Garden Activities: September 9, 2025
- Conejo Valley Botanic Garden
- Sep 10
- 2 min read
Today we had the pleasure of introducing two new volunteers to the garden: Isis Gabor and Kelly Colindres. Both are students at California State University-Channel Islands and are in the Environmental Sciences area but following slightly different tracks.
On hand to welcome Isis and Kelly were Dale Harshberger, Beverly Kemmerling, Nancy Taylor Walker, Marna Wensil, Ann Wright and myself. Bill Dobner came a bit later, worked on the compost, and watered where needed in the shade house and outside in the service area.
Once introductions were over and vacation updates complete, we started up the hill and paused at the Butterfly Garden where it appeared the sages had released their seed and were ready for deadheading.
After working in the Butterfly Garden for an hour, we started back up the hill deadheading the odd penstemon and broadcasting any remaining seeds. On the way up we introduced Isis and Kelly to the Herb Garden, Bird Habitat, Australian Garden, and the Rare Fruit Orchard. Then when passing the backside of the S. African Garden, we stopped at the Tranquility Garden where I explained the unfortunate truth that the soil there is very thin and doesn’t support much plant material. However it lends itself nicely to rock sculptures — usually in the form of cairns, but today we were treated to an arch which is tricky to create.
If this type of art form is of interest to you, and you’re not familiar with the art of Andrew Goldsworthy, please look him up; you won't be disappointed. He does wonders with dry stacked stone which makes this arch look like a kindergarten project!
Last on today’s agenda was the Desert Garden where we identified some plants and enjoyed the views and cool air. While there, Beverly captured Dale and Nancy below:
And Nancy, in turn, captured the rest of the group:
Many thanks to Nancy, Beverly and Marna for their images from which I selected those shown here.
Enjoy the garden! KMM
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