Our New Garden: Mother Nature’s Garden of Health

 

The
past few months have been busy.  In
addition to the usual winter tasks, we’ve been installing a new garden.  Mother Nature’s Garden of Health is located to
the east of the main garden, just off our outdoor classroom, in an area previously
unplanted.  The photo below shows the Garden
of Health prior to installation. 

 

Future site of Mother Nature's Garden of Health

 

The
Board of the Friends of the Gardena Willows Wetland Preserve – where our
gardens are located - envisioned a garden that would complement Mother Nature’s
Backyard for teaching purposes.  While the
main garden contains many interesting and useful plants, its size limits the
number of species.  As a result, a number
of important locally native medicinal plants could not be included. 

The
Garden of Health features medicinal plants that either grew locally or could
have been obtained through trade by local Native Californians.   Thus the majority of plants once grew in the
Los Angeles basin, on the Southern Channel islands or in the surrounding Santa
Monica, San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains.  The plants range from trees/large shrubs to herbaceous
annuals and perennials – even a few vines. 

 

Melissa Diaz (center) during garden planting

 

 

Final plan - Mother Nature's Garden of Health

 

Dr.
Vadheim and CSU Dominguez Hills undergraduate student Melissa Diaz – with helpful
comments from Board Member Kelley Dawdy - designed the garden during the
summer/fall of 2013.   The design went
through several iterations (see above) resulting in a final design that is
simple, formal and reminiscent of medicinal gardens throughout the world.  The formal walkways and brick-lined planting
beds will work well with the plants, many of which have an ‘informal’ growth
habit.

Adam D'Jamily on newly installed bench - Mother Nature's Garden of Health

The
paths, planting beds, bench and large pots were installed as an Eagle Scout
project by Adam D’Jamily and Boy Scout Troop 586 (Redondo Beach, CA).  A concurrent Eagle Scout project (Andrew
Harley – Troop 860, Hermosa Beach, CA  ) completed the  installation of the outdoor classroom.

 

 

The
garden installation took several days, with most of the hardscape work done on
January 25-26, 2014.  After mechanical
leveling (above), volunteers laid out the paths and beds, leveled the ground
and installed the bricks.  The bricks
aren’t mortared, but getting all the beds level was quite a challenge.  After the decomposed granite pathways were
laid, the garden and open air classroom looked quite nice (below).

 

Obtaining
plants for the Garden of Health has been a bit of a challenge.  Some plants are readily available, while many
others are ‘specialty natives’ available from only a few sources.  As a result, we’re raising many of the plants
from seed in the Cal State Dominguez Hills native plant nursery.   Some of the plants won’t be ready for
planting until next winter.  That’s
probably a good thing as the drought promises to make this a difficult summer
for new gardens.

 

Preparing plants at CSUDH greenhouse; plants ready for planting; planting day

 

The
Garden of Health was planted by CSUDH students and community volunteers on
February 22, exactly two years after Mother Nature’s Backyard was planted.  The photos above highlight the planting.  Fortunately, we had a major rainstorm soon after
planting, which helped the plants off to a good start.

Mother Nature's Garden of Health and outdoor classroom - 3/17/14

The
plants are growing well despite the drought; we even have a few flowers right
now.  The original garden plan, with
plants, is available under the ‘Original Garden Plans’ page.  An updated plant list is available under ‘Current
Plant Lists’.   We’ll keep you posted on
the garden’s progress with current photographs and posts featuring the plants.