demonstration garden

Fourth Year - December, 2009

STDG Home | First Year | Second Year | Third Year

Overview

In 2009, the Sunnyvale Teaching and Demonstration Garden completed its fourth summer in its garden space at Sunnyvale’s Charles Street Community Gardens.We continued our popular series of free gardening classes in the garden and continued to grow seasonally appropriate, organically grown vegetables and ornamentals in our demonstration beds.

Teaching

This year our monthly free public classes covered topics ranging from the design and use of drip irrigation systems to garden bed preparation and planting vegetable seedlings to ways to renovate an aging home landscape. We taught seven of our classes outdoors in the community gardens’ growing circle meeting space. These classes were followed by rounds in our garden where class participants could see examples of what was taught in class, try their hands at techniques taught or learn about ways our project gardeners were meeting various gardening challenges. Two classes were taught in the Sunnyvale Public Library. Overall, 432 gardeners attended our nine project classes.

Guadalupe Community Garden Demonstration Plot (GDG)

(map)

Third Year, 2008

STDG Home | First Year | Second Year | Fourth Year

Second Year, 2007

STDG Home | First Year | Third Year | Fourth Year

FIfth Year, 2007

PADG Home | First Year, 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2008 | 2009

Second Year, 2004

PADG Home | First Year, 2003 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009

The second year of the PADG project has been a productive and rewarding one. To fulfill the goal of demonstrating attractive edible landscaping, the Edible Garden was divided into three international-themed beds; Asian, Latin American, and Mediterranean. A fourth bed was dedicated to testing various varieties of lima beans. The four beds were planted with appropriate vegetables and enhanced with ornamental flowers. Decorative structures to support climbing plants were constructed in each bed.

Fruit trees were added in a high-density orchard area, an espaliered fruit tree row, and along the fence line. A raised blueberry bed was also made. We were able to obtain donations of fruit trees and several varieties of blueberry plants.

Additional perennials were added to the Water-wise Garden, and the beds were "adopted" by team members to assure their weekly hand watering. The Santa Clara Water District has donated funds for an irrigation system, that will be installed in 2005.

Project summaries: First Year, 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009
Workshop Handouts: Irrigation Talk

Look at the Waterwise plant dictionary for specific plants from our garden: Water Wise Ornamental Plants

(Map pdf) -The Palo Alto Demonstration Garden (PADG) is located at Eleanor Pardee Community Gardens, on Center Road near Martin Street in Palo Alto.

Starting in the spring of 2003, Master Gardeners began work on this former streets' department storage yard and turned it into a north Santa Clara county showplace for best and sustainable gardening practices.

The garden, a total of about 7300 sq ft, has two distinct areas - the 'edible' garden and waterwise garden.

Project summaries: First Year | Second Year | Third Year | Fourth Year

Our teaching and demonstration garden is located in the southeast corner of Sunnyvale’s Charles Street Community Garden at 433 Charles Street near Olive. Here we teach and demonstrate organic and sustainable methods of gardening in our garden of raised beds, in-ground beds and containers. The garden showcases perennial and annual food-producing plants as well as ornamental plantings selected for their beauty, ability to attract beneficial insects and low water use. The garden’s infrastructure demonstrates use of salvaged materials such as the broken patio concrete, other salvaged materials and timer controlled drip irrigation.

Master Gardeners built the demonstration garden in the spring of 2006 as the community garden was being built. Since then, we have been teaching monthly classes on gardening, covering organic growing methods, integrated pest control, water-wise irrigation methods and other sustainable gardening practices. Check this website for a listing of class topics and schedule.