Last month’s Brown Bag Speakers Forum featured Cristina Campbell, a volunteer at U.C. Botanical Garden. Since retiring from her work as a university librarian, she has worked in a volunteer capacity at the Garden, propagating California native plants.
Ms. Campbell introduced us to the Garden and its role as a lab for the university’s botany and environmental education programs. Read more about the garden: http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu
Cristina’s talk was filled with detailed information about specific plants and the history of the garden’s efforts to conserve native species. (Plants are labeled native if they grew in a region prior to European contact and survived the introduction of new species brought by settlers and explorers.) She described the local habitats where these plants will thrive, encouraging gardeners to plant natives that are well-suited to our soil conditions and micro-climates.
Our Discover and Go program offers free day passes to the U.C. Botanical Gardens. Check it out online at http://guides.aclibrary.org/discover?topic=Library&cat=DiscoverGo
Of course, our own library is surrounded by a border of beautiful plants–some of them natives. See the geraniums and ceanothus intertwined below.
