Bay-Friendly Gardening mimics natural systems, which recycle everything—water, debris, and nutrients—endlessly. It pays attention to climate and local conditions and uses appropriate plants that are adapted to those conditions. It follows maintenance practices that support the goals of conserving resources and reducing waste.

Bay-Friendly gardens aren’t a mold you have to fit into—they offer endless opportunities, from backyard wildlife gardens to kitchen gardens to native plant communities, and more. Bay-Friendly gardening offers an approach to landscaping that makes it easy to have a garden you can enjoy while reducing waste and conserving resources.

Bay-Friendly gardeners:
* Conserve water and other resources.
* Reuse plant trimmings through mulching and composting.
* Provide wildlife habitat.
* Feature native and Mediterranean plants.
* Choose least-toxic pest control methods.

The Bay-Friendly Gardening program was developed to encourage residents to make environmentally friendly gardening choices. It is not a particular style, but an approach. Bay-Friendly Gardeners work with nature to reduce waste and protect the watersheds of the San Francisco Bay.

Bay-Friendly is….
….. a holistic approach to gardening and landscaping that works in harmony with the natural conditions of the San Francisco Bay Watershed. Bay-Friendly practices foster soil health, conserve water and other valuable resources while reducing waste and preventing pollution.

The Bay-Friendly Gardening Program offers the home gardener tools for creating a beautiful and healthy Bay-Friendly garden. Likewise, the Bay-Friendly Landscaping Program provides resources for the professional landscaper to design, construct and maintain Bay-Friendly landscapes for clients.

For more information please visit the Stop Waste website http://www.stopwaste.org/home/index.asp?page=8

California coastal winters, rain followed by periods of crisp sunshine, result in massive amounts of weeds in our gardens.  I spend days upon days weeding out what is unwanted and it seems there is always more.  Plants are opportunists of the best kind and their seeds will slip into small bits of dirt and widen cracks in sidewalks.  They find their way to distressed soil, where the more pampered horticultural plants would never think of settling.  They are tough survivors with strong constituents and tenacious roots.   They know how to do a lot with few resources.  The type and amount of weeds you find in your yard tell a story about your soil.   Making your soil better doesn’t necessarily cut down on the weeds–probably the opposite, but as your soil health improves the type of weeds that proliferate will also shift.  Plants that thrive in highly compacted, low fertility soils are different than what will grow in your well amended, extra-fertile garden beds.  Of course the dreaded Oxalis pes-carpe will grow anywhere.  

As an example:  In my hard-to-amend front strip, which is sticky, soggy clay in winter and hard-pan in the summer, plantain proliferates as it does nowhere else in my yard.  In my nicely amended vegetable beds I get fields of cress, purslane and scarlet pimpernel.  Whether your soil is clay or sand, boggy or dry is probably pretty obvious to you, but weeds can also indicate soil pH and nutrient levels.  
For a simple list of weeds as soil indicators see here: http://www.co.thurston.wa.us/tcweeds/weeds/fact-sheets/weeds%20as%20soil%20ind.pdf

For a more comprehensive chart which include indications of nutrient presence or dearth, look here: http://oregonbd.org/Class/weeds.htm.   
For help identifying weeds, let one grow out a little and take it to a garden center or experienced gardener.  Don’t try to describe it (“you know it is green, with leaves”), bring the actual plant or a clear close up photo with you. If it is flowering, more the better.  Here is a nice little pdf with some good drawings of the most common Bay Area Weeds–I see all of these from time to time in my garden: http://www.greenbelt.org/downloads/resources/curriculum/chapter2.pdf

And by the way, when you weed try to pull the whole plant, including the root, as many weedy plants have tap roots that will simply spout new growth if left in the ground. 

Of course, not all weeds are bad and some traditional folks even see weeds as important companion plants, “guardians of the soil;” not just opportunists but filling important niches and offering soil reparation.    Check out chapter six, “Weeds as Mother Crops” of this longer article championing weeds: http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/weeds/WeedsToC.html.  Besides assisting in re-greening distressed areas, where no other plants would, many plants we call weeds are useful, edible, medicinal or both. Here are a few you might want to consider keeping from time to time:

Edible:  Cress, Purslane, Dandelion, Plantain, Chickweed, Mallow.  Young leaves  can be great additions to spring salads.

Medicinal:  Mallow, Dandelion, Plaintain, Dock, Chickweed, Yarrow, mugwort, Cleavers (uses too lengthy to go into here)

The Institute of Ubrban Homesteading offers classes in gardening, urban animal husbandry, food preservation, brewcraft, herbal medicines, and more. Go to www.iuhoakland.com for information and class schedules.

Why do bees prefer yellow flowers to red flowers? Hundreds of Oakland grade school children know the answer, thanks to an Oakland Museum school program featuring the Gardens at Lake Merritt. The program, known as the Secret Garden Tour, provides students with an understanding and appreciation of the mysteries and beauty of the natural world.

The two-hour program begins with the Museum’s engaging docents directing small groups of children through the collection of gardens, ensuring that each child has an opportunity to discover, touch, smell, and question as they explore.

The diversity of flowers, plants and trees in the Gardens makes it an ideal educational venue. The tours end with students drawing, making leaf rubbings, writing poetry, and examining their specimen collections.

“There is nothing like learning real-time and hands-on,” said Michelle Cascio, whose 5th grade class from Korematsu Discovery Academy, “discovered” the Gardens in early November. Exploration of these Gardens will support their grasp and interest in the science lessons we cover in the classroom,” added Cascio. “This was the first visit to the Gardens at Lake Merritt for most of these children and I will encourage them to bring their families here.”

A special thank you to Suzanne Pegas, Natural Science Program Coordinator for the Oakland Museum, Ron Krause, Friends of the Gardens at Lake Merritt, and the terrific Museum docents for creating and supporting this educational, inspirational and fun program.