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The American Horticultural Society’s highest award, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Award is given to an individual who has made significant lifetime contributions to at least three of the following horticultural fields: teaching, research, communications, plant exploration, administration, art, business, and leadership.

Named after Liberty Hyde Bailey (1858–1954), horticulturist, educator, author. First awarded in 1958.

In recognition of exceptional contributions to California’s native plants, CNPS has named three long-standing members as the newest CNPS Fellows: Larry Levine, Bart O’Brien, and Dieter Wilken. CNPS Fellow is the highest honor CNPS awards its members. “Beyond their incredible accomplishments on behalf of the Society, all our Fellows share one special characteristic: they have inspired all of us to work harder to save and celebrate our incredible flora,” says CNPS Executive Director Dan Gluesenkamp. Bart O’Brien – Native Plant Horticulturist and Author I used to bash on California native plants until I went on a tour with Bart O’Brien. Welcome me to the nunnery as your newest convert,” a Yelp reviewer as captured in Pacific Horticulture Magazine.

CNPS Fellow Bart O’Brien One of California’s leading experts in native plant horticulture, Bart’s impact is felt statewide. A long-time member and former president of the CNPS Santa Clara Valley Chapter, he is the current director of the the Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Berkeley. Before that, he served as the director of special projects for Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, during which time the Southern California Horticultural Society named him the 2005 Horticulturist of the Year. While in Southern California, Bart also developed an interest in the botany of Baja California and continues to serve as a board member for Terra Peninsular. Among his many accomplishments, he is credited with compiling a list of more than 7,000 California native cultivars, helping to save the Edgewood Park serpentine grasslands, and co-authoring multiple books, including Care and Maintenance of Southern California Gardens.

NOMINATION OF BART O’BRIEN TO BE A FELLOW OF THE CALIFORNIA NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY
NOMINATORS: Ken Himes (Santa Clara Valley Chapter of CNPS), Jean Struthers (Santa Clara Valley Chapter of CNPS), David Chipping (Chair, Fellows Committee)
When Jean Struthers asked Bart O’Brien’s mother what she read to him as a youngster she said “plant books”. A fifth generation California native from Hollister, Bart studied Environmental Planning at U.C. Davis, and then Landscape Architecture at the Harvard School of Design. Returning to California’s Marin County he opened a landscape architectural practice, and began serious work with California native plants by mapping a chocolate lily population for the Natural Diversity Database. He then was asked by Gerda Isenberg, a leading advocate in gardening with natives, to manage the well known Yerba Buena Nursery in the late 1980s.
He joined the Santa Clara Valley chapter of CNPS in 1983, where he immediately become very active. He participated in the very first chapter Members’ Night Program in 1983; he co-chaired the chapter’s first Plant Count Day; and he headed a field trip in May 1983 to the Clear Creek Area of southwestern San Benito County.
He became Chapter Vice President in 1983-1984 and co-chaired the chapter wildflower show in 1984, where he was able to work well with all the volunteers.
In 1985 and 1986 he served as chapter president, initiating the first meetings held during the summer season and creating the first chapter potluck and program development in 1986. In 1986 he co-chaired the chapter wildflower show and brought it to San Mateo County’s Coyote Point Museum, greatly increasing attendance and public awareness. He also created a plant communities exhibit for the Santa Clara County Fair in 1986, again increasing public awareness.
After serving a term as chapter president, he became editor of the chapter newsletter. He chaired the newly formed Edgewood Park Committee which had an intensive meeting schedule from 1987 through 1989. Bart lobbied each of the supervisors, which resulted in keeping golf course development from disturbing important serpentine grasslands and culminated in the park being declared a nature preserve in 1993.
Even after he had departed the chapter to work at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden (RSABG), he stepped in as chapter vice-president once more. Bart continues to visit the chapter and is always ready to speak at chapter meetings. After he moved south he was honored as the Santa Clara Valley Chapter’s Brenda Butner Memorial Speaker on two occasions: In 2004 his talk was “Intersections of Conservation and Gardening”; in 2014 he spoke on “Flora of Guadalupe Island.”
At RSABG he increased his interest in the flora of Baja California, leading several field trips there. He has promoted Baja plants in southern California landscapes, as in a recent talk to the Theodore Payne Foundation “Baja California Plants for California Gardens.” He is on the board of Terra Peninsular A.C., a Mexican non-profit organization committed to preserve and protect the natural ecosystems and wildlife in Baja California. He serves on their executive and conservation committees.
One great contribution for California horticulture was Bart’s concentration on native cultivars. He compiled a list of over 7,000 cultivars that had at one time or another been selected, and developed a new cultivar garden at RSABG (and the some of the art work in the garden). His influence in the Los Angeles area was such that the L.A. Times West Magazine named him one of the Southland’s most influential people in 2006. As noted in Pacific Horticulture magazine, a Yelp reviewer wrote about her visit to RSABG, “I used to bash about California native plants, until I went on a tour with Bart O’Brien. Welcome me to the nunnery as your newest convert…” While at RSABG Bart co-authored several books which have been invaluable tools in managing drought conditions in the California landscape. These include Reimagining the California Lawn: Water-conserving Plants, Practices, and Designs (2011, with Carol Bornstein and David Fross); California Native Plants for the Garden (2005, with Carol Bornstein and David Fross, winner of the 2006 book award from the American Horticultural Society); Care & Maintenance of Southern California Native Plant Gardens (2006) which was notable in being bilingual, and several RSABG publications such as Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden California Oaks Trail Guide (1998), and California Vernal Pools at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden (1999). He collaborated on several major editorial projects, notably Selected Plants for Southern California Gardens.
Bart was also instrumental in bringing together a meeting between commercial native plant nurserymen and CNPS conservation staff regarding the troubling issue of growing locally sourced plants.
One of Bart’s greatest contributions to CNPS in the field of publishing was becoming editor of Fremontia between the years of 2006-2009. He is currently on the Fremontia Advisory Board. He became the recorder and archivist for CNPS through the 1990’s, ensuring that CNPS documents were preserved, and has been very active in the Education Committee’s Horticultural Program. He is still serves on the CNPS Horticultural Experts Committee. He also arranged for the March Council Meeting to be hosted at RSABG for many years.
Bart’s work with organizations kindred to CNPS should be noted. In 1993, Bart joined the Southern California Horticultural Society (SCHS) board of directors and, over the course of 20 years, served as author and editor of Green Sheets, newsletter editor, and four years as SCHS president. In 2005 he was named “Horticulturist of the Year” by the Southern California Horticultural Society.
Signed
On behalf of Ken Himes (Santa Clara Valley Chapter of CNPS); On behalf of Jean Struthers (Santa Clara Valley Chapter of CNPS)
David Chipping (Chair, Fellows Committee) September 13th, 2017

Somewhere in the Presidio — exactly where, the National Park Service isn’t saying — a life-and-death struggle is playing itself out.

It’s a tale of secrecy and of survival. It’s also a tale of sex. Just because the sex is between plants doesn’t make it dull.

The struggle is over nothing less than the fate of an entire species, in this case a rare plant called the Franciscan manzanita. That’s a plant so rare that it was long thought to be extinct in the wild. There’s only one surviving specimen of it in the wild, and it lives a lonely life in a corner of the Presidio, in a sort of botanical witness-protection program.

The Franciscan manzanita used to be common in San Francisco, before developers began digging it up to make way for temporal things like houses, apartments and stores. Unlike such big-ticket endangered species such as condors and elephants, the Franciscan manzanita is a humble, ground-covering bit of greenery. Thousands of people have driven near the last surviving wild specimen, in its secret location, without caring about it in the slightest.

Its defenders say that’s not the manzanita’s fault.

MORE ON FRANCISCAN MANZANITA
A team of workers and park officials watch as a rare Franciscan manzanita bush is moved into position from a flatbed truck at The Presidio in San Francisco, Calif., on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010. Thought to have been an extinct variety, the manzanita was discovered and identified last month and was uprooted and replanted in an undisclosed location to make way for the Doyle Drive renovation project. Rare S.F. bush gets federal protection Caltrans and Presidio Trust officials uproot a rare Franciscan manzanita bush before dawn in San Francisco, Calif., on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010. Thought to have been an extinct variety, the manzanita was discovered and identified last month and was uprooted and replanted in an undisclosed location to make way for the Doyle Drive renovation project. Moving manzanita bush costs S.F. a small fortune Franciscan manzanita (Arctostaphylos franciscana), a plant thought to have been extinct in the wild since 1947. Tracing the roots of a rare shrub
“That one plant is a symbol of the extraordinary biodiversity of San Francisco,” said Lew Stringer, the associate director of natural resources for the Presidio Trust.

In 1947, when botanists thought the last Franciscan manzanitas were being bulldozed during development at the old Laurel Hill Cemetery area on Lone Mountain, they preserved clippings that ended up at the Tilden Park botanical garden in the Berkeley hills.

But it turned out that the Franciscan manzanitas from Laurel Hill weren’t the last ones in the wild after all. In 2009, a passing biologist with an eye for manzanitas found one growing in the Presidio near the Doyle Drive reconstruction project. The biologist, Daniel Gluesenkamp, said at the time that it was “like (finding) a unicorn.”

The next year, biologists spent $175,000 moving the plant to its new home, and then planted clippings from it at another secret site a half mile to the west.

The 2009 manzanita and its clippings cannot reproduce on their own. The clippings from the 1947 manzanitas cannot reproduce on their own, either.

But put the two of them together, as they say in the matchmaking business, and look out.

This winter, park service and Presidio Trust botanists got the idea to do just that. They brought 170 clippings of the Lone Mountain manzanitas from their foster homes at the Tilden Park botanical garden and two other gardens and transplanted them alongside the wild Franciscan manzanita. There was no formal announcement, in order to protect the secret site from rare-plant fanatics and their garden shears.

The rest will be up to the birds and bees, mostly bees.

When nature takes its course with human reproduction, the results are evident in nine months. With manzanita reproduction, Stringer said, it’s different. It could take years for the transplanted manzanita clippings to grow into proper plants and then pollinate with the surviving plant and its transplanted clones.

“The Franciscan manzanita was considered extinct in the wild for seven decades,” said Michael Chassé, biologist for the National Park Service. “The plant was saved and is now protected, but it cannot reproduce without ‘mates.’”

On Wednesday, Chassé returned to the secret spot with one last Tilden clipping, to replace one planted last month that had since died. He cradled the precious clipping — actually, a small twig with precisely seven leaves on it — as if it were plutonium.

After squirting the soles of his shoes with alcohol to kill any mold spores that could threaten the well-being of his clippings, Chassé hopped a fence, sidestepped some nonendangered poison oak and scampered down a path to a windswept hillside overlooking — well, said Chassé, better not say what it’s overlooking.

“Very few things are uniquely San Franciscan,” he said, digging a small hole for it. “There’s the Golden Gate Bridge. And there’s this plant.”

You take one rare manzanita, plant it near another rare manzanita and — poof! — maybe you get a third manzanita. It could happen.

Chassé added, “It’s not often you get the chance to bring something back from the brink of extinction.”

The world of rare San Francisco manzanitas is a curious thing. The clippings from the 2009 Franciscan manzanita are located only 100 yards or so from the only remaining example of an entirely different manzanita — the Raven’s manzanita. A casual bystander would assume they were the same manzanita. But a manzanita wouldn’t.

The Franciscan manzanita has small pores, called stomates, on the bottom of its leaves that are visible through a magnifying glass. The Raven’s manzanita’s stomates are considerably smaller, visible only through a microscope.

However, it just might be possible for the Franciscan manzanita and the Raven’s manzanita to get together some day, too, if the two plants hybridize. Not every species can do it, but a manzanita can. And if a manzanita can survive real estate developers, biologists say, it must be a tough cookie.

“It’s a nuance you find in the world of manzanitas,” Stringer said. “The manzanita can make ‘mules.’ It might work.”

The Franciscan manzanita and the Raven’s manzanita may be rare, but manzanitas aren’t. There are 106 species of them worldwide, almost all of them found in California. The species includes small trees and flat ground-hugging shrubs that evolved 15 million years before the first human was buried at Laurel Hill, botanists say.

With any luck, the clippings will flourish, become pollinated and then produce tiny apple-like berries (”manzanita” means “little apple” in Spanish) with seeds inside — seeds that could become more manzanitas. If that happens in sufficient numbers, Chassé said he will gladly reveal to the general public where the manzanitas are. But that’s a long way off.

And it may take centuries to find out if the two manzanita species have managed to get together and form an entirely new, genetically distinct species. The manzanitas, however, have nothing else on their schedule.

And if all this doesn’t work and the Franciscan and Raven’s manzanitas go extinct, what then?

“For most people, it wouldn’t change the world,” Stringer said. “But it would be a loss, just the same.”

Steve Rubenstein and Peter Fimrite are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com and pfimrite@sfchronicle.com

Napa is situated amid a bevy of botanical gardens large and small, and spring is the perfect time to visit those you’ve enjoyed before or discover new ones. Most gardens offer seasonal exhibits, special events, tours and workshops. A bonus: Many of the gardens mentioned here hold spring plant sales. Check with those that interest you for hours and admission fees.

Closest to home is the Martha Walker Native Habitat Garden in Skyline Wilderness Park. The Napa Valley chapter of the California Native Plant Society, which Walker helped found, maintains the three-acre garden, which opened in 1985. Among the native plants are gooseberry, Matilija and California poppies, bush anemone, hybrid monkey flowers, western redbuds and a heritage Valley oak tree. See http://www.napavalleycnps.org/index.php/martha-walker-garden.

In Glen Ellen, the Quarryhill Botanical Garden is said to feature “one of the largest collections of documented, wild-collected Asian plants in the world.” Spread over 25 acres, the garden also is home to oaks, maples, magnolias, dogwoods, lilies and roses. This garden collects and propagates seeds of endangered and threatened plant species, including Acer pentaphyllum, a rare maple, and Magnolia sinica. See http://www.quarryhillbg.org/.

Cornerstone Sonoma is a marketplace in Sonoma with shops, artisanal foods, wine, live music and gardens that showcase designs from landscape architects from right here and elsewhere in the world. Tour the Cornerstone Gardens, which change often, or visit the Sunset Test Gardens, dedicated to experimenting with design techniques. This quarter-acre space includes the Cocktail Garden, the Farm Garden, the Gathering Space, the Backyard Orchard and the Flower Room. See http://www.cornerstonesonoma.com/.

Visitors who want to see where a world-famous horticulturist lived and worked for much of his career are welcome year ‘round at the Luther Burbank Home and Gardens in Santa Rosa. Docent-led tours are available April through October, and that’s when the Carriage House Museum and gift shop are open as well. This urban garden is registered as a national, state and city Historic Landmark. See http://www.lutherburbank.org/.

In Davis, the UC Davis Arboretum offers 17 different gardens spread over 100 acres, including collections from Australia, East Asia, South America, the Mediterranean, the California foothills and the north coast. Here too are an acacia grove, oak grove, redwood grove and conifer collection. Forsythia, redbud, California wild lilac, flowering plum, apricot, crabapple and California poppy all bloom in early spring. See http://arboretum.ucdavis.edu/.

Looking for hard-to-find succulents, cacti or other drought-tolerant plants? The Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek is worth a visit. The Garden Conservancy’s first preservation garden, it is considered to be one of the finest dry gardens in the country. Plants native to California are here as well, along with plants from the Mediterranean. Garden design and consultation services are available. See http://www.ruthbancroftgarden.org/.

The Regional Parks Botanic Garden is in Tilden Regional Park’s Wildcat Canyon in the north Berkeley Hills. Divided into 10 geographic sections, the garden boasts native plants from all over California, including representatives of nearly all the state’s conifers and oaks. You can see an impressive collection of California manzanitas and collections of California native bunchgrasses, bulbs and aquatic plants.” The garden also has representative plants classified as “rare and endangered vascular plants of California.” See http://nativeplants.org.

Less than three miles from Tilden is the 34-acre UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley in Strawberry Canyon. Said to hold one of the largest and most diverse collections in the U.S., this garden has more than 10,000 types of plants, including many rare and endangered species. One of the rare plants is Amorphophallus titanium, also known as “the corpse flower” for the obnoxious odor it emits when in bloom. If that doesn’t appeal, stroll through the nine regions of the garden, organized geographically, of plantings from all over the world. See http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu/.

The Berkeley Rose Garden, a city-owned park in a residential neighborhood in the northeast part of the city, boasts 1,500 rose bushes and 250 varieties of roses, most in bloom beginning in mid-May and continuing through the summer. Conceived in 1933 and dedicated four years later, the garden was one of the first Civil Works Progress Projects built under the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Visitors find the garden a peaceful place, so make time to smell these roses! See http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/contentdisplay.aspx?id=12048.

Interested in palms? The Gardens at Lake Merritt, a seven-acre collection of 11 themed gardens in Oakland’s Lakeside Park, includes the Lakeside Palmetum, said to be the most extensive established collection of cool Mediterranean and high-altitude tropical palms in the U.S. The nearby Bonsai Garden, now celebrating its 15th anniversary, displays some 100 bonsai at a time, with another 100 on reserve, rotated through as exhibits change with the seasons. The oldest tree in the collection is estimated to be more than 1,600 years old. (For information on all the gardens, see http://gardensatlakemerritt.org/the-green-heart-of-oakland/)

Golden Gate Park is home to the 55-acre San Francisco Botanical Garden, which contains more than 8,000 different plants from around the world. As you meander through landscaped gardens representing different geographic areas and bask in the many open spaces, don’t miss the Ancient Plant Garden, which covers five epochs.
Another personal favorite is the redwood grove, a peaceful, sun-dappled spot where you can sit in the company of 100-year-old coast redwoods and listen to water rushing in a nearby creek. See http://sfbotanicalgarden.org.

Another botanical treasure in Golden Gate Park is the Conservatory of Flowers, the oldest public wood-and-glass conservatory in North America. The Victorian greenhouse opened in 1879 and today its galleries are home to aquatic plants, tropical plants and potted plants, including some carnivorous plants and numerous varieties of orchids. Out front are flowerbeds, where an abundance of dahlias are in bloom from July to October. See http://www.conservatoryofflowers.org/.

While you are in Golden Gate Park, make time to check out some of the other garden spots in this 1,017-acre park, which is something of a garden of delights in and of itself. Some special destinations include the Japanese Tea Garden, the Queen Wilhelmina Tulip Garden, the Shakespeare Garden, the Rhododendron Dell, the Rose Garden and the Fuchsia Garden. See http://sfrecpark.org/parks-open-spaces/golden-gate-park-guide/golden-gate-park-in-bloom/.

Here’s an unusual garden spot: Alcatraz. Depending on the time of year, on the island you may see gardens filled with flowers and plants able to withstand the salt water and often harsh weather conditions. In 2003, the Garden Conservancy and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy formed a partnership with the National Park Service to restore and maintain key gardens on the island. These organizations maintain the gardens and “interpret their history, horticulture and cultural significance for visitors.” See http://www.alcatrazgardens.org/.

Remember, a visit to a botanical garden soothes the soul, even if you don’t have the greenest of thumbs. Writing in National Geographic magazine a year ago, David Strayer, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Utah, reported that our brains are not “tireless three-pound machines.” He said when we slow down and take in beautiful natural surroundings, we feel restored. Need another payoff? Strayer added that some “green time” also improves mental performance.
See you at a garden soon.

http://napavalleyregister.com/lifestyles/home-and-garden/botanical-gardens-bloom-around-the-bay/article_18307a5d-e17b-528d-8a84-3181b5adde90.html

BERKELEY — The Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park knows that lots of people are planting natives for any number of reasons, whether for providing habitat, creating pollinator or show gardens, or replacing a lawn and reducing water use.
Whatever the reason, the garden’s Spring Native Plant Sale on April 16 is a source of low-growing plants and perennials, grasses and ferns, bulbs and annuals, trees and shrubs, evergreens, and deciduous plants; pretty much the full range of anything a gardener might need.
Meeting the growing demand for native plants is one reason behind the sale, another is the opportunity to get people to visit the botanic garden and realize what’s there.
“A lot of people still think native plants are dull and don’t really do anything, so we want to get them here to the garden to understand that everything they see is a California native plant, that they’re really quite lovely and are wonderful additions to any garden environment,” said Bart O’Brien, the site’s garden manager.
The event combines advice, the opportunity to find and purchase plants not available in a nursery, and elements of fun. There’s no entrance fee, parking and expert advice are free, there are refreshments available and proceeds directly benefit the garden, its programs and facilities.
Volunteers work year-round to prepare for the April and October plant sales, propagating from the garden collection and labeling, counting, pricing and setting plants out as the sale day draws near.
Last year they set out 3,945 plants of 50 different kinds, from 2-inch pots to five-gallon cans, with the majority in 4-inch and one-gallon containers; all California natives.
Milkweed plants are popular, as are different types of mahonia, evergreen shrubs that can be ground covers or large shrubs. Ceanothus, the California wild lilac; manzanita; dendromecon, the bush poppy; matilija poppy, wooly blue curls, Douglas iris and iris hybrids and coral bells also sell quickly.
“This year we’ll have a number of trillium, grown from seed, that are flowering size, in colors from white to red to pink,” O’Brien said. “They’re typically slow-growing and that’s why most nurseries don’t offer them since they take five or six years or more to grow.”
Many staffers, volunteers and docents will be on hand to answer questions at all levels, from bare beginners to garden pros seeking very specific advice.
Though this year’s rains have been promising, California is still in a drought. Add in climate change and weather pattern instability and native plants are still the best bet for a resilient garden.
“Going with the drought-tolerant end of California plants and other Mediterranean climate and dry land plants is certainly a better way for most gardens to go rather than a lot of the more temperate flora or Asiatic flora that have been so common in most gardens in North America,” he said.
And the Regional Parks Botanic Garden is a great place to get familiar with California’s flora. Within its 10 acres it has thousands of labeled specimens planted not in broad, showy swaths, but as they are in the wild.
“Gardens are living, evolving environments. If you only come once you don’t get any clue to what really is here. You can come and see something in bloom and in two weeks they’ll be gone and something entirely different will be in full bloom,” he said.
“We have something blooming all year long so even if you have a garden of California native plants you can have a very colorful garden year-round.”
IF YOU GO
The Spring Native Plant Sale at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden at the intersection of Wildcat Canyon Road and South Park Drive in Tilden Regional Park in the Berkeley hills is 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. April 16. Bring boxes or trays to carry plants home. Details: 510-544-3169,www.nativeplants.org, bgarden@ebparks.org.

Giant Nolina begins blooming
photo:Bart O’Brien

After 50 years of quietly minding its own business at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park, a rare desert plant by the name of “giant nolina” has started flowering — probably for the first time ever.
The giant nolina, also known as giant beargrass, is a California native plant found only in the Kingston Mountains of the eastern Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, according to the Botanic Garden.
There are in fact two nolina plants at the garden, and they were collected by the garden’s founding director, James Roof, and a garden staff member, Walter Knight, from the area near Beck Springs in the Kingston Mountains back in 1966.
Unlike many plants with giant blooms, the giant nolina does not die after flowering – it just keeps on growing.
“Another unusual attribute of these plants is that they are either male or female,” Garden Manager Bart O’Brien said in a release. “The vast majority of plants are bisexual. Since ours hasn’t opened any flowers yet, we don’t yet if it is male or female.”
If it does turn out to be female, the blooming will last more than a month, as the flowers yield fruits, according to the garden.
The plant as a whole is about 15’ tall, with the flower stalk and flowers about 7’ tall. The individual flowers are very small and are cream-colored, with thousands of densely packed flowers on each branch of the inflorescence. Originally described botanically as Nolina wolfii, it is now categorized with the typically much smaller and more common Parry’s beargrass (Nolina parryi).
The rare bloom may be trying to compete with another local plant flowering that happens only occasionally at the nearby UC Botanical Garden. The blooming of Trudy the corpse flower, a Sumatran plant officially called Amorphophallus titanum or titan arum, is such an unusual event that the garden puts on free shuttle buses, and visitors flock there to see it in their thousands. That, despite the fact that Trudy is known for being malodorous — its smell is variously described as being akin to a dead mouse or a rotting cow.
The giant nolina, which is not known for any particular smell, can be seen at Regional Parks Botanic Garden, which is open to the public for free every day, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. The garden is in Tilden Regional Park at the intersection of Wildcat Canyon Road and South Park Drive. (Note South Park Drive re-opens April 1; until then, take alternate routes through the park). The Regional Parks Botanic Garden has a public spring native plant saleSaturday, April 16, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

http://www.berkeleyside.com/2016/03/30/after-50-years-a-rare-desert-plant-blooms-in-tilden-park/

Credit: Sarah Rohrs

It was like stumbling across a California condor in the wild, only this rare find was an extinct shrub, and it sent shoots of excitement through the native plant community.

California native plant champion Bart O’Brien was new as director of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden in the Berkeley hills when he got a chance to weigh in on discovery of the last wild Franciscan manzanita.

Thought to be extinct, the Franciscan manzanita plant got the TV news cameras rolling which, in turn, put a spotlight on the garden itself.

Rediscovered during a highway construction project near the Golden Gate Bridge, the shrub has also put a light on all things native plant.

And the need is urgent to save California’s native plants, as one-quarter to one-third are endangered in some fashion, O’Brien has said.

The Regional Parks Botanic Garden, within Tilden Regional Park’s Wildcat Canyon in the Berkeley hills, is one place of refuge for them.

“The garden has many rare native specimens, such as the Santa Lucia fir, the pine hill flannelbush, and the Antioch dunes evening-primrose.

The garden is devoted to the collection, growth and display of native plants, including the Franciscan manzanita, which has grown there (outside of its wild habitat) for seven decades.

O’Brien is marking his one-year anniversary as director of the acclaimed garden, taking the reins from Stephen Edwards, who led the facility and worked there for 44 years.

The garden, which has had just four directors since its founding in 1940, is open daily to the public and hosts many classes and events.

Manzanitas are one of the garden’s specialties. There are 94 in all, which range in size from ground covers to small trees, O’Brien said.

The Franciscan manzanita is one of its more popular these days.

“We have more of them here than anywhere else,” O’Brien said. “This is and was a very special plant found only in San Francisco.”

On the garden path, many visitors pause at the Kings Mountain manzanitas, drawn by their rusty red smooth bark and twisted branches.

O’Brien said they are “quite rare,” and found only within Kings Mountain in San Mateo County.

In winter many of the garden’s manzanitas are budding, while ash trees and other plants show off autumn yellow leaves.

In spring, a vast array of lilies and other bulbous plants bloom, including the bright orange leopard lily, saved from destruction as Delta levees were built, Edwards said.

A living museum as well as a teaching garden for local students, the garden is also, in some cases, the only hope of saving some plants threatened by development, pesticides, invasive species and other threats.

“We are called more and more to do that with the disturbance of the environment,” Edwards said. “This is like Noah’s Ark. We protect them,” he added.

The garden’s seed collections, for example, will keep in reserve a plant’s genetic materials over the long-run, O’Brien said.

Should the plants become extinct in the wild, the garden will have the seeds so that they can be grown again, he said.

Once popular throughout San Francisco, the Franciscan manzanita is a case in point.

Recognizing that the shrubs were imperiled by development, garden founder James Roof collected samples and brought them to the Tilden garden in the 1940s.

Today, the shrubs have spread and line a walkway below the garden’s Visitor Center. The work of promoting native plants does not stop at the garden’s borders, as advocates further the cause of using native plants in many settings.

Native plants in public parks, along highways and in private gardens and lawns are increasingly taking root, O’Brien and Edwards said.

The garden is also linked to the California Native Plant Society.

O’Brien said the native plant movement is gaining ground. “There’s always been a small percentage of people who are very interested in all things native. Now there’s more,” O’Brien said.

“There’s more general awareness of the benefits of nature and native plants. The numbers of people who are willing to try new plants and experiment have increased.”

The current and past droughts have increased awareness, he added.

And any gardener in search of inspiration could do a lot worse than visiting the garden.

Within its lush 10-acre borders, with Wildcat Canyon Creek flowing through, the garden is divided into 10 different sections and three subsections corresponding to different parts of the state. All seeds and plants growing there were collected in the wild.

California is an exciting place for native plant advocates.

Its differing climates and geography have led to a plentiful array of plants unique to various regions of the state, both Edwards and O’Brien said.

Further, “California is the only recognized biodiversity hot spot in North America,” O’Brien said.

“There’s plenty here” to choose from for gardens and other areas.

Open to the public every day except major holidays, the garden also sponsors a popular lecture series.

O’Brien helps guide volunteers who do seed collecting, hold plant sales, serve as docents, and also do weeding and pruning.

Training for new docents gets underway in January. In the near future he also plans to enlarge the visitor’s center and add new exhibits.

Meanwhile, both O’Brien and Edwards are keeping a close eye on developments with the Franciscan manzanita, which has been moved to an undisclosed location. Federal agencies and plant advocates have launched a conservation plan for the rare plant.

O’Brien brings a wealth of experience. He previously served as director of special projects at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Southern California, where he became well-known in the horticultural field, and for promoting native plants in gardens big and small.

Edwards, a Martinez resident, is now a garden volunteer and is busy writing and furthering his education.

He said he left his post to pursue other interests, though the garden is still close to his heart.

Among the native plant community, both O’Brien and Edwards are colleagues and well-respected figures and plant experts.

Under Edwards’ leadership, the garden collections grew significantly.

A geologist, Edward himself collected rocks and built several rock gardens to replicate terrain found in the wild.

He also started the popular Wayne Roderick lecture series, among many other innovations.

The Tilden garden and its California native plant focus complements the UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley, which showcases plants from around the world.

Both facilities are renowned. “It’s rare to have two major gardens so close together,” O’Brien said.

“They are close but so different. We have a lot more unusual things just from the Bay Area here,” he added.

The garden hosts periodic plant sales and also advises people where to buy plants locally.

“We see a lot more people taking to native plants, especially here in Berkeley,” Edwards said. “It’s gradually caught on.”

Correspondent Marta Yamamoto contributed to this story.

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2014/12/24/berkeley-hills-site-a-haven-for-endangered-native-plants/

Anise Swallowtail Butterfly: one of the 43 species spotted in and around Berkeley during the annual Butterfly Count. Photo Elaine Miller Bond

A hummingbird whirrs by, as a squirrel flicks its tail, flirting. A robin fluffs its feathers after bathing in the stream. Leopard lilies, columbines, even the cacti are in full summery bloom. But today, at the Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park, we’re here for the butterflies.

Alan Kaplan, an entomologist, educator, and retired Tilden Park ranger, meets me at the garden’s gate, where, already, I have spotted maybe five different types of butterfly, from a teensy so-called “blue” to a glamorous pipevine swallowtail.

Still, there are rules for counting butterflies in nature. So Kaplan gives me the rundown of the day’s event — the Fourth of July Butterfly Count (currently run by the North American Butterfly Association (NABA) — held for its fortieth continuous year in Berkeley.

The cabbage white butterfly is an introduced species from Europe. Females, like this one, have two small spots on their forewings. Males have just one. Photo Elaine Miller Bond

“See there,” Kaplan says, pointing to two simple white butterflies, called cabbage whites, alighting on the flowers near our feet. “We count these butterflies as ‘two,’ because we’re observing them at the same time and in the same location.”

Farther down the path, we will probably see more cabbage whites. Kaplan says he could safely add those ones to his tally. But he wouldn’t count cabbage whites from this place, again, unless we see three or more. Two of them might be repeats“Whoa! Whoa!” he calls out. “We did it! We’ve got a monarch!”

I step in closer, thinking that Kaplan might show me a dazzling butterfly on the wing. Instead, he points to a showy black-, yellow-, and white-striped caterpillar. He also reveals holes in the milkweed flower buds — evidence that a caterpillar has been munching them.

“We’ve got a known larva on its known host plant,” Kaplan says. “So it’s confirmed: we’ve got at least one monarch.”

Monarch caterpillar on its host plant, milkweed. Photo: Elaine Miller Bond

This caterpillar goes into a different data column than the adult butterflies do. And yet, seeing it makes my mind flutter, as I begin to realize the full scope of butterfly work. In entomology, beauty and fascination belong to the tiny butterfly eggs, larvae (caterpillars), and pupae (chrysalises), just as much as the delicate winged adults.

Indeed, searching for butterflies is a quest for shape-shifters.

And, half way through our search, I begin to recognize a few types of butterfly from earlier in the day: the Mylitta crescent, fiery skipper, buckeye. I call out these names as I see butterflies, and Kaplan gives verbal confirmation of my sightings. Then he jots them down.

In the end, we find and identify nine butterfly species here at the Botanic Garden — all in varying abundance.

Buckeye butterfly Photo: Elaine Miller Bond

But I’ve learned more than that. Following Kaplan’s lead, I stop along our walk to smell the creamy-sweet flowers of a buckeye tree, touch the velvety leaves of a thimbleberry, hear the fluting song of a black-headed grosbeak.

Butterflies, after all, are part of a vast and intricate network of life. And Kaplan really knows his stuff.

“It’s just like everything,” he explains. “If you’re going to be an entomologist, then you have to be a plant person, because that’s what your insects are eating, and you have to be a bird person, because that’s what’s eating your insects.”

Painted lady butterfly Photo: Elaine Miller Bond

Next, Kaplan will go count butterflies near the Tilden Nature Area. When we rendezvous this evening (over pizza and beer at La Val’s), we join the half-dozen other parties who counted butterflies in different pre-assigned spots in and near Berkeley. Dr. Jerry Powell, Director Emeritus of the UC Berkeley Essig Museum of Entomology, does the final tally.

Overall, he finds that 43 butterfly species were observed on the count today. This, Dr. Powell says, is up from the last few years in Berkeley.

He also says that numbers are not the whole story.

“We started the counts not so much to track abundance,” Dr. Powell says, “but to increase awareness for butterflies and natural history in the bigger picture, especially in places where many species are endangered by development and other massive effects on the environment.”

Gulf fillary, a non-native Photo: Elaine Miller Bond

As I reflect on his words, my mind pictures all the butterflies I saw today as symbols for something greater, as the striped and checkered wings for acts of conservation.

My mind goes next to all the other people — both scientists and non-scientists — who admire butterflies and go venturing out to count them. Maybe they’re driven by curiosity, or intricacy, or beauty.

Whatever it is, I seem to have caught the bug.

May beautiful butterflies be our reminder to conserve nature Photo Elaine Miller Bond

For more on our local butterflies:

Read the online brochure, co-written by Alan Kaplan, for the East Bay Regional Parks

Visit the inspiring “SFbutterfly” website of Liam O’Brien, artist and organizer of the popular San Francisco Butterfly Count.

And, to participate in a butterfly count near you, visit the North American Butterfly Association (NABA).

Berkeley’s historic Fortieth Annual Butterfly Count was held in memory of Robert “Bob” Langston, “King of the Blues ” (tiny blue butterflies)

Elaine Miller Bond is photographer of the upcoming book, “The Utah Prairie Dog: Life Among the Red Rocks” (University of Utah Press, 2014). She’s also the author of “Dream Affimals: Affirmations + Animals” (Sunstone Press, 2013) and “Affimals” (LIT Verlag, 2009) — uplifting books of environmental education. Her email is elainebond@comcast.net

http://www.berkeleyside.com/2014/07/24/all-aflutter-berkeley-insect-lovers-celebrate-40th-year-counting-butterflies

As winter heads toward spring with little sign of rain, gardeners’ thoughts turn to how to cope with drought conditions and how California native plants can be used in light of water-challenged seasons.

A good place to turn for suggestions and advice is the Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Regional Park in the Berkeley hills, where new manager Bart O’Brien has ideas for East Bay gardeners.

O’Brien has been on the job since Dec. 2, previously working as director of special projects for Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Southern California and having a long experience with native plant horticulture and conservation.

The garden has long attracted O’Brien, in part because its small 10-acre size does not reflect its diversity.

RPBG juniper lodge seabluff photo by Steve Edwards

“This garden’s site, collections and design make it a beautiful, compelling garden,” O’Brien said. “There are more California native plants here and more types than just about anywhere else.”

Having such a repository of low-water possibilities for the home makes the botanic garden a resource and O’Brien and staff have plans to increase the delivery of information to visitors.

First is the creation of a new, larger visitor center, one that will provide more space for its popular lecture series and will add new exhibits on interpreting plants in the collection. “There’s not a lot of interpretive panels or big display boards in the garden. That makes the visitor experience more direct with the plants, but it also doesn’t tell people as much as they could know,” O’Brien said. “The increased size of the visitor center will provide people with all that additional information so they can get more out of their vis

Another plan is to inventory the entire collection and augment where needed; in particular, focusing on rare and endangered plant species, particularly those of the local region.

“In California one-third to one-quarter of all our native plants are endangered at some level and we also have the greatest plant diversity in the nation,” he said. “So this is a good thing to be focused on.”

With stewardship of such an important part of California’s flora, the garden’s staff has been watering over the past few months, attempting to simulate winter rainfall that native species are accustomed to, winter being the time plants absorb and bank water to get through long, dry summers.

O’Brien recommends the same procedure for home gardeners, explaining that often untrained eyes may fail to notice plant stress from lack of water.

“A lot of trees may be stressed and that enables plant pests or pathogens to move in and kill them off,” he said. “Sometimes plants won’t flower or flower very little and then won’t set any seeds. Others will produce lots of flowers and set lots of seeds because they realize that this is likely it.”

Seeing this drought year as a sign of climate change, O’Brien speaks up about the benefits of native plants for landscaping in our dry Mediterranean climate, noting that California has more than 6,000 natives and 8,000 garden cultivars, totaling 14,000 plants to choose from.

Kathy Kramer, organizer of Bring Back the Natives Garden Tour, wholeheartedly agrees and recommends replacing all or part of a lawn with native plants as the number one way to conserve water, adding that some water districts may offer a $500 rebate.

“Native plants are water-conserving, hardy, don’t require pesticides and attract birds, bees and butterflies to your garden,” Kramer said. “Also consider hiring a landscape designer, even a one-hour consultation can help make choices that will save money in the long run.”

Kramer also suggests browsing the Bringing Back the Native Garden Tour website to view photos of water-conserving, native plant gardens, see plant lists and nurseries that carry native plants and register for the free garden tour on May 4.

Regional Parks Botanic Garden is an accessible resource, merely coming for a visit, taking part in a docent-led tour or signing up for one of the many classes offered.

“Just come by and look and there’s so much to see and to choose from,” O’Brien said. “The garden is also just a good place to look at things from a general or design standpoint. Looking at the massing of plants gives an idea of how to go about creating a vista that is attractive.”

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2014/03/19/regional-parks-botanic-garden-a-resource-for-drought-conditions-gardening/

Winter in the Botanic Garden’s Sierran section Photo: Eleanor Biccetti

From a speeding car, the Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park is a quick blur of green surrounded by a chain-link fence with a single sign bearing its cumbersome, dryly bureaucratic name. But there is concentrated, elemental magic in this place that can’t be sensed from a drive-by or a Google Earth flyover, a photo or a written description. Its ten acres, nestled in the canyon of Wildcat Creek, hold much of the plant diversity of California’s wild landscapes and can charm even the first-time visitor with a wonderful and mysterious spell.

Perhaps this magic lies in the energy of the place—the life force of the plants coupled with what a longtime employee describes as all the love put into the garden by those who have designed and nurtured it. Perhaps it’s the stories the garden holds: earth stories of wild places, adaptation, evolution, and extinction, and human stories of struggle, failure, and triumph. Perhaps it’s the grand yet intimate beauty of the place. Most likely it’s all of these things and many more we’ll never understand.

Some of the Botanic Garden’s unique magic stems from its primary purpose: to create the most beautiful and diverse landscape possible using only California native plants. There are just two other public botanic gardens in the world devoted exclusively to California native plants, both in Southern California. Although the garden in Tilden is by far the smallest, its northern-central latitude and specific location on the east flank of the Berkeley hills provide habitat for plants from a wider range of environments around the state than either of the two Southern California gardens. Nearly every corner of the state is represented here, from the deserts and arid mountains of southeastern California to the rainy northern coastal forests, and from the alpine Sierra Nevada to our own Bay Area backyard.

As natural as the garden looks, it is a created landscape. Only clever manipulation of the local environment permits so many of California’s wild plants to be represented here. Yet nature’s magic is always at work, giving this man-made habitat an ever-changing life of its own.

Winter reveals the garden’s quietest secrets: stark forms and intricate architecture of trees; bright lichens and mosses clothing rocks, branches, railings, and walls; ladybugs hibernating in the protection of bunchgrass clumps; and the flowers of manzanita, pipevine, silk-tassel, and slink-pod, which are all specially adapted to this season of fewer pollinators.

Nature also reveals her winter work in more powerful ways: Huge trees sway and bend in stormy winds and rainwater pours into the garden from dozens of channels, culverts, and unintended places, at times turning the creek into a thundering torrent that rises two feet over the course of an hour.

The brilliant new-life green of spring foliage follows the quiet and passion of winter, and the garden displays its most spectacular colors. Dazzling combinations of flowers paint the landscape, like the canopy of deep magenta western redbud flowers over a sky-blue carpet of fragrant creeping sage. Golden-orange California poppies knit the garden together with their vagabond ways, colonizing and brightening every sunny bed, crack, and crevice.

In summer, the chartreuse leaves of spring mature into deep green canopies of shade and cool refuge. The creek trickles and slides gently down the center of its channel, now lined with greenery that in places almost hides the water from view. In the fall, reds, oranges, yellows, and browns warm the green landscape as leaves turn and late-season flowers like bright crimson California fuchsias and golden gumplants bloom.

But there’s more than beauty here. Every plant in the garden has stories—of the wild place it came from, of its ancestors’ adaptation to that place, and of how the earth’s history shaped its past.

The plants have human stories, as well—of amusing foibles in pursuit of specimens, of dramatic scientific discoveries, of persistent trial and error in cultivation, and of habitat loss and conservation. In his 1959 guide to the garden, founding director James Roof recounts the story of the Franciscan manzanita (Arctostaphylos hookeri ssp. franciscana), a rare form native to just one site in the Laurel Heights district of San Francisco. This plant was discovered there in 1905 by Alice Eastwood, the famous curator of botany at the California Academy of Sciences, but it was bulldozed into extinction in the early 1940s, save for plants rescued by Roof and planted in the Botanic Garden. Roof writes:

When she was over ninety years old Miss Alice Eastwood walked to this spot in the Botanic Garden, sat on a stone, and wept a little to see this species, which she discovered and named. “Tumbling over the stones,” she said, “it looks exactly as it used to at Laurel Hill.” This is San Francisco’s own manzanita, which San Francisco has subdivided out of existence . . . These plants are “originals” from Laurel Hill, uprooted by bulldozers on the day of destruction.

Sadly, the Franciscan manzanita now exists only in cultivation, because all its native habitat has been eliminated.

Sometimes the stories are happier. Among the majestic conifers in the garden are two groves of Santa Lucia firs, the rarest firs in the world. In their limited native mountain habitat east of Big Sur, seeds of these trees are parasitized by the larvae of chalcids, small wasps that have evolved with the trees over thousands of years. Adult wasps lay their eggs inside the developing cones and when the larvae hatch, they eat the seeds from the inside out. Few viable seeds remain in years when wasp population levels are high.

However, the wasps do not live in the Bay Area and the trees in the Botanic Garden produce large amounts of viable seed. When the Marble Cone fire of 1977 burned 175,000 acres in the Santa Lucia Mountains and killed many of the firs in their wild home, foresters were able to collect quantities of good seed from trees in the Botanic Garden, which had been grown from seed originally collected in the Santa Lucias by the garden staff.

The garden has thus served as a genetic repository for these two plants. They are among the 300 kinds of rare and endangered plants grown here that cling to life in the wild. Though it is no substitute for preserving their wild habitat, their presence in the garden provides some small insurance against total extinction.

Garden Founder James Roof, on right, tends bristlecone pine seedlings in 1949. Photo courtesy of East Bay Regional Parks District

Other plants simply can’t be grown in the garden. In spite of well-informed and sometimes heroic efforts by the garden staff, these plants defy all attempts at cultivation. Foxtail pine from the mountains and ocotillo from the desert cannot be induced to tolerate our climate. And yet others, like chinquapin, which grows naturally in the Oakland hills and other Bay Area locales, challenge the staff to divine the secrets of their favored growing environments and then duplicate those conditions in the garden.

James Roof wrote about hundreds of unsuccessful attempts to grow chinquapin in the garden or elsewhere. “I doubt that anyone, professional or amateur, has ever successfully grown the wicked things,” he noted. “It is the most notable failure in native plant horticulture.” He never stopped trying to grow chinquapin, but never succeeded in keeping one alive for more than a few years; most died within months after he planted them in the garden. With tongue only partly in cheek, he reported, “A friend recommended that we go to the Oakland hills, buy a lot with chinquapins on it and label it the Botanic Garden’s South Annex.”

Since Roof’s time, many other garden staff members have collected chinquapin seeds or cuttings in the wild and grown them in the garden’s greenhouse for a few years. Most of these attempts also failed once the plants were set in the ground. However, two chinquapins have now survived in the garden for more than ten years and stand as living testaments to the skill, talent, and persistence of the garden staff.

Growing chinquapins and rare plants reflects another of the garden’s primary missions: to protect and conserve the California flora in the wild. That effort requires an informed public, says Steve Edwards, the garden’s current director. “The Regional Parks Botanic Garden fills the irreplaceable role of enhancing the public’s knowledge and appreciation of the native flora of California,” he explains. “The result is a public more sensitive to the natural world that is rapidly vanishing around them.”

Public education programs at the garden have expanded under each of the garden’s three directors over its 66 years of existence. When James Roof created the garden in 1940, he welcomed all visitors, from academic researchers to curious neighbors. He also wrote extensively about native plants and started the garden’s scholarly journal, The Four Seasons.

Wayne Roderick, who served as the garden’s second director from 1976 through 1983, instituted a lecture series to teach the public about native plants; the series continues on winter Saturday mornings to this day. A renowned expert on native plants that grow from bulbs, Roderick introduced these little-known beauties to the public and planted them throughout the garden.

Steve Edwards, director since 1983, has brought a new academic focus to the garden, incorporating research in geology and anthropology, as well as botany and horticulture, into the garden’s activities. Edwards also has extended educational opportunities to an even broader audience through a volunteer docent program developed by botanist Glenn Keator. Docents lead tours of the garden for the general public on Saturday and Sunday afternoons as well as for preschool through college classes and a wide range of groups including garden clubs, Alzheimer’s support groups, Girl Scouts, and environmental volunteers.

“It is the perfect multisensory experience for young children,” says Pamela Meredith, a kindergarten teacher at Walden School in Berkeley who has been bringing her classes to the garden twice a year since 1998. “They’re able to see life cycles, which is why I bring them in the fall and then again in the spring. Docents point out things that change, so in their young vocabularies [the children] now have words like ‘deciduous.’ And they use those words. One of my students told me, ‘My teeth are deciduous.’”

The garden’s floristic abundance and diversity not only serve its human public, but also provide a spectacular smorgasbord of food and habitats for a concentration of diverse local and migrant wildlife. Its myriad animal residents and visitors include great blue herons, rainbow trout, weasels, king snakes, and a seemingly unlimited array of nectar-feeders and pollinators ranging from hummingbirds to native bees to butterflies.

Of course, not all wildlife is welcome in the garden. Tall fences keep out browsing deer that would devour the collection, given the opportunity. One such opportunity came on an otherwise quiet spring afternoon in 1981 when a tanker truck careened out of control and crashed through the garden’s fence. The driver walked away uninjured, but an ever-vigilant Tilden Park deer found the hole in the fence that night and decimated some of the garden’s most prized plants.

Along with its intricate web of life, the garden itself has a complex history. At various times, it was larger and smaller than its present ten acres; it was nearly orphaned in the mid-1960s when the East Bay Regional Park District proposed the creation of a new botanic garden in Chabot Regional Park; it has suffered the vagaries of public agency funding; and it has employed some unique human characters.

It’s hardly possible to think or talk or write about the garden without discussing its brilliant and controversial founder. James Roof’s ideas and talents were reflected in the garden’s original design and clearly persist in its present form. Before he started the garden in 1940, Roof managed a U.S. Forest Service native plant nursery that eventually formed the core of the new Botanic Garden. With help from large Works Progress Administration crews, Roof built much of the garden in two years.

Unfortunately, the garden’s auspicious beginning was largely undone when Roof was drafted and sent overseas for four years during World War II. In his absence, the garden went untended, and when he returned in 1946, he found a tangle of poison oak, waist-high grasses, and weedy forests of willow and bay trees. Starting over with only a few helpers, he cleared the brush with fire and chain saws and returned to the field over a period of years to collect the majority of the garden’s plants a second time.

Roof was both Jekyll and Hyde: Arguably the most brilliant California native plant horticulturist who ever lived and gardened and a prodigiously talented writer, he was also an independent thinker and operator who had no patience for bureaucracy or democracy. He could please his staff with impromptu field trips and hoes-down afternoons of storytelling, and then turn around and berate them cruelly for erroneously perceived incompetence. His famous intolerance for authority caused him to be reprimanded, disciplined, fired, reinstated, retired, and rehired more than once during his stormy 36 years as director.

Roof’s clashes with district administrators ultimately led to the creation of the California Native Plant Society (CNPS). In 1964, Roof was fired for insubordination and the district began planning a new 400-acre California native botanic garden in Chabot Regional Park. Roof’s admirers successfully lobbied the district’s board to abandon those plans, embrace the existing garden, and reinstate him. The committee formed in that effort expanded its mission from protection of the Botanic Garden to protection of native plants throughout the state, incorporating as CNPS. That organization now has over 9,000 members in 33 chapters around the state dedicated to the conservation of California’s flora.

For the most part, Roof operated the garden in isolation—splendid isolation, he might have said—with just a very small paid staff. But his successors, directors Roderick and Edwards, placed a new emphasis on volunteerism.

Roderick first invited volunteers to help maintain the garden, but their role expanded in 1979, when Proposition 13 budget cuts caused the Park District to institute an admission fee for the garden. The volunteers proposed an annual native plant sale in place of the fee, and that sale, now in its 29th year, still contributes significant revenue to the garden. In 1996, another group of volunteers created a Friends organization that raises additional funds for the garden and offers classes on native plants, garden art, and many other subjects.

The garden’s rich habitat attracts pollinators like this Anna’s hummingbird at a California fushsia. Photo: Eleanor Briccetti

Collectively, the garden’s volunteers contributed nearly 9,000 hours of work in 2005. All of those volunteer hours, as well as the thousands of hours visitors spend enjoying the garden, are inspired by its representation of the beauty and diversity of California’s native plant life.

In this concentrated habitat, people and plants will always come together in both deliberate and unanticipated ways. A docent finds satisfaction in sharing her love of the garden with schoolchildren; a future botanist’s life course is set by an hour of joy and discovery on a tour with that docent; a family begins with a romantic, bended-knee proposal in the sanctuary of the garden’s redwood grove; and a rare plant or a piece of wild habitat is championed by a garden visitor inspired to activism by the sobering number of plants labeled rare and endangered. Through it all, the garden continues to grow, bloom, set seed, die, germinate, and always surprise us with its special magic.
https://baynature.org/articles/botanic-magic/