It’s almost spring and we are starting a new season of classes at the garden to educate, inspire and entertain you while you learn more ways to celebrate nature!
Sunday March 30 – 3:00 to 4:30pm
Big Gardens In Small Spaces: Container Gardening
Please join us for the first class of 2014 with Lori Caldwell, certified Master Gardner Composter and a favorite teacher at the Community Garden. If you have small space or want to grow your own food without being overwhelmed by a big garden, this is the class for you. Topics such as types of containers, maintaining soil fertility, best plants for container gardens, watering and crop rotation will be covered. It’s a great way to start a garden or add on to maximize your existing garden possibilities. We have scheduled this class for March so you’ll be able to get your containers ready for spring planting.
We’ll meet rain or shine at the Lafayette Community Garden on Mt Diablo Boulevard across from the Lafayette Reservoir. A $5 donation per person to support our education programs is appreciated but not required. Register for our classes here.
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.
If you have seen the Miwok dwelling at the Lafayette Community Garden, you should know that the tules come from the Dow Wetlands. These tules were cut and harvested over the past few months with the help of the wonderful volunteers who maintain the Wetlands and conduct tours for visitors. The Wetlands are in Antioch and are teaming with birds, river otters, turtles and beaver.
Who can identify this fellow below?
2013 Harvest Celebration
October 20, 2013 Noon to 3pm
Schedule of Events
NOON WELCOME
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PICNIC AREA: ONGOING CHILDRENS ACTIVITIES
12:-00 – 2:15
Vegetable Prints/ Fragrant Sachets/ Plant Starts from Seeds/
Corn Husk Dolls/ Scavenger Hunt
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GARDEN ENTRANCE : MUSIC AND RAFFLE
12:30 -1pm Gary Peare, Ukelele Instructor, Lamorinda Music
1:30 – 2pm The Second Calling, Folk, Americana, Bluegrass Music
2:15 pm Raffle Drawing You don’t need to be present to win
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FRONT GATE: GARDEN and NATURE TRAIL TOURS
12:15 1:00. 1:45
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WEST END EDUCATION AREA: WORKSHOPS
12:15 – 1:00 Scarecrow Building with Sharon Anduri
1:00 – 1:30 Worm Composting with Lori Caldwell
1:45 – 2:15 Solar Cooking with Rennie Archibald
2:30 – 3:00 Drumming Circle
Join us for the Lafayette Community Garden Fall Harvest Celebration Sunday, October 20 – Noon to 3 PM.
We hope you will join us at the Garden to share in the celebration.
$5/Individual or $10/family donation requested
Garden Tours / Informal Classes
Local Musicians / Scavenger Hunt
Raffle / Art Projects for All Ages
Lafayette Community Garden and Outdoor Education Center opened last spring after three years in development. Located on EBMUD land across from the Lafayette Reservoir, it has become a beautiful site where community members grow food collaboratively, participate in workshops about sustainable practices and harvest and share food. The garden is being developed as a place where all community members can visit, witness and learn about a thriving garden and the native plants that part of the Lafayette Cree’s riparian ecosystem.
This week the Garden has played host to campers who are learning to “meet nature through Miwok eyes.” And today, there were Drums!
