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Countdown to the 2018 Season

By Blog, Community Events, Outdoor Learning Center

We’re excited! It’s been 10 years in the making of the Lafayette Community Garden & Outdoor Learning Center. In 2008, a group 19 members of the community embarked on a quest to bring a learning garden to the City of Lafayette. Three years later, in 2011, was a groundbreaking moment: EBMUD and the City offered the community a home for what is now the Lafayette Community Garden & Outdoor Learning Center.

On Saturday, March 10, the gates open for our seventh working season. We’ll be open Tuesdays from 4:00 to 7:00PM, Thursdays from9:00AM to 12:00PM and Saturdays from 9:00AM to 1:00PM. Remember, all community members are always welcome to visit.

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Photo courtesy of Jen Frase, Nicole Paulsen Photography © 2017

Be amazed! Sat., July 12 – 3:30 to 5:00 PM

By Blog, News & Events, Outdoor Learning Center, Wildlife

Doc Jim Hale, wildlife biologist, naturalist and ethnobiologist will bring alive the amazing natural history of the Lamorinda area. Learn what plants thrived here and how they were used by local Native Americans. Find out what animals visit our area while we sleep at night. Doc Hale is an expert on wild, edible plants, the medicinal and cultural use of herbs, and mountain lion ecology in Contra Costa County. Doc’s photos and stories will delight people of all ages. Want proof? Check out this photo from Briones taken on June 19th. Register here.
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Airport Gardening?

By Blog, News & Events, Sustainability

If you have been to Chicago recently and arrived at the O’hare airport you may have seen something remarkable – the vertical farm in G Terminal.

Future Growing LLC is the innovator at O’hare and the same company gets credit for the amazing rooftop garden that fuels the kitchens of New York City restaurant, Bell, Book and Candle.

Read more here and see the rest of Urban Gardens here.

Hat tip to Lori Caldwell for telling us about this vertical garden.

Nelson Mandela – prisoner, president…gardener?

By Blog, Outdoor Learning Center

The Christian Science Monitor reports on Mandela’s prison garden here.

After 18 years imprisoned on Robben Island, Mandela and his colleagues were transferred to a prison on the mainland outside Cape Town. Pollsmoor was a concrete monolith. The political prisoners, however, had had a small garden in their cell block courtyard on the island, and Mandela was determined to have one again in his new circumstances.

“Within a few weeks of surveying all the empty space we had on the building’s roof and how it was bathed in sun the whole day, I decided to start a garden and received permission,” Mandela recalled. “I requested that the prison service supply me with sixteen 44-gallon oil drums that I had them slice in half. The authorities then filled each half with rich, moist soil, creating in effect thirty-two giant flowerpots.

“I grew onions, eggplant, cabbage, cauliflower, beans, spinach, carrots, cucumbers, broccoli, beetroot, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, and much more. At its height I had a small farm with nearly nine hundred plants.”

Read it all.

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Sheet Mulching!

By Blog, Outdoor Learning Center

Last weekend we got a good lesson on sheet mulching from Lori Caldwell in our first Outdoor Learning class of the year. Now we are putting that lesson to good use under the oak trees in our garden. First we laid down a layer of cardboard making sure not to leave any ground uncovered. Then we thoroughly soaked the cardboard and added mulch (wood chips). The transformation continues!
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