How to tour eco-friendly gardens in the North Bay online

NORTH BAY

Eco-friendly garden tour goes online

So much of life has transitioned to the web during the coronavirus, including spring garden tours.

The Eco-Friedly Garden Tour, spotlighting sustainable North Bay landscapes that are low in water use but still lovely, will go online on May 2.

Tourgoers can explore 15 gardens by following links on the Sonoma-Marin Saving Water Partnership? website starting May 2.

Sponsors are working to put the entire experience of the annual tour online, including a plant sale by the California Native Plant Society. People can order plants online and society members will deliver them to their homes. Daily Acts, The Laguna Foundation and the Habitat Corridor Project will host a live Q&A from 4 to 5:30 p.m. May 2, with experts fielding questions related to sustainable gardening and landscape design practices.

Participating garden owners have submitted videos of their own landscapes, highlighting favorite features such as native plants, rain water capture systems and use of recycled materials. Gardens range from private gardens to co-housing community gardens to gardens owned by nonprofit organizations. Included is a landscape installed at a fire rebuild in Coffey Park using the Sonoma-Marin Saving Water Partnership’s free landscape design templates.

For more information or to browse the featured gardens, visit savingwaterpartnership.org. To register for the Q&A session, visit tinyurl.com/yb5vyjtt.

SONOMA

Victory garden giveaway

The Sonoma Ecology Center is celebrating its 30th birthday by giving away 300 victory garden starter packs to Sonoma Valley residents on a first-come, first-served basis Saturday.

The free starter packs will include a mix of young summer squash, cucumbers, melons, sunflowers, peas and beans, sprouted at Bee-Well Farms in Sonoma Valley. They also will include tomatoes, eggplants or pepper plants donated by Santa Rosa Junior College and organic carrot and spinach seed packets, as well as a sample of biochar, a carbon-sequestering soil amendment.

The packs will be distributed between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. in “the horseshoe” drive in front of Sonoma City Hall on The Plaza.

To maintain safe social distance, recipients are asked to drive into the horseshoe and wait in their vehicles for someone from the ecology center to place the box in the back seat or trunk.

For those who don’t have space for their own gardens, Sonoma Ecology Center is starting a communal victory garden at Sonoma Garden Park and will share the produce. For information visit sonomaecologycenter.org or call 707-996-0712, ext. 111.

ONLINE

Botany for beginners

Learning plant nomenclature is bewildering. But botanist and Santa Rosa Junior College instructor Captice Disbrow will break it down for you in a free “Botany for Beginners” webinar April 28.

The one-hour presentation will cover the basic anatomy of flowering plants. What clues and patterns do flowers give us that help us understand their relationships?

Disbrow, who has a master’s degree in biology from Sonoma State, serves on the board of the California Native Plant Society’s Milo Baker Chapter, where she edits the newsletter, serves on the scholarship committee and helps with education, outreach and communications. The webinar is from 1 to 2 p.m. It is free but registration is required at tinyurl.com/ycqf7x3u.

ONLIne?Wildscaping for native songbirds

Turn your garden sanctuary into a sanctuary for songbirds.

Veronica Bowers, founder of the Native Songbird Care and Conservation, will give a webinar on Thursday with tips on landscaping your yard, patio or balcony with native plants that will provide food and shelter for native birds, pollinators and other wildlife whose habitat is disappearing.

Bowers converted her own property into a 1½-acre sanctuary that supports more than 70 species of songbirds throughout the year.

The talk is 2-3 p.m. There is no charge, but registration is required at tinyurl.com/ydht4twy.

Home and Garden news may be sent to meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com. Items must be received at least two weeks in advance.