Pam Geisel is the Statewide Master Gardener Coordinator for the University of California, and for the last few years she has lived and gardened in Hamilton City, a small scenic town in Glenn County. Being a North Stater herself now, she leads the charge in wanting to see more Master Gardener events and opportunities in the counties of the North State. She is very excited about the many Master Gardener programs now available in many North State counties - including Shasta, Butte and Glenn. While Shasta College has been a host of the UC Master Gardener program since 2003, Butte and Glenn counties have only more recently developed their programs. Trinity and Tehama counties are served by the Shasta County program, but Trinity County Cooperative Extension is hoping in 2012 to start their own program in Weaverville under the direction of UC Copperative Extension representative Carol Fall.

“The Master Gardener program has hosted many conferences around the state, and it was time to host one in the North State,” Pam says in our recorded interview this weekend on In a North State Garden. “While many of our educational conferences are for Master Gardeners only, we really wanted this one - with it’s wide topic range and wonderful panel of speakers - to be open to the public as well. We’re really excited to be hosting it! So many gardeners - new and experienced are hungry for this kind of information!” Listen to the full interview this Saturday Sept 3rd at 7:34 am and Sunday Sept 4th at 8:34 a.m. on Northstate Public Radio (KCHO 91.7 fm Chico/KFPR 88.9 fm Redding).

The details for the California Smart Landscaping Conference details are below and are taken from the conference website: http://ucanr.org/sites/casmartlandscape/, where you are also able to register on-line.

Event Details: California Smart Landscaping Conference
Date: October 21, 2011
Time: 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Sponsor: Statewide Master Gardener Program
Location: Masonic Family Center 1110 West East Avenue Chico, CA 95926

The University of California’s Statewide Master Gardener Program is excited to host the California Smart Landscaping Conference. Join us and learn how you can make some easy changes to your home landscape to become a smart and sustainable gardener. UC horticulture specialists, master gardeners and local landscape experts will be sharing their knowledge about attracting bees to your garden, water conservation, lawn alternatives, composting and much more! The keynote speaker is Rosalind Creasy, the esteemed author of Edible Landscaping. Rosalind’s presentation will focus on edible plants and maximizing your garden’s potential. The conference is for both gardening enthusiasts and for master gardener volunteers. Therefore, please share the details about the conference to both fellow and non-master gardeners.

Cost is $35 for the public and $25 for UC master gardeners (lunch included).

Register Today! Space is limited and the deadline to register is Friday, September 30, 2011.

The day will kick off with introductory remarks and thoughts on Sustainable and Smart Landscaping Practices by Pam Geisel - a bubbly and energetic speaker if ever there was one - from 8:50 - 9:45.

Attendees will then break-up into smaller groups for four, one-hour long breakout sessions, with lunch being served between the second and third sessions. The four break-out sessions include:

1A. Welcome Bees to your Garden - Shannon Mueller
2A. Irrigation Basics & New Approaches for Water Conservation - Loren Oki
3A. Backyard Vegetable Gardening - Sean Kriletich

1B. Natives Belong in your Garden - Jennifer Jewell
2B. Low Water Lawn Alternatives - Sandy Metzger
3B. Small Space Backyard Orchard - Chuck Ingels

Lunch

1C. Wise Water Use in your Sustainable Landscape and Vegetable Garden - Janet Hartin
2C. Right Plant, Right Place - James Sigala
3C. Composts & Compost Teas – Practical Practices - Kevin Marini

1D. All-Star Plants for Water Conservation - Ellen Zagory
2D. Beneficial Wildlife for your Garden - Scott Oneto
3D. Gardening for Less to the Landfill & Alternative Turf Varieties - Chuck Ingels

For biographies of each speaker and a description of their talk, please go to Speaker and Class details.

International garden writer, photographer, foodie and edible landscape design expert Rosalind Creasy will be the KEYNOTE SPEAKER, wrapping up the day’s offerings from 2:45 to 4:00 pm. Rosalind has a passion for beautiful vegetables and ecologically sensitive gardening. She began her career in horticulture in the 1970s as a landscape designer and restaurant consultant. By 1982 she had published her first book, “The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping,” which won the Garden Writers Association’s Quill and Trowel award, was chosen as a Book of the Month selection, and hailed by The Wall Street Journal as the best garden book of 1982. Considered a classic, it coined the term “Edible Landscaping,” now a part of the American vocabulary.

Rosalind shares her knowledge of gardening and cooking by writing, lecturing nationwide, appearing on television and radio shows, and working as a consultant to restaurants, growers, and seed companies. Rosalind’s recent publications include the ten book Edible Gardening series filled with beautiful photographs and recipes. The series was awarded a Quill and Trowel Award from the Garden Writers in 2001. Her latest book is a complete update of The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping, now called Edible Landscaping (2010). Recently, Rosalind was awarded a 2011 American Horticulture Society Book Award for Edible Landscaping. She resides in Northern California.

Rosalind’s Presentation: Edible Landscapes, Maximizing your Garden’s Potential
One of today’s gardening buzzwords is sustainable. You’d be hard put to find a more sustainable landscape style than an organically grown edible garden. Rosalind Creasy, pioneer in the field of edible landscaping, award-winning professional photographer, and author of the Complete Book of Edible Landscaping, will give a mouth-watering slide presentation. Among the topics she will cover are an A to Z of her recommended beautiful edible plants for home gardens, an overview of the wide variety of edible landscapes, as well as the principles of landscape design particular to edibles.

View the conference website for registration, speaker & class details: http://ucanr.org/sites/casmartlandscape/

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. It is 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.

“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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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…)

This week’s program was first published in January of 2008. Something about the mid-winter grayness inspired me to run it again - to remind us of winter’s bright spots.

Variegation is an interesting thing in a plant. And gardeners’ responses to variegation are almost as interesting. Some people love it. Some people hate it. Some people like striped variegation; others love splotchy variegation; still others like multi-colored variegations. My Aunt Bettina, Head Gardener at Ash Lawn, James Monroe’s historic home in Charlottesville, Virginia, once said to me. “Enjoying variegation comes with age.” And she may have been right, for while I am still not a total fan of all variegation – some of it absolutely stops me in my gardening tracks. Photo Above: The visually refreshing variegated Jacob’s Ladder (Polemonium caeruleum ‘Brise d’Anjou’).
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Every year – about this time in the North Valley - the big spring bloom begins. And every year I think – it’s even more miraculous – even more lovely this year. Narcissus, hellebores, daphnes, camellias, magnolias, the first of the fruit trees – the beauty is abundant. And now that we’ve had some real rain and snow, I can actually enjoy the bloom with less worry. Close to 11 inches of rain – that’s how much rain I measured in my home garden in the month of February. The rain was so inspiring to me that some days I had to go check my rain gauge 2 or 3 times. I then ran inside, reported the newest numbers to my family and rushed to record the numbers in my journal. I know one good month of rain and snow will not reverse the past seasons’ unusually low precipitation. I know we are still in a drought – but this one good month sure doesn’t hurt. And when the March mountains are decked with snow and the valley is greening and damp, life in my garden feels just right. Photo: White Hellebores.

Although the first official day of spring is March 20th – hurray! - average last frost dates are still a ways away for most of us (early-April for the earliest of us) so don’t get too excited too quickly. Now is a great time for continuing to sow cold hardy vegetable seeds or planting out cold hardy perennials and shrubs to begin establishing before true spring. Now is also the time for feeding a balanced fertilizer to your trees, shrubs and lawns that are starting to show signs of growth. March 1st is a traditional date on which to feed citrus trees. And don’t forget that March 8th, we spring our clocks forward one hour. Photo: Looking across snow covered mountains from Mt. Shasta in mid- February.
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Over the past few months Karen McGrath, a Landscape Designer, and I have had an ongoing conversation about the many merits of using a good, trained designer to help in the initial design of a new garden or the renovation/remodel of an existing one. In her well articulated philosophy: “Landscape design is more than just shrubbing up the outside of a building. It is a logical planning process and also an art form that marries a site’s unique characteristics with people’s needs and wishes to create a totally unique outdoor place.” Karen is the owner of Karen McGrath Design, Landscapes for Outdoor Living based in Redding. Photo: A good Landscape Designer can help you choose and articulate good focal point sites and elements in a space.

As a gardener – and I like to think a pretty good gardener – using a designer to help me in my garden was once unthinkable to me. If I was a good gardener, why would I need a designer? I thought. Landscape architects, landscape designer and/or garden designers were for people who weren’t really gardeners, I reasoned. But then my family and I moved to a house with a really oddly shaped lot. And it had odd elements within that shape. And odd plantings – some I wanted, others I did not – numbered among those odd elements.

I had very solid ideas about what I wanted as several parts of the whole garden: I knew I wanted raised vegetable beds; I knew they would need to be fenced due to dogs, kids and rabbits; I knew I wanted the fenced veggie garden to be attractive; I knew I wanted a long perennial border; I knew I wanted to create some sort of “space” beneath a grove of old Ponderosa Pines; I knew I wanted a chicken coop, and so forth. But after three seasons in the garden, and after implementing and working on my wish list including installing the attractive vegetable garden, the chicken coop and some nice perennial beds, after planting and transplanting, sketching and re-sketching, I also knew I had reached a wall and was stumped. Photo: Some garden designs are more self-conscious or dramatic for effect than others. This is one of the display gardens at Cornerstone Gardens - Gallery Style Garden exhibits in Sonoma.

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