Bay-Friendly Gardening Workshops

The workshop series teaches “Bay-Friendly” design and maintenance practices that reduce the generation of plant debris, conserve water and prevent pollution through planting appropriate plants, proper plant spacing, grasscycling, mulching, composting, and keeping plants healthy by amending soil with compost and using slow release natural fertilizers, using natural pest controls and more.

Workshops are interactive in nature, in just 3 hours you will have multiple opportunities to practice techniques on-sight and bring home adequate resources to begin implementing lessons learned. All workshops are open to the public and offered throughout the Bay Area in the spring and fall. View the current workshop schedule.

Bay-Friendly Basics

This class provides an overview of the Bay-Friendly philosophy, approach and integrated practices that make for a sustainable garden. It is a mix of lecture and hands-on activities, including:

1. Breakouts on: soil, managing pests and plant selection – where you’ll be introduced to the primary Bay-Friendly maintenance practices.
2. Small group design activity to instill fundamentals and help with getting started on your own garden.
   

For more in depth information on maintenance practices, we recommend attending:

Ground Up for building healthy soil

Managing Pests Naturally for least toxic methods

Go Native: Planting for Pollinators (for native plant selection)  

High Performing Plants for Low-Water Gardens (for Mediterranean plant selection)

Attendance at a Basics class is a prerequisite for participating in Bay-Friendly Design.

Other classes where there is an opportunity to look at garden design and plant communities:

Creating Year-Round Edible Gardens

High Performing Plants for Low-Water Gardens

Go Native: Planting for Pollinators

Gardening From the Ground Up

The foundation of a Bay-Friendly garden is healthy soil. And the best way to build healthy soil is to amend with compost and/or cover with mulch. This class digs deeper into how to:

1. identify your soil type
2. how to best amend your soil
3. identify finished compost and appropriate mulch for uses such as pathways, around ornamental beds, in edible beds
4. build a compost pile in a backyard bin – hand’s on activity
5. sheet mulch to replace a lawn, build new planting bed – hand’s on activity

This class always takes place outdoors, rain or shine. Dress appropriately, including toe-covered shoes. If you have garden gloves, you may want to bring them.

Go Native: Planting for Pollinators

This specialized workshop gives you the tools to create wildlife habitat – for young and mature wildlife -- including birds, butterflies and beneficial insects. The focus is on creating native plant communities to create habitat.  You’ll learn:

1. how to assess your current garden habitat
2. the plant communities in which California natives thrive and which ones work in your garden
3. how to propagate plants – that you can take home and plant in your garden through hands on activities
4. other useful tools for attracting wildlife – water features, hiding places, food for young wildlife

Creating Year-Round Edible Gardens

Please note that this class is geared toward beginning edible gardeners. It focuses on the proven bio-intensive techniques for urban plots. It is a mixture of lecture and hand’s on activities. Elements include:

1. review of soil science basics
2. companion planting to attract beneficial insects and optimize productivity
3. small group design activity for planning and planting
4. double digging and planting veggie starts – hand’s on

This class always takes place outdoors, rain or shine. Dress appropriately, including toe-covered shoes. If you have garden gloves, you may want to bring them.

Gardening to Manage Pests Naturally

Did you know that 95% of the bugs in your garden are not pests? This class will give you the tools to identify beneficial insects and common garden pests as well as the knowledge to incorporate basic Integrated Pest Management practices in your garden maintenance. Through hands on activities, you’ll also learn:

1. how to identify good bugs and bad bugs
2. how to attract beneficial insects like ladybugs and lacewings to your garden
3. how to apply integrated pest management to your home garden
4. common, easy to use, less-toxic products and practices for controlling specific garden problems, such as snails, aphids and weeds.

High Performing Plants for Low-Water Gardening

Interested in finding the plants that will thrive in our Bay Area’s unique climate and bring another dimension to your garden? This workshop opens up the opportunities and shows you the diversity of low-water using Mediterranean and California native plants. Using the plant list from the comprehensive EBMUD plant book, seasoned horticulturists will share their top 30 Bay-Friendly plants – slide show and lecture format. Plant list will be provided.

This workshop also includes tips for grouping plants for water consumption, design tips and troubleshooting, ideas on where to find natives and Mediterranean plants

Design a Bay-Friendly Garden

The Basics class is a prerequisite for this class, so that participants understand the Bay-Friendly philosophy and approach. Homework will be assigned prior to the Design Class. There is a non-refundable $15 fee for this class.

Choosing a section or room of the garden on which to focus, participants come armed with a site plan/map, picture and completed Bay-Friendly design survey.

Within small groups, each participant will have an opportunity to share their design challenge with a landscape designer or architect. This is meant to be a group learning activity, as many residents face common design challenges.

We encourage participants to come as prepared as possible: [bring site map to scale, ideas for how to use the site – is it for entertaining, for kids’ use, edibles? understanding of site – how much sun, shade, slope] All of this information will help the designers help you

Let Worms Eat Your Garbage

If you want an inexpensive but highly valuable organic fertilizer for your garden – worm castings are the way to go. This class goes step by step through the fundamentals of composting with red wiggler worms – the best digesters in nature.

Elements include:

1. basics on worm composting: what is it? What are the benefits?
2. creating a worm habitat – assembling a worm bin (hands on)
3. trouble shooting the worm bin system – workshop presenters use the Wriggly Wranch stacking model which is sold by StopWaste.Org
4. harvesting worm castings and all the ways you can use them in your garden (hands on)

If you have a Wriggly Wranch and have questions or had problems, this class is a great opportunity to get answers.