday mornings at 7:34 AM Pacific time and Sunday morning at 8:34 AM Pacific time. Podcasts of past shows are available here. Weekly essays are also posted on anewscafe.com a regional news source that is simultaneously universal and positively North State.

One of the first plants I remember knowing and loving as a child was a scented-leaf geranium. As little girls, my sisters and I were privileged to attend “fancy, grown-up” dinner parties at the home of a great aunt and uncle who lived outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Featured at such dinners were finger bowls in which were floated the leaves from my aunt and uncle’s collection of potted scented-leaf geraniums. Rubbing the leaves between our fingers, we girls were delighted by the lemon or rose fragrance that magically perfumed our fingers from the soft, sometimes fuzzy, textural leaves. Photo: The bold beautiful abundance of a P. ‘Angel’s Star’ in bloom in the greenhouse of Geraniaceae. (more…)

“Once neighbors and passersby see the changes happening as you begin the process of removing your default front lawn and replacing it with something more lively and interesting,” notes landscape designer Bernadette Balics of Davis, “curiosity gets the best of them, and they ask questions. I really like the social aspect of this gardening interaction, and my clients do too. If you plant something edible, the interest level really peaks. So consider replacing your lawn with some strawberries or artichokes, and meet the neighbors.” Photo: Bernadette’s gardens are frequently marked by creative pairings of common and less-common herbaceous perennials. Here a vibrant yellow yarrow and a radiant pink buckwheat (Eriogonum grande rubescens) balance opposite corners of a rich planting around a drip-fed cut-stone birdbath. In this composition, strongly textural foliage and the focal-point of the birdbath create interest year-round - for people and for visiting birds and pollinators.
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An Oroville couple brings their love and knowledge of the spare splendor shared by California’s deserts and alpine zones to their home with a low-water, low-maintenance, habitat-friendly, high diversity and high-enjoyment desert garden. Photo: Catie & Jim Bishop’s colorful desert garden in front of their Oroville home illustrates the beauty that a spare, dry garden can provide. (more…)

My deer come daily to the garden this time of year. Sigh. I thought it was a good time to repeat this interview with Karen McGrath from last year. A girl has to have hope….Enjoy.

Let’s face it - I am all about habitat and environmentally friendly and responsible gardening. I am. I love birds, bees, butterflies and the like. But, let’s also face the fact that we live in deer country. And Oh Deer! (%^&*^%$*!!), this can be a harsh reality for a gardener. What to do? Throw in the gardening towel? Set up a tree stand, get out your rifle, paint your face, put on your camo and look through your venison cookbooks while you wait for deer to venture back to your decimated garden? (Although your HOA and/or neighbors might object to this second option.) Photo: Hungry deer heading toward my garden.

Ask the question “How should I deal with ravenous deer decimating my garden?” in mixed gardening company and you will get some seriously interesting answers, ranging from little bags of human hair hung throughout your shrubs and trees, to sprinkling human urine all around your garden (again, maybe not the best if your neighbors are quite near), to bags of Ivory soap, to radios blaring soft rock or talk-shows in the garden all night, and on it goes. (more…)

“For all our grumbling about wasteful and purposeless government spending, I look at this project and think to myself: ‘Now this is money well spent,’” said Emily Alma, co-owner with five others since 1987 of Riparia, an organic 12-acre farm in southwest Chico. She was referring to Riparia’s partnering with the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), a division of the United States Department of Agriculture. Photo: One of Fred Stolp’s established hedgerows running along a young walnut orchard.

Since late 2009, Riparia, with the help and under the guidance of the NRCS, has incorporated several conservation programs into the care of their land, including cover-cropping, and the planting and tending of riparian-forest buffer zones, native bunch grass cover areas, wildlife habitat management areas and hedgerows. Riparia is actively worked by two separate farmers who lease land from the Riparia partnership and all involved help to implement these conservation programs throughout the farm. The NRCS, according to their website www.nrcs.usda.gov, works to help agricultural producers – farmers and ranchers - conserve and improve their land’s natural resources including “soil, water, air, plants, and animals,” while also helping them to achieve their “aspirations” of making a living. The NRCS’s collaborations with agricultural landowners strive to make life better for us all - from the smallest of flowering plants to the widest expanse of orchard - from the smallest of insects to the largest of mammals - including us humans. Photo: Big-leaf maple seed clusters in one of Stolp’s hedgerows. (more…)