Civic Beautification

The sun was out and we were able to plant raised beds at the Berkeley Arts Magnet School on Lincoln Street. Many thanks to our Civic Beautification Committee for coming with garden gloves and trowels in hand!

We planted 4+ raised beds with 35 plants: plants for making dyes, plants for a ‘sensory’ garden and pollinator plants. We will continue to maintain the raised beds and plant additional CA native Monarch butterfly pollinator plants in spring. This is all in coordination with BUSD planting coordinator, known to her students as ’Miss Cat’, who not only enabled us to do this, but provided us with encouragement, snacks, tea and a valuable link to the school district.

Many thanks to all who participated, and especially to Adrienne for the initial idea and connections with Miss Cat, and for Ben doing the chop and drop of the existing vegetation to prepare the beds, going nursery shopping (East Bay Nursery, Oaktown Nursery, and Annie’s Annuals) and doing the majority of the compost/soil top dressing preparing the beds for planting. Also thanks to East Bay Nursery for giving us, at a very deep discount, the 15 cubic feet of compost.