While this garden is open all year round, visiting it during the tour day provides an opportunity to ask the docents about any particularly interesting plants or features.

Address: 409 Seymour St, San Jose (click the address to show it on a map).

Directions: From Hwy 87 (Guadalupe Pkwy), take the Taylor St. exit and head southwest for about 0.4 mile, then turn left onto Walnut Street, and left onto Seymour St. To get to the garden, walk about 500 ft across the park, towards Taylor Street.

Showcase Features: The current location of the garden used to be hard clay soil, infested with Bermuda grass, and required substantial preparation work. The site was prepared over the course of 2 years by sheet-mulching without any water besides natural rainfall. The clay soil was amended with compost and gypsum, and mycorrhizae inoculate at the planting time.

Over the next two years, many plants have flourished into eye-catching specimens, including several clumps of deer grass, numerous mature Ceanothus shrubs, California wild grape, locally native California buckwheats, low-growing Salvia "Bee's Bliss", and a spectacular specimen of the "Ken Taylor" flannelbush. The site also hosts patches of lawn-quality native CA grasses with low watering requirements.

Other Garden Attractions: CA native grasses receive supplemental irrigation via a Hunter Industries sub-surface irrigation system. The entire system uses recycled water and avoids water run-off. Hardscape paths are made of Decomposed Granite with an organic binder (Organic Lock), recycled crushed brick, and urbanite (recycled concrete blocks) with Perk Grout (permeable grout material with polymer binder).

This garden is used as a living laboratory so that students, residents, and staff can gain hands-on experience with sustainable landscaping methods and technologies.

Gardening for Wildlife: Moths, butterflies, bees (native and European), native flies and wasps, gopher snakes, red-tail hawks, crows, bluebirds, American kestrels were observed in the garden.

Years of CA Native Gardening at this Location: 3

Garden Size: 6,269 sq.ft.

Designer: Amber Schat and Frank Niccoli
Installer: Amber Schat, Frank Niccoli and City of San Jose staff and the public

Click here to display the plant list in a printer-friendly format.