In the fall of 2021, still under some Covid-19 lock-down, there were reasons we decided to move house. After living in the same place for nearly 20 years, this was a challenge, but, ultimately, we found ourselves in a new environment that met our needs far better. We’re happy in our new place.
Our new garden is underway, but it will take some time until it is photo ready. Meanwhile, people still inquire about the past garden which they came to know by previous social media posts. Photos can be misleading and often people would think this garden was bigger than it actually was. This post is meant to explain this small space and relate what it meant to us.
At the tail end of 2002, we had our first sight the house and yard we would occupy for the next 2 decades. What struck us about the garden space when we first visited the property was its orientation and protection. The space was also completely flat and relatively private (our previous outdoor space was a steep slope that was quite public).
This spot solved various problems for us and our teenage son (he could walk to his High School). It convenient for me to take Bart via the North Berkeley Bart station to my day job in Downtown Oakland. We were also surrounded by interesting and friendly people (a number were graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, who we are still in touch with even though many have moved across the country).
West Berkeley lies directly across the San Francisco Bay from the Golden Gate – very quaint and romantic, but also subject to ocean winds and fog entering through that gap. This can be especially true in summer when California’s huge Central Valley warms up – hot air rises and must be replaced somehow – so cooler, moister air flows through the Golden Gate to replace it, often right through Berkeley!
But the rear garden of this property we were inspecting was sheltered by buildings on two side and trees on the third. This created a nice heat-trap that we noticed right away. The fact that much of the space had been concreted over, historically, in a piecemeal fashion helped this effect. There was an area of open soil in which we were told we could garden, but there was also areas of concrete where we could stage potted plants. Realizing the potential of an additional ‘outdoor room’, we were excited.
There was a sunken (one step down) space that was easy to turn into a sitting area, using vintage outdoor furniture we were already collecting. This became a personal respite from indoor life and a favorite place to entertain friends and neighbors. Surrounding this ‘room’ with our favorite plants added to the comfort and ambiance. Many of the photos I share online over the years related to this space.
Once the relatively spare space was populated with growing plants, birds began visiting in earnest. We became even more devoted bird-watchers, looking up each new species they appeared. Spotting them from the windows of the house (3/4 flight up from the garden) was a bit challenging, but some birds even became comfortable with us sitting very still down in the garden!
So where was this birdhouse hanging? Adjacent to the sunken sitting area, were wooden stairs to the unit upstairs. This provided some privacy to our space as well a a bit of shade for some of our favorite plants. It also created artistic opportunities to arrange our collection of found objects.
Other parts of our sitting area provided many opportunities to showcase our collection of interesting plants and found objects.
At the base of stairs to the unit above our, we arranged a number of plants in old rusted plant stands. An Aeonium nobilis hybrid that we received as a cutting from a friend grows in an unusual metal container with hand-welded handles in various places. It is obviously a hybrid because it branches readily and continued growing tall and bushy (the true A. nobilis does not branch). Eight years later, and moved to a different spot, it surprised us with a dramatic flowering! (We still grow cuttings of this unusual hybrid)
The brick path in the last of the above series provided access to our open ground area. That is a Meyer lemon at top right. Various plants occupied this space over time, but two main players, shown in the left foreground, were there throughout.
As we created our personal space in our allotted corner of the property, other tenants could not help but notice. The rest of the space was mostly neglected (we pulled weeds anywhere on the property that might spread or take over). Eventually, we were invited to expand our efforts into their spaces.
The brick wall shown in the above photo is the back side of a neighboring building. Its tall and stark presence was hard to ignore. Eventually we got the idea to hang a rusty mattress spring for some visual interest. In a college town, abandoned mattresses are common during student move-out, so it was easy to collect a few more in different sizes …
Other found rusty items were also displayed along the base of this wall. One of our favorites, found along some nearby railroad tracks, was this bent iron cover of some sort, with a charmingly bent corner.
The ‘mattress wall’ providing a background for other parts of the garden.
As artists, we have collected a variety of interesting objects to add to our living spaces (inside and out). An old metal chair became a holder for a flower pot (once we found one the right diameter and depth). This had pride of place on the fence behind our sitting area, at first holding the blue Echeveria secunda ‘Glauca’, swapped for a larger E. agavoides hybrid later.
We brought a potted Canna lily that was given to me some years before. After a living confined existence, it was quite happy to have room to thrive in the rich, heavy soil of this garden!
Over the time we lived in West Berkeley, there was lots of opportunity for experimentation with plant color, form, and texture!
At left: The golden Sedum reflexum ‘Angelina’ flowering in a concrete tube topped with a rusty grate, joined by the flowers of Teucrium scorodonia ‘Crispum Marginatum’ (foreground left) and the flowering green form of Sedum reflexum (foreground). At right: Salvia leucantha ‘White Mischief’ flowering in from of one of the many gray leaf Centaureas I was researching.
To add some variation in height to parts of the garden, we often used recycled terra-cotta tubes we sourced locally. These provided excellent drainage for certain plants that might sulk in our heavy soil, but were also excellent staging for setting off plant combinations.
We enjoyed this garden very much, as did many of the people living around us. When it came time to leave, it was made clear that this outdoor space would be put to other uses by the property owner. So, we removed these plants and constructions and brought them with us to build our next garden. It was somewhat sad to see it all disappear but it would have been sadder still to know it would be neglected, damaged, or destroyed by others.
gardening in mediterranean climates worldwide 