Common Ground GardenAdult Garden Classes
Garden Classes and Events to Grow Your Expertise
All garden classes hosted at Common Ground Garden, 687 Arastradero Road, Palo Alto 94306
More classes on the way!
A ticket for one of our classes supports all of our community oriented programming, including: Youth Education (free field trips for Title 1 schools), garden Volunteer Program, and weekly sustainably-grown-vegetable donations to the Palo Alto Food Closets (SPAFC and PAFC).
View our classes in calendar format here.
How to Grow and Use Medicinal Herbs
(Interactive Lecture)
September 9 from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Price: $30 ($25 Early-bird; purchase before August 9)
‘Let food be thy medicine…’ – Hippocrates
Come learn about herbs that grow well in our Bay Area climate and that are easy to use for self care. We will focus on kid- and dog-friendly herbs, like lavender and rosemary. Learn to identify, grow, and use them on a regular basis, including:
- cultivating the plants
- dealing with bulk fresh/dry herbs
- using in tincture, essential oil or flower essence forms
Penni Thorpe is a volunteer at CGG and a long time lay herbalist and flower essence practitioner in San Mateo. She started learning about easy-to-grow herbs and their use while raising her children. See more classes and workshops Penni offers at her website, here: www.healingflowerenergies.com.
Get tickets here: http://bit.ly/2mDFTb4
Planting for Honey Bees
(Interactive Lecture)
September 23 from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Price: $30
Collectively, the choices we make in our urban gardens impact the health of honeybees and other pollinators. We’ll begin by looking at the biology of Apis mellifera, the European Honeybee, and the annual cycles of a colony as related to weather and forage availability. With that as a background, we’ll discuss plants that can provide nutrition through a variety of seasons.
Bonnie Morse, co-owner of Bonnie Bee & Company which offers local bees and honey in addition to support for local beekeepers through workshops, consulting and hive management. www.bonniebeecompany.com
Get tickets here: http://bit.ly/2uru9g4
Fall Fruit Tree Pruning for Beauty and Bounty
(Hands-on Workshop)
October 14 from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Price: $30 ($25 Early-bird; purchase before September 14)
Pruning is vital to your fruit tree’s health. This class the second part of our ‘Home Orchard’ series, including ‘Summer Fruit Tree Thinning and Pruning for Quality’ (6/17/2017), ‘Fall Fruit Tree Pruning for Beauty and Bounty’ (this class), and ‘Bare-root Fruit Tree Planting’ (1/20/2018). Purchase your tickets early and save!
If you want a fruitful abundance, make sure you understand the art of pruning, from apricots to apples, pomegranates to plums. In this class, you will learn basic techniques of pruning and what tools to use. Tom Cronin, the workshop teacher, will first demonstrate how to prune a tree and then foster hands-on learning with one-on-one assistance in the pruning process.
Tom Cronin has gardened for over 25 years, and he is extensively involved in a number of garden projects. To read all about his experience, visit his website, Tom’s Edible Gardens.
Get tickets here: http://bit.ly/2jgxbRA
How to Start and Grow a Community Garden
(Interactive Lecture)
November 4 from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Price: $30 ($25 Early-bird; purchase before October 4)
This interactive class will explore the essentials of starting and maintaining a community-run garden. Topics will include the types of community gardens, creating the project vision and values, community engagement, where and how to find land, water and irrigation considerations, garden planning, issues of sustainability, funding and organizational structure. The instructor will use Pacifica Gardens as a model to educate and inspire you to become a part of community food-growing.
Loretta O’Brien is the founding project director and garden manager of Pacifica Gardens. Loretta has been a backyard food grower most of her adult life. She has training in both GROW BIOINTENSIVE mini-farming and Permaculture. She can be found most Saturdays at Pacifica Gardens working alongside many dedicated garden volunteers.
Get tickets here: http://bit.ly/2u7SXtx
Bare-root Fruit Tree Planting
(Hands-on Workshop)
January 20, 2018 from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Price: $30 ($25 Early-bird; purchase before December 20)
Learn to plant your own backyard orchard! This class is the third part of our ‘Home Orchard’ series, including ‘Summer Fruit Tree Thinning and Pruning for Quality’ (6/17/2017), ‘Fall Fruit Tree Pruning for Beauty and Bounty’ (10/14/2017), and ‘Bare-root Fruit Tree Planting’ (this class). Puchase your tickets early and save!
Do you know how to choose an appealing apricot tree? How to care for a mulberry? How much water a pomegranate tree needs in this drought? This workshop is your chance to learn hands-on what an arborist sees when selecting and caring for fruit trees. Tom Cronin, a masterful arborist, will take you into the garden to plant some trees and learn about…
- Bare root definition
- Tree/plant selection
- Timing of plantings
- Hole size and planting depth
- How to fertilize trees best
- Water basin and watering requirements, especially in the drought
- Critter protection (including gophers, deer, squirrels, birds, rats, raccoons, etc.)
Tom Cronin has gardened for over 25 years, and he is extensively involved in a number of local projects, such as City Trees and Incredible Edible Redwood City. To read all about his experience, visit his website, Tom’s Edible Gardens.
Get tickets here: http://bit.ly/2j9lUzV
6 Comments on “Adult Garden Classes”
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I have several questions:
1) Would you ever consider having a class on what plants, in a survival situation, might be edible.
These would be plants in the garden that would be edible, however, not on the list of fruits and vegetables that most people specifically plant to eat?
2) I planted an all organic lawn 7 years ago. It is now about 50% weeds, Bermuda grass and Crab grass. What can be used (organic, not toxic) to kill the bermuda grass. NO ROUNDUP or similiar.
3) My last problem is having dozens of squirrels that live on my property. They eat every single fruit or vegetable and many flowers that are planted with the exception of Bell Peppers and Jalapenos. It has gotten worse as the years have gone by. It is easier to prevent deer and rabbits from getting to crops, however, squirrels can climb anywhere!!
Do you have any suggestions?
thanks, Pat Sheehan
Hi Pat,
Thank you for reaching out! Some quick answers that I hope are helpful:
1) We are looking to host a foraging class on wild edibles. Keep checking back to our adult classes for it!
2) As for your lawn question, I have reached out to an owner of a local landscaping company called Landsthetics (landsthetics.com). I’ll be in touch with his suggestions.
3) You are about the 20th person who has asked about this issue. I have some good news on the squirrel front! It is possible that CGG may host a free class about squirrel and gopher protection for gardens. It is a pressing gardening issue in this region of the Bay Area, and we are planning to make cages for our garden beds to protect our crops. So far, we have not found another way to solve the pest problem.
If you have more questions, please continue to reach out to CGG. Thank you for gardening.
Hi,
I echo the concerns with squirrels! I look forward to any info on that subject!
Mona,
If the Silicon Valley Community Foundation approves our proposal, we hope to offer a free class about (furry) pest prevention to the local gardening community. It seems that insects are not the challenging garden pest this time!
Keep checking our adult class page or sign up for our newsletter to get updates. I hope to meet you one day and talk about squirrels!
Hello,
My name is Joanna Tran and I am a Program Assistant at the City of Palo Alto- Public Works Water Quality. Every September we host an array of activities for Pollution Prevention week to teach both City employees and residents how to keep pollutants out of our watershed.
A couple of years ago, our group worked with Common Grounds to host an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) workshop to educate local gardeners on how to grow a sustainable garden. I wanted to know if you still offered these workshops at your garden as we would LOVE to work with you once again. I heard great feedback about these workshops from previous years and think it’d be a great idea to bring it back once again if still available.
Please let me know if these workshops are still available and the cost to reserve. Our Pollution Prevention Week activities will take place September 18 to September 22nd. Thank you for your time.
Best,
Joanna
(So sorry for the informal request! I could not find a working email address to contact)
Resubmitting as I had a typo to my email address