The UC Master Gardeners of Alameda County held their north county meeting at Memorial park, partly as a design consultation for members of Memorial Park in the heart of Albany, CA. Initially started by Transition Albany, the community garden has gone through a transformation over the years as locals plan the space to work best for their needs.
Co-coordinators Nathan Thompson and Delia Carroll explain their design process and their experience working with the master gardeners in planning out their space, which recently had a large Acacia tree removed due to hazardous conditions. This newly gained sunlight in its absence presented an opportunity to grow more edible plants that thrive in full sun.
Awesome so I’m Nathan Thompson and I’m the co-coordinator of the edible landscape project that’s the name of the Garden and we’re in Memorial Park in the center of Albany and I’m Delia Carroll Master Gardener class of 2008. I’ve been involved with this Garden on and off since 2012.
This Garden was initiated in I believe 2011 as a project of transition Albany this his spot has been historically uh neglected and abused and transition Albany had a bunch of um Avid gardeners so the city said okay see what you can do here and we had a lot of support in the form
Of albany’s arborist at the time Tony Wolcott Who provided us with the slab wood to make the wooden beds that you see and was great with helping us with irrigation and delivering soil and Mulch and whatnot and this Garden was always conceived as a public garden an education garden and a place where
People could come and pick a strawberry or pick a flower just be here and enjoy the fact that there are public gardens in Albany and that’s been going on since 2011 and Nathan you came on board in 2012. no it was a little later so I started about 2014 2015. and
Um at that time our team we had a team of about 12 to 15 volunteers I would come here every Saturday so this this day is the normal day that we have our work parties and the space at the time had a lot more energy this space in
Particular so this is our West Side Garden there’s also another Garden on the other side of this ballpark so that the two spaces together Nick up the edible landscape project that’s the name of the this this Garden here until 2019 had a 35 foot tall acacia tree in the center
Of it and so this whole Space was shaded by that tree this Garden was designed uh with that in mind so most of the plants that were in here at that time were shade tolerance perennials and um one of the things that we really invested in is we wanted to be a space
For people to learn about plants that they could plant in their yards if when you know climate change really hits hard and it’s starting to hit hard now so like we wanted them to be able to have plants that are very drought tolerant and they’re very functional
They don’t need a lot of Maintenance and so what you’re seeing here is kind of the remnants of the garden that was here for about 10 years when that that tree was taken out in in the fall of 2019 and basically the last couple of years since
Then we’ve been trying to figure out what to do with the space Of losing that tree is these plants on this side which I’ve never really done well really yeah I have a new lease on life for the first time our strawberry tree is looking like something and there’s a pomegranate over there and uh Elderberry and these are all really
Start appreciating the extra sun and starting to flesh out and our garden is changing as Gardens do right right right I mean I really think that like this the the sun you know the Sun that we’re getting Now is really it’s opened up the space and so we’re kind of in this this
Process of figuring out or what are we going to do with this how do we want to make it look inviting again and and look inviting uh with the knowledge that we have a different you know where it’s a different climate now literally and so and and yeah it’s totally true this
Thing has probably doubled in size in the last couple years basically just to give you an example so with that in mind we thought we would ask the Master Gardeners to come and have their North County meeting here and introduce them to the Garden because not many people
Know about this garden over time it’s dwindled to a very small volunteer base and we’re looking to up that obviously and get other people excited about this garden and we wanted the collective Master gardening mind on what changes we could make to this Garden which would reinvigorate it so that was the purpose
Of today’s meeting and we did have a productive brainstorming yeah it was a nice group we really we worked on we went through the entire garden and there was some suggestions for the other side as well we primarily focused on this space today and you know we so some of
The suggestions that we came up with were you know we’re going to look at this look at sheet mulching this whole area so that it has a uniform look and it’s also taken care of so that people come in and they can see like they feel
More like the space is being taken care of well Plus is one less thing for us to do and then we talked about re-doing this strip here so there’s a walkway that was here you can see it it’s a gravel walkway and we’re talking about re redoing this either in gravel or
Um more uh wood chips we’re not really sure yet there’s still some debate about that but but basically reinvigorating the strip so that people can walk along it and feel like they’re you know in a space that’s taken care of again and maybe some benches because people do gather here yeah
Some considerations about possibly you know having some functionality to this to the space for people to use it you see people in here doing shigong together I see it’s a nice it’s kind of a Enclave it’s protected yeah from view mostly it’s protected from a lot of the
Wind and in the summer it’s actually kind of shady it used to be Shady but um yeah a little a feeling of an enclave yeah you have a secret spot you can come and spend a few minutes I see what was the reason for removing the acacia so so
Determined that this plant so the tree was angled like this I see and they were concerned that it was going to go into the building and there was some I mean there was at least some research done on the tree it suggested that it had some
Um some rotting going on I see and they were concerned it was going to go down at some point but soon so the tree was taken out and yeah they replaced it with a tree that’s not doing much so right we’re sort of stuck with it for now but
Got it the other thing we did was we planted all these chamomile so recent plan this was today okay that looks like blue that looks like a blueberries and and ground cherry rice and another blueberry this is motherboard okay the other one’s favorite food fever Feud and the yellow there’s calendula flowers and
Also milkweed this one right there yeah most of the plants in this space are either edible or they’re medicinal or both and some of them are both exactly so you know these are almost all of these are I mean medicinals here berries obviously yeah it’s um it’s a lovely thing yeah
The advice we got was very well taken and well thought out and an important piece of advice was look at what you have here that’s doing well and work from that as opposed to bringing your hands about what’s not working sure so we decided that you know these this
Area is doing real well doing what we’re doing here and then the other advice was sheet Mulch and cover up get rid of the weeds sheet mulch the area so it looks inviting and start to think about what you can do next year
Right right I see so it was a um it was good we needed that burst of energy plus we had a couple of Master Gardeners who were willing to come on a regular basis oh great very good for us I see yeah