••• Grow + Gather!
Free gardening workshops every second Friday of the month at the West Berkeley Family Wellness Center!
We’re bringing a learning garden to life — and everyone is welcome!
Join us for this year-long series (July 2026 to June 2027) to create a thriving hub of edible plants, pollinator-friendly flowers, and local community at the West Berkeley Family Wellness Center.
Each month we’ll observe what’s going on in our garden, then get our hands dirty with: planting and weeding, soil amendment and watering, sweeping and sowing, harvesting and composting, and more. We’ll watch the garden change with the seasons, and learn how to be thoughtful caretakers of nature in our city, and beyond.
Develop skills, share knowledge, and be a part of building something special together. No experience necessary — just curiosity!
JULy 2026!!
Our first month! We’re really just getting to know our garden now: observing our beds, harvesting what’s ready, watching what changes from week to week, and weeding. Hooo-wee, we are weeding. We amended bed #1 and planted a six-pack of zinnias, two pumpkin starts, and some sunflower seeds. After a super hot spell we’ve (still) got some sprouts, blooms, and itty bitty gourds going for it. Shout out to the Monarch butterfly that’s flitted around during each visit.
Thanks to Brittany, Kevin, William, and Julie for being such awesome gardeners, and to Tino for watering!
August 2026!!
Month number two! So much to do! We’re still in major tidy mode, trying to clear paths, beds, and around tables and benches in order to allow full access to the space. We have a lot of weeds, but we also have a lot of yarrow — a lovely California native that isn’t a weed in our garden, but sure is weed-y. Because I knew we’d be taking a ton of it out, I wanted to dedicate the second volume of our Grow + Gather zine to Achillea millefolium — what we might do with it in our garden, along with suggestions for a few creative projects.
Some notes: The pumpkin starts we planted last month have absolutely TAKEN OVER!! Incredible, they are really thriving. Fingers crossed we get some good Halloween gourds going by October. Our zinnias are still blooming, and our sunflowers are almost ready to flower. We continue to produce the biggest zukes I’ve ever seen, and our tomatoes are finally turning red. Very cool to harvest chard and broccoli seeds and some beans — these will become the first additions to our on-site seed library, coming soon!
Thanks to Shay, Adi, Ray, Elle, Nina, Lina, Naomi, Rosalind, Layhoon, Konstantin, and Anna for being such awesome gardeners, and to Tino for watering!
Glossary
Annuals: Plants that go through their whole life cycle in one year, from seed, to flower, to seed again. Annuals can be as persistent as a California poppy, or as ephemeral as baby blue eyes.
Observation: One of the most important things we can do as gardeners is to pay close attention to our plants and our environment — then be curious, ask questions, and seek answers about what we see. Over time, we’ll learn the natural rhythms of our unique urban ecosystem, along with how to protect and support it.
Soil: Soil isn’t dirt! It’s alive and thriving, a nutrient-rich of minerals, organic material, and beneficial micro-organisms that nourish plants through their roots. The good stuff often gets depleted over time — we add compost, loam builder, and / or fertilizer to replenish and rebalance. Healthy soil = happy plants!
Perennials: Plants that grows from the same resilient root system year after year. Perennials can be as small as a seaside daisy or as big as a coast live oak.
Summer-dry climate: Characterized by temperate, dry summers and mild, wet winters. Coastal California is one of five of earth’s summer-dry zones, along with the coastal Mediterranean, southern and western Australia, central Chile, and the west South African coast.
Weed: If something’s growing in your garden and you don’t want it there — it’s a weed. Because any plant can be considered a weed, as gardeners, we get to choose what we keep and what we pull in our space (and we’re allowed to change our minds as we go!). Weeding is an ongoing process — and incredibly annoying or meditative, depending on your perspective.