West Marin Climate Action’s Local Food Resilience Working Group
invited the community to visit
Food Gardens in West Marin
Saturday, April 30th
Bolinas – 10 am to noon
Point Reyes Station and Inverness Park – 1:30 to 4:30 pm
Are you an aspiring food gardener, but aren’t quite sure where to start? Do you already grow fruits and vegetables, and would love to see how others deal with gardening challenges? Whether you are a novice or experienced – or somewhere in between – this garden visit day offered opportunities to learn with local home gardeners.
Morning in Bolinas - one location option
An in-depth tour and discussion, lasting up to two hours.
10:00 am to 12:00 pm
· Hosts Mark Butler and Meg Simonds – Mark and Meg live on 1/2 acre in Bolinas. Their garden/orchard is 37 years old and covers 1/4 acre. They have 20 fruit trees with 9 types of fruit, along with a greenhouse, chickens, and bees. They are 100% organic and, though they create compost in a variety of different ways, their "cover crop /no till" method of building soil is what they are most proud of. Other things of interest are two homes hand built from 100% recycled wood, a humanure composting system, greywater, 17,000 gallons of water catchment, and a small solar system.
Afternoon in Point Reyes Station, Inverness, and Inverness Park - choose three tours
Four hosts opened their gardens for shorter and more intimate visits and conversations lasting 40-45 minutes each.
Tours started promptly at 1:30, 2:30, and 3:30 pm
· West Marin School Garden, hosted by Jo Ann Kempf – The garden at WMS is approximately 50x 70 feet with 32 raised beds. It enhances the students’ education as well as the school property. Students plant and tend the garden which in turn helps to provide fresh produce to augment the school lunch program; produce is also offered to school families.
· Hosts Eden Clearbrook and Marie Grace – This is a compact, two-year-old, permaculture inspired, partial-sun, roadside garden in Point Reyes Station, mostly organic. It has gopher-wired temporary containers and an ongoing compost pile with manure from Marie's animal rescues. The garden provides Eden and Marie with daily, year-round greens, vitality, and joy.
CANCELLED
· Host Burton Eubank – In his small Inverness Park garden, Burton promotes density and variety to obtain an abundant daily harvest year-round. The food forest concept is largely employed, and even the fruit trees have multiple grafts to increase variety and yield. Protection methods against common pests are demonstrated, and there are weekly plantings as well as intentional seed production and collection.
· Hosts Eleanore Despina and Bing Gong – This Point Reyes Station garden has raised beds in both sun and shade, with protection from gophers and quail. Eleanore and Bing also have an interesting chicken coop and a separate orchard. The water catchment system was developed over time to 8,500 gallons, with uphill pumping. Composting is practiced both with worm boxes and in the open.
Visitors were encouraged to bring a stool/seat if preferred, so that all can be comfortable while sharing garden lore. No restrooms.
Each visitor to this outdoor event has the option to mask or not, depending on your individual COVID comfort level. We followed Marin County Health Department guidelines.
FREE EVENT. Donations to West Marin Climate Action are gratefully accepted.
About West Marin Climate Action’s Local Food Working Group
West Marin values locally produced, fresh food and strong community. Considering our changing climate and the increasing frequency of wildfire threat, drought, flooding, not to mention other challenges like earthquake and pandemic, our food supply can become less reliable, and accessible. It makes sense to take action together now, to strengthen our community’s food resilience.
One way to do that is by encouraging more community members to grow our own food – for our own health, for our community’s health, and for our planet’s health.