PETALUMA: Festival helps you spruce up the yard
The Petaluma Art & Garden Festival once again spreads out across two downtown blocks on July 14, with music, wine and food tasting and activities, along with 140 booths of art, plants, and objects to beautify your outdoor living space.
Festival-goers can shop for fresh vegetables, plants, succulents and everything from wind chimes and garden art to antiques, benches and flowerpots. Experts from the Petaluma Garden Club and the Sonoma County Master Gardeners will be on hand to help troubleshoot, as well as representatives from nurseries like North Coast Native, Re-succulents and Noelle's Miniature Gardens.
Entertainers include Dylan Chambers and The Midnight Transit. Dylan is the son of Lester Chambers, lead singer for the '60s soul band The Chambers Brothers. Lester will join him onstage.
Food and wine tasting is by ticket, $25 for a discount pass that includes a commemorative wine or ale glass. Purveyors include Pongo's Kitchen, Nick's Cove, Della Fattoria, Velasco's, Robledo and Reynoso wineries, Lagunitas IPA, Henhouse and Dempsey's. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. 762-9348, petalumadowntown.com.
SEBASTOPOL: Learn to preserve bounty of summer
Summer gardens so often produce more than we can eat. Learn to preserve the bounty for a rainy day during a class at Sebastopol Hardware at 6 p.m. Wednesday, July 10.
Wendy Krupnick, who teaches in the Sustainable Agriculture Program at Santa Rosa Junior College, will cover basic methods for preserving vegetables and stone fruits that includes freezing, canning, drying and pickling.
Krupnick will offer pointers on the best techniques for preserving each type of produce safely and efficiently.
The class is free, and all preserving supplies will be 20 percent off for participants. 660 Gravenstein Hwy N. 823-768, 823-8091 or karen@sebastopolhardware.com.
GLEN ELLEN: Quarryhill creator gets new honor
World plant explorer William McNamara, who created the 62-acre Quarryhill Botanical Garden from seeds he collected himself in Asia, has been honored with an Award of Excellence from National Garden Clubs, Inc., the largest volunteer gardening organization in the world.
McNamara is the executive director of the nonprofit public garden renowned for the study and preservation of temperate flora of Asia. He was nominated by California Garden Clubs, Inc.
Ever since he was recruited by the late Jane Davenport to develop the rare plant garden at her Glen Ellen property, McNamara has made more than 20 expeditions to China, Japan, India, Nepal and Taiwan to conserve and document valuable and endangered plants. He began developing the wild garden of rare plants 25 years ago in an old quarry using seeds he collected in the wild.
McNamara, who has a master's degree in conservation biology from Sonoma State University, has been singled out for other honors by the California Horticultural Society and by the Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College. He holds appointments and advisory positions at botanical gardens, science academies and horticultural societies throughout the U.S. and overseas, including the Department of Botany at the California Academy of Sciences, the San Francisco Botanical Garden, the joint Chinese-American Committee for the Flora of China, the Magnolia Society International and the Scientific Information Center of Resources and Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The National Garden Clubs Inc., based in St. Louis, Mo., has more than 190,000 members in 6,200 local clubs around the country.
ALBION: Digging Dog holds open gardens, sale
It's well off the beaten path, but a trip to Digging Dog should be on the bucket list of any gardener.
The stunningly landscaped nursery on Albion Ridge along the Mendocino Coast has picture-worthy display gardens and has been featured in Martha Stewart Living Magazine and House & Garden.
Friday, July 12 through July 14, Digging Dog will hold an open house and plant sale from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. All plants will be 25 percent off, and admission is free to stroll through the gardens, which also are wheelchair accessible. 31101 Middle Ridge Road, Albion. 937-1130 or diggingdog.com.
You can direct Home and Garden news to Meg McConahey at 521-5204 or meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com.
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