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A Penny For Your…..The Penny Pines Reforestation Program in CA

A penny for a …..pine? As they have for the past 50 years, this year the Chico Horticultural Society – along with other garden clubs statewide – chose honorees to receive a Penny Pines Plantation. I was among this year’s… Continue Reading

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Unity of Opposites: July in the Garden & North State Calendar of Gardening Events

“I hear my mother calling when the summer wind blows, Go out into the garden in your old, old clothes…” Rosemary Wells, “First Tomato” The garden in the height of summer is a source of deep comfort for me despite… Continue Reading

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Oreganos: Ornamental, Useful, Fragrant & Tough

Ahhh, despite heat and drought, these tough-as-nails beauties are in bloom again….enjoy revisiting this summer garden treat: oreganos. I’m a big believer in Beauty for its very own sake, but in a gardening life where choices must be made as… Continue Reading

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June in the Garden & North State Calendar of Gardening Events

Sometimes I’m really organized as a gardener and sometimes I’m just not. Take for instance the deadheading that is now in progress among my early summer blooming perennials – sometimes I get everything in order in advance: I get my… Continue Reading

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Henderson Open Space – The Restoration and Recovery of a Public Treasure

Randall Smith – known as Randy – is a retired physician and community activist who for more than a decade now (many of these as the environmental chair for the Rotary Club of Redding) has been working with the California… Continue Reading

Sweet – May in the North State Garden & Regional Calendar of Gardening Events

PHOTO: Rosa ‘A Shropshire Lad’ April has me left considering the total inadequacy of the word Sweet. I have happily filled my house this past month with old roses, hybrid tea roses, musk roses and climbing roses, with Salvia fructicosa,… Continue Reading

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In a North State Garden and Two New Friends

On Tuesday April 8th, I hosted a special edition of In a North State Garden during Northstate Public Radio’s Spring Membership drive the theme for which has been “A Steady Stream.” With this in mind, my special was a celebration… Continue Reading

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Shasta Chapter CNPS Spring Native Plant Sale – April 10 – 12

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday April 10th, 11th and 12th – the Redding-based Shasta Chapter of the California Native Society will hold their annual spring plant sale open to the public. Continue Reading

Penstemons: Colorful Western Perennials for the North State Garden

PHOTO: Foothills penstemon (Penstemon heterophyllus) in vigorous summer bloom in a low-water Chico home garden. Some people call them beardtongue – the visual image of which always made me laugh as a girl. Now – as an adult gardener whose… Continue Reading

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The Wildflowers of Table Mountain, a Naturalist’s Guide – 2nd Edition (Color)

Despite a long and primarily dry winter, just this week I saw some of the most colorful, lovely and resilient wildflowers – rich yellow Douglas’s violets (Viola douglasii ‘Steudel’) and shooting stars (Dodecatheon sp.). While I know it will not… Continue Reading