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Blooming community gardens

Community space fosters places for residents’ mutual love of the outdoors
Blooming community gardens

As Palo Alto resident Annie Carl walks into her designated plot at the Rinconada Community Garden, she spots native bees buzzing in the spring winds around her neatly planted wildflowers. From the bright orange California poppies and lavender phacelias, to the light blue globe gilias and golden yellow tidy tips, pollinators dance around the flowers and insects scurry through the soil.

“My favorite part of (gardening) is trying to help not only the native bees, but all of the insects and pollinators,” Carl said. “We have a native garden that we built together, and it’s a good place to go and to notice the native bees or butterflies, especially the monarch butterfly because we always have monarch butterflies visiting the garden.”

In addition to the Rinconada garden, the city has four others where gardeners have access to resources including personal plots and gardening classes taught by master gardeners. Those who  use them say they all have a tight-knit community formed around the common love of gardening.

Sharon Erickson is the co-lead of the Palo Alto Demonstration Garden, a teaching program of the University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener Program in Santa Clara County. She said she teaches classes at the gardens to show community members how to grow fruits and vegetables at home and said the mission of the Master Gardener program is to help distribute science-based information to the local public and people who want a garden.

As an educator, Erickson appreciates the unique opportunity the community gardens provide to teach gardeners using hands-on techniques.

“(We teach) about urban trees, soils, composting; our point is to demonstrate that, and then be able to teach people in a live setting,” Erickson said.

Carl said she particularly appreciates the welcoming atmosphere these community gardens promote.“I always thought that the community garden was awesome because we meet new people, and we share different styles of gardening; we share seeds; we share seedlings … and knowledge,” Carl said. “People really were thankful for having the space and this time outside … It’s really cool to meet people from different countries and share our knowledge.”

With so many kind people, Eswar Subramanian, who has gardened at Pardee Park for over a decade, said he appreciated the friendships he has forged thanks to the garden.

“It is a nice little community because you meet the same people over and over again, week after week … and you exchange seeds, seedlings, plants, fruits, vegetables, and it is nice to share,” Subramaniam said.

Eleanor Laney, who started the Butterfly Gardens at the Eleanor and Rinconada Gardens and previously helped students run Paly’s garden plot, said she finds joy in educating community members on the environment and gardening through slideshow talks and hands-on demonstrations.

“Educating people for their individual garden, not just a community plot, can really make an impact,” Laney said.

Subramanian said being able to garden and have homegrown plants and food is important for teens to understand where their food comes from.

“It’s a very good idea to get kids exposed to gardening; they need to know that things just don’t grow on grocery store shelves,” Subramanian said. “There is no substitute to actually touching (the plants), to understanding plants.”

Junior Nathan Lee, a member of the Environmental Science Club, said he enjoys working with his family to weed, plant and harvest seasonal gardens at our plot at the Rinconada Community Garden and at home.

“Especially during tomato and zucchini season, you can be really prolific in terms of big zucchini, and that’s always fun, and then tomatoes are cool because you make so much with them like homemade pizza and pasta sauce,” Lee said. “The best part is that it’s a useful skill, and it’s cool to make your own food and have your own food.”

Lee said he is interested in working with the biology teachers to restart the Paly garden plots and use them as another hands-on resource for classes.

 “You can explore (the Paly garden) as an opportunity to learn about plants, and it’s just a great opportunity if you want to try something new,” Lee said.

Laney said she hopes students will grow a passion for gardening and find time to nurture the Paly garden as she had helped students do before it was abandoned when students weren’t attending in-person school during the pandemic.

“(The community garden program is) wonderful because it’s open to everybody who is here in Palo Alto,” Laney said. “It’s a community way of getting outside, getting away from their screens and enjoying the fresh air … so a community garden allows people to congregate together and talk, and it’s healthy for our community.”

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