A native plant and wildlife habitat garden blooms in Healdsburg, carved out of the edge of a parking lot, and it’s helping to revive a neglected downtown
Hookeri in the Harry and Maggie Wetzel Native Plant Garden in Healdsburg (CRISTA JEREMIASON/ PD)
creek.
The recently dedicated Harry and Maggie Wetzel Native Plant Garden, created by Russian Riverkeeper in cooperation with the city of Healdsburg and the Wetzel family, is not just an urban oasis, however.
See more photos from the garden here
The sliver of greenery, stretching from the edge of a parking lot to Foss Creek on North Street, serves as a demonstration garden for people trolling for environmentally conscious landscape plants.
Think furniture showroom. But instead of strolling among groupings to see which end tables look best with which couch, you can get an idea of what a Heuchera ‘Wendy,’ Pacific wax myrtle, dwarf coyote bush and blue California gooseberry look like in a mature garden setting.
You can also observe which native plants pair well together.
All of the 87 species have been carefully selected for their ability to thrive in North Coast habitats without a lot of extra irrigation or pesticides.
“This project has great aspects of both restoration and preservation,” said Katie Wetzel Murphy, who came up with the idea of the small public garden as a way of honoring her parents, the founders of Alexander Valley Vineyards, who both died within months of each other in 2008.
“It’s taking an area that was really overgrown and really not beneficial to anyone or anything and restoring it to a use that people can view,” she added.
The garden is one of a number of demonstration and educational gardens cropping up around the county to help people visually see how attractive native and low-water-using plants can look in a real landscape setting they can walk through.
These demonstration gardens also show what native plants look like at various times of the year and when fully mature rather than in a small pot in a nursery.
These small gardens, usually planted and/or tended by volunteers, are free and easily accessible to the public and an invaluable resource at a time when homeowners are increasingly turning to smart landscaping.
Using natives and low-water-use plants provide critical habitat for birds and beneficial insects, conserve water and tend to be easier to maintain.
Also in Healdsburg is the FireSafe Garden, planted in cooperation with Cal Fire, the Sonoma County Master Gardeners and the Healdsburg Garden Club. Located at the Cal Fire Station near Lytton Springs, it features plants that are not highly flammable — wise choices for people who live in areas with high fire danger.
Sonoma has two native plant demonstration gardens, both within a few blocks of The Plaza — one in front of the Sonoma Community Center and one designed like a pretty little neighborhood park along Nathanson Creek in the Nathanson Creek Preserve at East MacArthur and Second Street East.
In Santa Rosa, the Sonoma County Jail Industries, a vocational program for low-risk inmates, maintains two demonstration gardens at the site of their nursery on Ordinance Road.
And in Rohnert Park, Sonoma State University has the Stocking Native Plant and Butterfly Garden with a guided trail through sample plantings showcasing woodland, marsh and riparian ecosystems.
The newest, the Wetzel Native Plant Garden, is a fitting tribute to her parents, said Murphy. They purchased the historic Cyrus Alexander ranch in southeast Alexander Valley 50 years ago. Both were major community boosters. Maggie Wetzel also loved to garden and did what she could to restore the grounds around the original homestead to what she thought they might have looked like when Alexander lived there in the 19th century.
The Wetzel Native Plant Garden is in that spirit. But in this case, it’s trying to restore to the creekside some of the plants that might naturally have rooted there before non-natives and invasive species, some washed down from other properties, took over.
Don McEnill, executive director of Russian Riverkeeper, said that even though the garden is only about 30 feet wide by 220 feet long, it was deceptively difficult to pull off.
The property had at one time been a home that was burned down by Healdsburg Firefighters in a training exercise. It was then compacted and paved over. Because utility lines were still in place, crews had to be extra careful when removing the paving.
The area was also overgrown with invaders, including a huge infestation of privet.
“We’re trying to show that you can have very attractive and aesthetic groupings of native plants, designed to mimic the look and feel of a residential commercial landscaping installation,” McEnhill said.
By July, every plant will be labeled so visitors can see what grows well in marked habitat zones.
“If you’re under the oaks you don’t want irrigation intensive plants,” McEnhill said.
“If you’re next to a creek, you want things that don’t mind being very wet. If you have mixed evergreens you don’t want to put sage in there and if you’re in chaparral you don’t want to plant Monkey Flowers that will just dry up.”
You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or 521-5204.
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