Explore the Garden

A tour of the garden would take one on soft mulch paths past scores of flowers and raised beds, each built by garden members, home to numerous types of vegetables and fruits.

All of this is framed by the wonderful natural beauty of the riparian landscape: valley and live oaks, bay laurel, buckeye, elderberry trees abound, offering visitors shade when the sun is at its peak. 

 

There are seating areas where folks hang out and an education area where larger meetings are held and classes given. A beehive-shaped pizza oven is backdrop to the member meeting and eating area. Kids enjoy the family deck, sandbox and play kitchen. A large toolshed and carpentry area are used to mill lumber and build structures. And a propagation greenhouse sits next to outdoor propagation tables, where members sow plants and water seedlings start.

 

An active compost area with five stalls holds stages of compost throughout the year. Adjoining the compost bins is a large worm bin where gallons of worm castings are gathered each season to help in providing nutrients to our plants.  

There is a sustainably built chicken coop and run, housing about 15 hens, which offers members about 90 eggs per week.  

 

And through a back gate a nature trail leads visitors down a creekside path past a beautiful, natural labyrinth to a Miwok area, with structures similar to those built by Native Americans in the area. 

 

Behind the Miwok area is an apiary, home to scores of hives used by the Mount Diablo Beekeepers for training purposes and help in pollinating community flowers and keeping the bee population thriving.

 

The garden and learning center continue to evolve in ways no one predicted. It’s nature at its best with connections in different ways to all members, in keeping with the garden’s front gate sign: “In nature nothing exists alone.” by Rachel Carson.

What We Grow

woman standing next to a table full of cartons of tomatoes

Much of the food produced at the garden is seasonal.  The planning, propagation, planting and harvesting is done by crop group leaders and team members. 

 

  • In cooler months members grow green leafy kale, lettuces, mustard greens, broccoli rabe, collards, beans, arugula, turnips, chard, bok choy, beets, fava, radishes, garlic, onions, carrots, and herbs, in addition to other crops.
  • In warmer months members grow mainly tomatoes, basil, squash, eggplant, peppers, cucumbers, radishes, beans, carrots, radishes and herbs.
  • Eggs and honey are also wonderful products of our garden animal friends.

Outdoor Learning

woman taking photos of flowers in a field

As part of the mission of LCG and OLC we offer members and the community various learning opportunities.  In addition to the learning gained by gardening itself, these include:

 

  • Workshops in the education area on various topics
  • Member Field Trips to other venues
  •  Tours of the Community Garden
  •  Miwok cultural experiences
  •  Member Meeting speakers at the second Saturday of each month
  •  Master Gardener Grand Rounds the third Saturday of each month
  •  Speakers Series at the Master Gardeners’ educational garden site
  •  Open House the second Sunday in September with invited speaker(s)
  •  Nature Trail with beautiful native riparian plants and trees

Composting System and Worm Bins

woman with handful of dirt and worms

Over the years the garden community has developed an ongoing composting system.  This system takes plants that no longer produce, chops them, adds water and “brown” material such as dried leaves or straw in designated bins. The material is added to regularly, turned and ultimately made into rich compost, which is used to fertilize our plants.

 

A large worm bin, with thousands of worms, is tended by the garden compost team. The hundreds of worms, fed, and covered, ultimately produce castings, which are added to water as worm tea to fertilize garden plants. 

Pollinators, Flowers, Succulents and Native Plants

outdoor garden full of succulent plants

A mutualistic relationship has been established between LCG and OLC and the Mount Diablo Beekeepers Association who manage twelve active hives at the end of our nature trail. The thousands of bees help pollinate our crops.  And to attract the bees a flower team plants a number of different flowering plants that are present throughout the garden.

 

Succulents in designated areas have been added to the garden not only for their beauty but to demonstrate to community members the ease and low-water maintenance of growing and propagating these wonderful plants. 

 

Native plants have existed for centuries along the creek, and now the creekside nature trail.  They grow well in our area for a reason. They have adapted well to this area’s climate and ecosystem. There are a number of native plants that have been planted and labeled in our education area and in a native demonstration garden opposite the family deck.  Workshops continue to be held to acquaint community members with the importance of these plants and getting information from the Native Plant Society is encouraged. 

Chickens

chickens

Lafayette resident and community garden friend John Kiefer designed the coop and run based on his extensive study of sustainable chicken housing practices in South America. John’s well aerated structure, outfitted with compostable bedding material, provides a coop that is virtually odor free and requires very little ongoing maintenance other than periodic turning of the bedding.  

 

The chicken coop gives garden members an opportunity to appreciate the backyard chicken experience. In addition, it provides a way to further explore the plant and animal relationship in gardening and biodynamics. 

 

While we don’t have chickens actively patrolling the garden beds, we do donate coop bedding to the garden’s composting program, and we have witnessed firsthand the benefits of composting inside the run itself, which turned the arid, barren run into the fluffy, deep litter material that the chickens love to dust bathe in today. One also loves to see the excitement in gardeners’ (and kids’) faces when they capture invasive beetle larva, big bugs, and other pests from the raised beds and bring them to the chickens! 

 

In addition, the coop provides a memorable sight  and experience for the many children who visit during school tours and garden hours. The garden coop houses up to sixteen hens, who in their first year, can together lay up to 85-90 eggs a week. A team of volunteers nicknamed “Chicken Tenders” monitors their feed, water, collects eggs, and visits daily, rain or shine. Members share the eggs, taking home a half dozen every other week or so. Flocks are re-homed and a new batch of chicks raised once every three years. Be sure to follow the chickens’ adventures on their Instagram page.

The Construction Team

two men building a wooden tomato enclosure

The Construction Team is integral to garden operations, building new raised beds, inventing new critter protection designs, and making needed repairs throughout the garden.  Most of the structures in the garden were designed and built by this team, which includes carpenters, retired engineers and newbies alike. 

 

The garden has been the lucky beneficiary of most of its tools as donations.  Gifts to the garden have also included several downed tree slabs which the team has hand-milled with garden equipment, using beautiful woodworking craftsmanship. 

 

Above all, the team exemplifies a spirit of cooperation and camaraderie, with each member working together in whatever role or niche seems to fit the needs of their project at hand. 

Artistic Elements

two men standing in front of an outdoor pizza oven

There are a number of members who have shared their amazing talents as we’ve built the garden.   Many of the elements mirror the beauty of nature or offer structural artform, such as:

 

  •  A beautiful birdbath
  • Circular and trellised stucco beds 
  •  Front gate
  •  Innovative garden cage designs 
  •  Bulletin boards and carved wooden signs
  •  Peace pole
  •  Carved wooden signage
  •  Interactive children’s area
  •  Little free library
  •  Beehive pizza oven

All are crafted with a sense of connection to the natural world.  And each, in its own way, offers members and visitors peace and joy.  

 Members also share artistic talents in giving workshops such as flower arranging, wind chime making, shadow drawing, card making and shibori dying.

Labyrinth

outdoor labyrinth

 In the spring of 2019, a small group of people from the Lafayette Community Garden decided to create a five-circuit (Inner Chartres) labyrinth just beyond the garden fence on sacred Miwok ground. The entrance was defined by the falling of a large oak tree and the circles were created from cut tree limbs and moss rocks.

 

Labyrinths have existed for hundreds of years all around the world. One of the most famous labyrinths is made of stones in the floor of the cathedral in Chartres, France. Walking a labyrinth mirrors walking one’s own life path. It quiets the mind and body as you slowly walk the opening path of turns that end in a center space — only to pause and reflect and once again walk back out into the world.

 

All are welcome to walk our natural, organic labyrinth to find the quiet space within as we navigate all of life’s twists and turns with grace and gratitude.

Miwok Village

Miwok village huts

A special area at the end of the nature trail allows one to experience how local Native Americans lived for up to 18,000 years.  Led by garden member Peggy Magilen, community members and local scouts have replicated dwellings used by the local Saclan Bay Miwok peoples.

 

These people lived peacefully in community tribelets in the abundant, riparian ecosystems along our creeks, depending on acorns, berries, roots, hunted fish and game and much more, and traded items from coastal and inland regions. The garden’s Miwok area has evolved to include two traditional tule and willow, conical wickiup dwellings, an acorn granary, a shade shelter, and a sweat lodge frame. 

 

Miwok Village summer camps before Covid turned into morning field trips for all Lafayette schools’ third graders. During these visits the students, teachers, and volunteers learn about native plants, see artifacts, hear Native legends, do bead work, and get lost in the naturally occurring, rhythmic pounding of acorns with their mortars and pestles and clapper sticks.  

 

Hopefully, this village experience allows children and others to take home a joyous broadened respect, knowledge, and sense of responsibility for how humans can live in harmony and well-being with nature.