A Fine Day in the East Bay - The Fleming Garden

Town Mouse is very good to me. Knowing I tend to be a stay-at-home little mouse, nibbling incessantly on grasses and weeds, she encourages me to get out a little and see the world. So on Sunday (actually "yesterday" for two more hours as I write) I drove over the mountain to Mr and Ms Town Mouse's lovely garden and residence - gasped at the beautiful phacelia in the front yard (see above) - and then headed up to Berkeley, and the Bringing Back the Natives garden tour. We fought the navigation system all the way there. She kept patiently and pleasantly telling us to leave the freeway at every exit (Till I banished her) - I must have set a no-freeway option unknowingly. Then she led us on a winding tour of many charming Berkeley hills neighborhoods before depositing us at our first stop: the Fleming Garden.

The Fleming garden is well known among native plant gardening aficionados in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was my first time there and I was captivated. It is a 50-plus-year old garden, sloping up, as do so many homes in those steep hills, both behind and in front of the house. Here's a shot looking up towards the house.

And here's a shot looking up from the back of the house.


The pool gathers water that tumbles prettily down the hill and is recirculated back to the top. A visitor found a tiny snake near the pool and was handling him for a few minutes before releasing him. i think he's a baby Pacific ring neck snake, Diadophis punctatus amabilis. He did have an orange belly. He was slimmer than a pencil.


The paths were rocky, with solid steps and sturdy hand rails. I really want some very solid hand rails and steps leading down into the flatter lower area of the chaparral slope here, to make that area more accessible.


(Those are Town Mouse's back paws we see - she was a nicely color co-ordinated mouse, as usual.)

The Fleming garden filled us with oohs and aahs, in a quiet, rich, green, restful way. There were flowers of all sorts, and maybe Town Mouse got some photos to share. But they were accents rather than massed bands of color. The foliage itself held my interest certainly. Here is an arctostaphylos aglow.

And here is a shot from above of a stunning bunch grass meadow on a mound, topped with lupines, and sprinkled with poppies and all kinds of delicious smaller flowers - and surrounded by admirers. Rather hard to capture in a photograph.


If only I could do something like that with our local Nassella lepida, foothill needle grass - very similar to Nassella pulchra, purple needle grass, the one used here.

But oh, the bunnies! They would think they'd died and gone to bunny heaven. It would never work without a fence.

There was even a river of grass, with Douglas irises intermingled. It looks like Festuca idahoensis, Siskiyou Blue but I'm not sure.

And a small swimming pool, edged with rocks.


And beyond the pool there is - quite a view!

That's Berkeley spreading out below, and San Francisco across the bay.

If you want to see more pictures and read a little more info on this garden, click here. Garden designer Luke Hass who maintains this lovely garden was on hand and was answering questions non-stop. His portfolio is also worth a look.

Before moving on to the next garden, we bought a couple of home made cookies from a pair of cheerful young teenage girls and sat down and soaked it all in. The sun was warm and gladdening after our chilly wet spring days.

Also enjoying a sit in the garden was the estimable Helen Popper, who is writing a book on native garden maintenance month by month, to be published by U.C. Press. She says she is making great progress, but there is a lot of detail work to be done yet, getting permissions for photos and so on. I can't wait! I'm excited for her, too.

I'm sure Town Mouse has more to share about the gardens we toured - she particularly wanted to see the Bee Garden, quite a different enterprise from the Fleming Garden to be sure.

Oh, I also have a greenhouse update - the roof is on!!