Lake County >> “I think it’s about time that we started getting some recognition about how beautiful it is around here,” said Kathy Steinberg, the Garden Walk Press Chair of the Clear Lake Trowel and Trellis Garden Club.
To showcase the beauty away from the lake, mountains and vineyards, the club set up the Hidden Gardens of Lake County 2015 Home Garden Tour, the first of its kind in the area. The tour takes place this Saturday from 10 a.m. -4 p.m. Guests can purchase a passport ticket and visit 8 gardens around Upper Lake, Lakeport and Kelseyville.
The event is a fundraiser for scholarships for two high school students who plan to pursue a degree in horticulture or related fields. Last year the club gave two students $500 each. With all the expenses of college, the scholarships help cover the cost of books. “It is a garden club,” Steinberg said. “We want to encourage people to take care of the earth themselves.”
The rest of the funds go toward local student gardens. There are seven gardens at various schools around the county and the club plans to divide up their proceeds among them. “We want to get them used to planting and seeing things grow and actually taking it from the garden and into the cafeteria for the food program,” said Steinberg. “So it kind of gets them excited about gardening.”
Steinberg said it’s important children begin gardening as early as possible. “When you get kids excited when they’re young about gardening they’re going to carry it right up through when they graduate and they go out on their own,” she explained. “They’re going to understand the importance of taking care of themselves, the land, the water and how to garden effectively.”
Debra Watson O’Dell, the Co-Chair of the home garden tour, agreed that learning to garden has numerous benefits for a child. “We just really feel we have an opportunity through those gardens,” she said. “The financial benefits and health benefits to them with these student gardens are going to stay with them throughout their lives.”
Donating funds to school gardens could have a wide-spread positive impact on the county’s children. “[The tour] is going to benefit a lot of local youth,” Watson O’Dell said. “Our scholarships have been a wonderful thing. That’s one or two students a year. These school gardens can benefit hundreds of kids a year.”
Kelseyville Elementary School possesses a kid’s garden, which is featured on the tour. Director Helen Finch has seen the positive effects of gardening first-hand. Once kids grow and cook many of their own salad ingredients, they’re so excited about their food that they head back for thirds. “It just changes their whole attitude on eating,” Finch said.
The Clear Lake Trowel and Trellis Garden Club used to make lush green wreaths as a fundraiser, but in the face of the drought there isn’t enough greenery to construct the wreaths. So instead, they turned to the county’s home gardens. “We have so many amazing gardens, that’s why we called it the Hidden Gardens of Lake County,” said Watson O’Dell. “We thought it would be delightful to show people … exactly what we’ve got here.”
Steinberg was happily surprised when the club discovered the many impressive yards. “We have some gardens around our lake that are absolutely fantastic. They’re absolutely beautiful,” she said. “We could go right up against anybody in the state with our gardens. We’ve been working and trying to get the word out.”
The Trowel and Trellis Garden Club hopes to bring more positive attention to the county. “We want to show off the lake,” Steinberg said. “This area is fantastic and people just for some reason don’t think about Lake County.”
The club has advertised a good deal in the surrounding Humboldt, Mendocino and Napa counties. They hope the event attracts visitors. Watson O’Dell thinks the garden tour will benefit the community by “introducing people to Lake County who might be unfamiliar with it,” she said. “We expect that we’ll get a fair number of people from these surrounding counties.”
If ticket sales are any indication, the future of the event looks promising. “We have sold so many pre-sale tickets I’m going to say it’s already a success,” said Watson O’Dell. “Hopefully we can do this every year.”
While most of the gardens on the tour are in Upper Lake and Lakeport, O’Dell hopes each year they can concentrate on yards in varying locations. “Our next tour maybe we would do the Riviera areas and then maybe another tour would be just in the general Kelseyville area,” she explained. “But this year we just tried to keep it within that Upper Lake, Lakeport area, so that people have time to see everything.”
Each garden offers something just a little bit different. One garden in Upper Lake is owned by Dr. and Mrs. Glenn Benjamin. It features 60-year-old walnut trees, old and new roses, and Camellias and Hydrangeas original to the garden. The various tress and shrubs are common to the time the house was built, during the Victorian period. Situated among the plants is a Redwood tree, planted the day World War I ended. Then there are the statues spread throughout the grounds, commissioned by various well-known artists.
The other Upper Lake garden belongs to Bernie and Lynne Butcher at the Tallman Hotel. The Butcher’s brought in a landscape architect from Portland to design the space, which boasts six London Plane trees. Guests at the Blue Wing Saloon can sit under the shade of the sizeable branches and enjoy a meal. The entirety of the garden was planted in the spring of 2006 and to this day, the greenery is thriving. “[The trees] were no taller than I am when we opened ten years ago,” said Bernie Butcher. “This time of year, everything’s growing.”
While the Tallman Hotel’s gardens are mostly decorative, consisting of flowers, trees and shrubbery surrounding a sculpture tour, a small market garden does exist behind the saloon. Herbs are grown for use in the restaurant.
Four gardens are located in Lakeport. Gerald and Josephine Shaul have been working on their greenery since 1969, when the couple built their home on 2 acres of an abandoned walnut orchard. “We’re surrounded by trees. Most of them my husband planted, so they’ve been here a long time,” said Josephine Shaul.
The garden features an abundance of native plants to conserve water in the face of the drought. “Some plants, once they’re established, don’t have to be watered,” explained Shaul. “We’ve always been concerned about water conservation and all that and that’s one of the reasons I wanted our yard on [the tour].”
She wished for their garden to encourage water conservation among those who visit during the tour. “We’re hoping that they will learn to see what you can do by planting natives and getting away from big lawns,” Shaul said. “It really upsets us when we see people wasting water.”
Shaul passed her love for gardening down to her son, Karl Shaul. His garden is also featured on the home garden tour. Karl and Jane Shaul, whose home is situated just down the road from Gerald and Josephine Shaul, are committed to organic and bio-intensive practices. The potager garden, an ornamental kitchen or vegetable garden, is Mediterranean in style and produces year-round. The couple provide produce, including figs, olives and artichokes, for Gerald and Josephine Shaul as well as their own family.
The land boasts art of all kinds from wooden structures to handmade garden art to a custom hothouse. Karl and Jane Shaul will also be having a plant sale during the tour, featuring succulents, low water plants and vegetables.
Dr. Wayne Scheidemann’s garden, located in south Scott’s Valley, has a view of both the valley and Clear Lake below the property. In 1990, his home was custom designed for Barney Forbes by an architect out of San Francisco. Upon acquiring the property, Dr. Scheidemann went to work, landscaping the grounds to create a palm nursery. With many varietals of palms, his garden brings “island beauty” to Lake County.
Watson O’Dell isn’t just organizing the home garden tour, she’s featured in it as well. “It’s just kind of the concept that I would say lots of American farms were set up the same way,” she said, describing her garden.
On over 40 acres of land, her home, constructed as a traditional French farmhouse, features a 70-year-old walnut orchard. Any time of the year, her potager garden hosts an abundance of items, including raspberries, strawberries, asparagus and a gogi berry hedge. The gardens include an heirloom variety fruit orchard and trees for honey bees. A grape arbor and perennial flower garden flank the pool.
“We’re lucky we can grow so many things that are traditionally grown in the Mediterranean climate of France and Italy, so it makes it really fun.” Watson O’Dell said.
In addition to the many fruits, vegetables and plants, animals roam the grounds. The garden is home to heirloom Icelandic sheep and lambs, chickens, ducks and two French Toulouse geese.
Watson O’Dell can’t wait for Saturday. “I’m really looking forward just to meeting … and talking with other gardeners and just seeing what they think about our gardens and learning from them too,” she said. “I think that’s going to be really wonderful.”
The last two gardens are located in Kelseyville and run by the elementary school and high school. Both schools benefit from the club’s fundraiser and are part of the Farm to School Program.
The children at Kelseyville Elementary School tend to their garden two days a week during the school year and once a week in the summer months. The kids learn the basics of gardening and also harvest the food for meals. “They cut it up, they wash it and get it all prepared and send it over to the high school where it goes into their lunches,” explained Finch.
The tour is an opportunity to witness first-hand how gardening benefits the children. “We just like people to come out and see what the kids are doing and see what an extensive garden they have going on,” Finch said. “It’s a pretty serious effort there. They’re actually farming.”
The benefits of gardening, regardless of age, are numerous. “I think there are wonderful health benefits. I think it’s a really good form of exercise too,” Watson O’Dell said. “We have so many members that are still gardening in their 90s. Some of our founding members have lived past 100.”
Plus, growing the food for a meal provides a feeling of gratification hard to find elsewhere. “It’s such a sense of satisfaction when you sit down to a meal that is really wholesome,” said Watson O’Dell. “You know how the meat was raised, you know how everything was raised. It’s an incredibly satisfying and enjoyable thing.”
The Hidden Gardens of Lake County 2015 Home garden Tour is this Saturday from 10 a.m. -4 p.m. To purchase tickets email gardentour@clttgc.org or call 279-0192. Tickets can also be purchased the day of the event, starting at 9:30 a.m. at the Lake County Wine Studio in Upper Lake, Jitter Bean Coffee Company in Lakeport or the Kelseyville Elementary School Kid’s Garden.
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
