By Kathy Blavatt
(All photos by Kathy)
My husband and I started our Spring with visits to local gardens, starting with the Point Loma Native Plant Garden by Collier Park.
Spring is the perfect time to put on your walking shoes and get out and visit the peninsula gardens while they are in their peak season. The flowers burst forth in color, and branches fill with fresh green foliage.
Unlike the popular Sunset Cliffs Natural Park, which has become full of crowds on most days and evenings, we decided to go to the Native Plant Garden, which is quieter and less crowded.
Over the years, the park’s landscape grown and matured. Improvements and a lovely setting make it perfect for strolling and sitting. Improvements and lovely setting make it perfect for strolling and sitting.
An informational sign with a map and another display sign with the park’s history welcome visitors.
On the weekday we were there, a couple of women and children were playfully walking through the paths, sitting under trees, looking with fascination at the plants, and scoping out animals.
The lovely, picturesque setting reminded me of an impressionistic painting. The laughter of children, the breeze through the trees, the buzz of bees and hummingbirds’ wings, and critters running among the brush was indeed an ideal moment.
Our next garden adventure was the OB Community Garden ‘Open Garden Day’ (thanks to the OB Rag notice).
The OB Community Garden abuts Collier Park, making for a lovely setting.
Gardeners were working on and harvesting their plots in a very relaxed atmosphere.
The gardens glasshouse is perfect for growing starter plants and includes a “Kip Sign” by the entrance.
Also posted out in front of the glasshouse was the winners of the “2021 Vegetable Contests”, which impressively had a long list of giant vegetables that were grown in the garden!
Towards the back of the garden were tables where visitors, gardeners, and student volunteers enjoyed chatting under umbrellas surrounded by fruit trees.
Our third garden adventure was the ‘Point Loma Garden Association Garden Walk’, which was very impressive in its different styles of landscapes and varieties of plants.
Many of the gardens have exquisite water features. Happily, ‘Bee Kind’ signs were popular among the tour’s gardens and the homes along the walk’s route.
The walk included a variety of garden landscapes and patio designs, from traditional, native plant gardens, English gardens, Fung shay with artifacts, vertical gardens and water features, succulents, and cactus.
My personal favorite was the palm house. The home was surrounded by over 250 palm trees, including varieties of rare and unusual species. It was truly an outdoor museum and a horticulturist’s dream to walk through the magical garden of peaceful blowing palm fronds.
The Peninsula has a long history of propagating diverse plant varieties from around the world due to our climate, location, and the community interests that goes back for over a decade. It is essential to continue to preserve the unique and rare species of plants in our local gardens.
The world is losing plant and animal species at record rates. Global and regional habitats such as rain forests, wetlands, deserts, and other environments face mass destruction and die-offs of plant and animal life. Maybe the plants from our local garden will be part of the solution to bringing back some of the world’s lost habitats
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I want to make sure the guy who is almost single-handedly responsible for the great condition of the Point Loma Plant Garden is volunteer Al Field. I live a half block away and have watched as Al has cared for this garden for several years. It looks better than it ever has thanks to Al.
Great place! If only the people with their dogs off the leash weren’t there when we go. They barge all around some of them very comfortable without having them on a leash. Stopped going with the family ’cause of that.