Garden Activities: July 8, 2025

This Tuesday we had an embarrassment of riches!  Four new volunteers joined us today: Caitlyn Mei DePrano, Zack Taylor, Marna Wensil, and Parnian Zia. On site to welcome them were: Steve Davis, Dale Harshberger, Beverly Kemmerling, Julie Moffat, Katie Shank, Daryl Stutley, Nancy Taylor Walker, Ann Wright, and myself. I know Marna from the Goebel Garden where she has volunteered for a year.

We started on the zig zag path up the hill and stopped under the shade of the CA walnuts to clear some of the plants spilling over onto the path.

Ann, Julie and Daryl trimming the edge of the large patch of bee’s bliss sage.

Beverly and yours truly working on the nasturtium. Note this is also the area where there are several nice specimens of the uncommon Ribes viburnifolium, the plant between me and the nasturtiums.

Next we finished deadheading the bulbine patch.

The “after” shot.

Steve took the new recruits and Dale to the S. African section where they planted some blue chalk sticks (Senecio mandraliscae).

The label is in front of the one surviving plant from an earlier planting of several specimens in the NW corner of the 2nd four corners.

The rest of us headed up the hill removing the dead parts of a couple of sages at the top of the Bird Habitat.

Before joining us, Dale took advantage of the opportunity to explain to the new volunteers some of the fine points of trimming using a chaparral mallow as a subject.

Parnian, Marna, Zack, Dale and Caitlyn.

When the two groups came together at the top of the hill, we tackled dead heading the yellow hardy aloe at the entrance to the Desert Garden.

Turning around for the camera were Katie, Julie, Beverly, KMM, Zack, Daryl, Parnian (peeking out between Daryl and Dale), Dale, and Caitlyn.  We only found and removed 2 new aloe mite galls, so we’re on the right track.

There were two plants of note today: the mescal agave (Agave parryi var. truncata) in the desert garden and the Nevin's barberry (Mahonia nevinii aka Berberis nevinii) under the same walnuts as the Ribes viburnifolium. First, the agave.

A close up of the flower stalk.  Unfortunately the sun isn’t on it, or it would have been much more dramatic.

A view showing the plant at the base of the bloom stalk.

This agave is monocarpic meaning that once it flowers and produces fruit, it dies. Mono (single) carpic (fruit) is a plant that produces only one cycle of “birth” to fruiting to death. Continuing the species is achieved by the production of pups and/or seeds or plantlets (or both) after the flowers are pollinated. For ones that produce both seeds and plantlets it would be interesting to understand what determines which are produced, and if both, what determines the ratio of seeds to plantlets. A subject of further study!

The 2nd plant of interest is the Nevin’s barberry. CVBG is fortunate to have several beautiful mature specimens in the collection. Below is one:

It has dark green holly-like leaves and is currently laden with red berries. It has a very small range  that includes our area. Wikipedia cites this as being critically imperiled.   We have to be careful with what we have — no pressure!

I couldn’t resist including this image of 3 of our volunteers because it embodies the joy with which we work in the garden and interact with each other and with the public.

Ann, Nancy and Julie.

Thanks to Beverly, Nancy, Daryl and Steve for their images.

Enjoy the garden!   KMM