2011
portola neighborhood garden
After updating the landscaping in the Portola neighborhood, this large site was ready to be turned into a community garden. an AmeriCorps team built beds, mulched the site, and other volunteers filled them with soil. One of my intern’s projects was to sheet mulch the poor soil and plant a pollinator garden with natives along the fence. Gardens take time to build, and even more time to maintain-regular volunteer workdays weeded and mulched community spaces, but individual beds were assigned to and maintained by families in the adjacent neighborhoods.
2011-laying string lines for plot placement
assembly line-building sides
adding hardware cloth to keep out gophers
braces to keep plastic lumber from bowing
beds lined with landscape fabric
help from SFCC to fill the beds
several wheelbarrow loads per bed
families planting their new beds
June 2011
September 2011
November 2011
June 2011 showing the edge that was eventually sheet mulched and planted with natives
June 2015 native plant border + herbs
2014 community gardens need lots of community maintenance
by October 2019 bird exclusion cages were added to keep sparrows from eating all of the new seedlings