Mountain View Cemetery

I love cemeteries for their beautiful locations, peaceful settings, respect for those who have lived before us, and marvelous history. Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery is located at the end of Piedmont Avenue in the Oakland Hills. It has a park-like feel, with winding roads; stunning vistas; beautiful flower beds; native oaks and transplanted cypress, cedar, and stone pine trees. Mountain View Cemetery was designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who also designed Central Park in New York City. Olmsted was influenced by early 19^th century ideas that park-like cemeteries represent harmony between nature and man, and his own egalitarian ideals that park land should be available to all. The cemetary was dedicated in 1865.

View of Mountain View Cemetery from the top of the hill.

Mountain View Cemetery is designed around a central axis – a main road connects the end of Piedmont Avenue with the top of the hill. Four fountains are positioned at periodic intervals on this main axis, surrounded with roundabouts that connect to roadways leading off the main thoroughfare to meander throughout the site.

Millionaire row in Mountain View Cemetery.

The cemetery is filled with the business leaders, builders, architects, writers, artists, educators visionaries, and plain folks, from Oakland’s last 150 years. Millionaire row is easy to spot, with all the crypts and vaults. I love the Victorian influence of draped urns, angels, and cherubs; and the human history etched across the marble grave markers. To learn more about the cemetery, its history, gardens, and docent-lead tours: http://www.mountainviewcemetery.org/

 Victorian draped urn.

Crocker angel.

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Gardens Are For People

The title of this book makes me chuckle – isn’t it evident that gardens are for people? But, from a historical perspective, this has not always been the case. Gardens have been long been functional for growing food and medicinal herbs, a retreat for the wealthy and privileged, and a means to display power and status. It is fairly recent that gardens have become havens for common folks, and even more recently that the California garden emerged as an independent style. Gardens are for People was written by Thomas (Tommy) D. Church in 1955, and is now in its third edition, published by University of California Press (Berkeley, Los Angles, and London).

Church lived from 1902 – 1978. He studied landscape architecture at University of California, Berkeley, traveled throughout Europe for six months after his graduation in 1922, and then taught landscape architecture at UC Berkeley after his return. He obtained a Master’s degree from Harvard University in 1927; his Master’s thesis is titled “A Study of Mediterranean Gardens and Their Adaptability to California Conditions”. He opened a landscape architect company in San Francisco, which operated from 1929 to 1977. He wrote about and photographed gardens, and collaborated with many of the best architects of his time. Some of his projects include the Exposition Gardens on Treasure Island (1940), and many private gardens, and university, public, and corporate landscapes spanning his career.

Church is considered by some to be the father of the California style– integrating the house and garden, landscaping for indoor-outdoor living, and using existing trees and natural features in the landscape design. His projects range from small townhouse gardens to large, sprawling landscapes. His work was influenced by Italian, Spanish, and Islamic gardens–where home and garden are integrated–and adapted for the California climate, geology, and flora. The book provides insight into some of his guiding landscape principles, including scale, line, beauty, function, and the owner's desires. The book includes many photos of his projects. To learn more about some of his 1100 projects, see: http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf938nb4jf/.

Poison Gardens – Stinging Nettle

Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica spp. holosericea) is an herbaceous perennial flowering plant that is found all over the Western United States. It grows from 3 - 6 feet tall; leaves are 1 - 6 inches long, ovate, and serrate; flowers are tiny and grow in clusters; and the fruit is an achene. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the plant thrives in oak woodlands, riparian zones, and in nutrient rich soil.

Stinging Nettle. Photo by Júlio Reis, image released  under
the GNU Public Documentation License.

Tiny, stinging hairs cover the stems and leaves, and cause temporary skin irritation when touched; and pollen may cause hay fever. However, stinging nettle may be tolerant of heavy metals and useful for rehabilitating contaminated soil.

California native people brewed a tea for treating sores and hives, and boiled the leaves to eat. Western settlers used the fibers to weave cloth.

To learn more:

• http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/forb/urtdio/all.html
• http://www.plantsofcalifornia.com/stinging-nettle-urtica-dioica/

Poison Gardens – Poison Oak

Western poison oak (Toxicodendron diversiloba) is a shrub, which can grow like a vine. It is native to the Western United States, from British Columbia to Baja, California, from the mountains to the coast. Poison oak is the counterpart to the East Coast poison ivy. Its leaves are pinnately trifoliate, each leaf with multiple lobes; the greenish-white flowers grow in panicles; and the fruit is a drupe. Leaves turn red or pinkish in fall, so they are sometimes used in landscaping for fall color. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the plant thrives in the redwood forest, mixed evergreen forests, oak woodland, and chaparral plant communities, and in riparian zones. As the common name suggests, it frequently grows near oak trees, and its leaves resemble oak leaves, especially live oaks, such as Quercus agrifolia. Deer and livestock browse poison oak, which contains high levels of phosphorus, sulfur and calcium.

Poison oak leaves resemble oak leaves.
Photo by Gary A. Monroe @ USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database 
(http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=TODI&photoID=todi_007_ahp.tif).

Poison oak causes skin irritation for most people, and can cause serious respiratory inflammation if inhaled while burning. Some people report they have no reaction upon first exposure, then immediate and painful reactions on subsequent exposure. A few people report no reaction, but this seems rare.

California native people groups, such as the Ohlone, ingested small quantities of the leaves to prevent the rash, and to prevent colds. They made baskets of the long fibers, and used the leaves to wrap corn meal for baking in hot coals.

To learn more:

• http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/vine/toxdiv/all.html 
• http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0802.htm

Poison Gardens - California Buckeye

California buckeye (Aesculus californica) is a large shrub, or small tree, that is endemic to California and used in landscaping. Its leaves are palmately compound; flowers are panicles with many tiny, cream-to-pale-pink blossoms in spring; seeds are large, pear-shaped, and ripen in late fall. California buckeye grows on dry slopes, in canyons, near water, in open grassland, or in the forest understory. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the shrub thrives in the redwood forest, mixed evergreen forest, oak woodland, and chaparral plant communities.

California buckeye spring blossoms in Leona Canyon.

California buckeye is toxic – its bark, leaves, stems, fruits, and seeds contain glycosidal compounds, which depress the central nervous system when ingested. This can cause harm to wildlife, livestock, non-native bees, and people. Even with this toxicity, many creatures eat the leaves, flowers, and shoots. The seeds are high in carbohydrates, and include protein, fat, and fiber.



California buckeye poisonous fruit in the fall.
Photo by Eugene Zelenko, used under Creative Common license (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aesculus_californica-28.jpg).

California native peoples used the seeds as a food source. They developed methods of roasting, mashing, leaching, and cooking the seeds to remove the poison. California natives also used the seeds in streams and ponds to partially paralyze fish, making them easier to catch, without poisoning the fish or water.

To learn more:

• http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/tree/aescal/all.html
• http://www.laspilitas.com/nature-of-california/plants/aesculus-californica

The Butchart Gardens Use of Hardscaping

The Butchart Gardens makes good use of hardscaping in its garden design. Hardscaping refers to the landscape elements such as paths, walls, structures, arbors, and fountains. They often comprise the bones or structure of the garden, to which plants, trees, and shrubs are added. I enjoyed viewing some of these structural elements during our visit to the garden.

A small, open-air log cabin provides charming shelter
from the elements and a panoramic view of the sunken garden below.
The stone wall adds to its rustic charm.

This paved stairway beckons you to explore. The
railings are made from cement and shaped like tree limbs.

The archway provides a passage through the high, formal, clipped hedge.

This trellis surrounds a small sitting area. In the summer, the area is
sheltered with leaves. In the fall, the area is still sheltered, but the vines
die back and provide a glimpse of the garden beyond.

A pergola provides shelter for a shady, hanging garden, built on a sloping hill.

Most of us do not have much space in our gardens, so our hardscaping may be relegated to paths, a fence, a deck or patio, and several garden beds. Studying hardscaping in large, public gardens can provide ideas that could be adapted to smaller, personal gardens.

Fall in the Garden

On our visit to The Butchart Gardens, fall was most evident in the leaves changing from green to shades of yellow, red, or orange. The colored leaves transform the garden. The days are warm, but the evenings are chilly. It is this change in temperature, along with other factors, that kicks off the process of leaves turning colors and then dropping.

Fall colors in the The Butchart Gardens near Victoria, B.C.

Flaming maple tree nestled among the big trees.

Other ideas for fall interest in the garden include trees or bushes that display colored berries, or that possess interesting bark or branch structures that are revealed once leaves drop. Seed pods and dried grasses can also be beautiful in the fall garden. Nature’s own natural processes extend the garden into the fall.

The Butchart Gardens

Fall is a wonderful time to travel, and to visit public gardens. That may seem counter intuitive, since spring is typically the season we associate with beautiful gardens, but a well-planned garden has interest for every season. Fall is a spectacular time to visit The Butchart Gardens, located north of Victoria, British Columbia on the Saanich Peninsula. In the early 1900s, Robert and Jennie Butchart settled into their 130 acre estate on Victoria Island. Jennie transformed a limestone quarry on the estate into a 55 acre garden, which is now designated a National Historic Site of Canada.

The Sunken Garden - created in an abandoned limestone quarry.

Garden features include various garden types—sunken, bog, rose, Japanese, Italian, and Mediterranean; water features—fountains, waterwheel, and ponds; green house, public gathering areas and restaurants; a plant identification station; and a gift shop that sells seeds packaged on site and other merchandise. The Butchart Gardens follows the Victorian tradition of changing out the bedding plants seasonally, so there is something new to see all year round.

The formal Italian Garden - with a Pacific Northwest vista.

My husband and I took a Gray Line tour bus from our hotel in Victoria’s Inner Harbor, and spent a sunny, fall afternoon strolling in the gardens and taking pictures, then relaxing over sandwiches and coffee in the coffee shop. We loved the open feeling of the garden, the interesting paths and details, the buildings, and the artistry of plants and trees.

Surprised by dahlias in October.

Oakland

When we bought property in Oakland, California, one of the many papers we signed was from the City of Oakland, informing us it is illegal to cut down oak trees in Oakland. Our property includes a beautiful Quercus agrifolia oak tree at the edge of the property, overhanging the street, and providing shade and habitat for many woodland creatures. We were committing to owning property in Oakland, and to providing stewardship for a living tree that will surely outlive us.

Oakland was once an oak woodland forest, situated by the San Francisco Bay and inhabited by the Ohlone people. The forests of Oakland and Alameda must have been a beautiful site. Few oaks remain by comparison, but you can find pockets of oak woodland forests in the area on unused land or in protected areas and parks. Oakland’s effort to protect its oaks may help restore a portion of the trees that gave Oakland her name.

This video from Save the Bay provides beautiful images of oak trees, and a brief history of Oakland and her namesake trees.

Mother Trees

Below is a link to an interesting book about mother trees, based on work done by Dr. Suzanne Simard, a professor with the University of British Columbia Faculty of Forestry, shared by an Eden By the Bay reader. Dr. Simard researches and lectures on mycorrhizae and mycorrhizal networks, related to tree migration and climate change. She and her students have made discoveries about the networks of mycorrhizal fungal mycelium, which connect tree roots and enable resource sharing in Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) forests in British Columbia.

The research asks the question “Do trees communicate?” Using isotopic labeling, two of her students have mapped the interconnections of the plant community through mycorrhizal networks. The research describes the role of “Mother Trees”, where an older tree acts as a hub with other trees in the plant community through mycorrhizal networks. Carbon, nitrogen, and water are transferred from healthy, old trees to seedlings and other trees in the network, improving their chances for survival. Mycorrhizal networks may help forests adapt to climate change, and help with forest succession after disturbances such as fire, insect infestation, or logging. 

To learn more about Dr. Simard and her research, see: Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.

Mycorrhizae and Oaks

Many trees have a symbiotic relationship with a particular type of mycorrhizae, which is a fungus that grows on or in tree roots. The mycorrhizae extends the root system to collect nutrients and water, which benefits the tree; the tree processes the nutrients and water, which benefits the mycorrhiza, since fungi cannot perform photosynthesis. Oak trees are dependent on two kinds of mycorrhizal fungus:

• Ectomycorrhiza – lives outside the root, in the top four inches of soil, and is visible to the eye.
• Vescicular-Arbuscular mycorrhiza (VA mycorrhiza) – lives outside the roots, in the soil below ectomycorrhiza to 20 feet deep, and is microscopic.

Mycorrhizae filaments, or hyphae, help combat erosion. by holding soil particles in place. Mycorrhizae produces chemicals that help boost the oak tree’s immune system. Other plants in the plant community share in the mycorrhizal grid, enabling resources to be distributed, and thereby ensuring the survival of the plant community as a whole. For more information, see seminar notes by Celeste Wilson: http://www.laspilitas.com/classes/mycorrih.htm.

This video from Iowa State University (http://youtu.be/rPlSkov-xcE) shows endomycorrhizae, where the fungi lives inside the root. Notice the symbiotic relationship at work, here with soy bean mycorrhizae. 
 

Succession

In Designing California Native Gardens, Alrie Middlebrook describes her use of succession (moving through a series of simple-to-complex planting stages, culminating in a final stage) in her garden designs. For slower growing shrubs and trees, she recommends planting them with ample spacing, so they can grow to their mature size without overcrowding, and filling in with shorter-lived grasses, bushes and flowers. She gives the example of establishing an oak woodland garden in a hot area of a yard. While the oaks were getting started, she planted chaparral species that could tolerate the heat, and then started to introduce oak woodland understory plants as the oaks became established and their watering needs changed.

I saw succession at work while growing up in Southeast Alaska. A marker at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center indicates the location from which the glacier had receded only a hundred years before. The glacier left behind barren, ground bedrock; over time moisture- and air-borne soil particles began to accumulate. Early plant species—such as fireweed, grasses, and alders—moved in. Alders can live in poor soil, and fix nitrogen, so they contribute to building the soil. Over time, spruce trees replaced alders – shading them out. A new understory of shade-tolerant plants emerged, such as fern, horse tails, moss, devil’s club, and Indian rhubarb. During this process, organic material accumulates and decomposes, further enriching and developing the soil.

Succession at work - this peninsula at Mendenhall Glacier used
to be barren rock just several decades ago.

The key ideas for using succession in the home garden are: (1) enrich the soil naturally, and (2) design an attractive short-term garden that allows slow growing trees and shrubs the space and time they need to get established.

Oak Woodland Plant Community

The oak woodland plant community varies by region – Northern and Southern California, and coastal and foothill. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the oak woodland plant community is dominated by the Coast Live Oak, and is under the influence of fog and ocean breezes. Because of our microclimates, plant communities often intermingle if conditions are right, but a typical base palate of plants include:

• Trees: coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia), California bay (Umbellularia californica), California buckeye (Aesculus californica), tanbark oak (Lithocarpus densiflorus), and madrone (Arbutus menziesii).
• Shrubs and understory: toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia), manzanita (Arctostaphylos manzanita), coyote brush (Baccharis pilularis), Western redbud (Cercis occidentalis), California sagebrush (Artemisia californica), California fescue (Festuca californica), common wood fern (Dryopteris arguta), and sticky monkey flower (Mimulus aurantiacus).

Toyon berries in winter, add color to the garden and attract birds

Using these plants together—with their similar watering, drainage, and soil needs—can help ensure a successful native oak woodland garden that attracts pollinators and wildlife.

For photos of Northern oak woodland plants: http://www.laspilitas.com/nature-of-california/communities/northern-oak-woodland/plants. For information about oak woodland plant communities: Plant Life in the World’s Mediterranean Climates (Peter Dallman), and Designing California Native Gardens (Glenn Keator and Alrie Middlebrook).