This blog is moving...

Hi all,

Today we had an amazing end to our weekend of plant installation - we completed everything we set out to do, and more!  Read about it all at www.psgsf.org.

Now that the new street park at 17th St and Pennsylvania Ave is pretty much installed, I've merged this blog with our main one at www.psgsf.org, and from now on SPUR info will appear there.

Go there to read all the future updates, learn about upcoming garden events, as well as archives of posts about the 17th and Pennsylvania project.

You can sign up for emails from us about events in the right column under "Email Sign Up" as well as receiving an email of each blog post as they are written (usually about one a week, sometimes more) by putting your email in the box under "Get Blog Posts By Email"

Other ways to stay in touch are  becoming a Follower with Google Friend Connect (right column again) or following us on Facebook or Twitter.

Cheers!

Plantstravaganza!

Plants in place

Today was Day 1 of the 2 day Planting Party marathon we devised to get all 800 plants that were delivered this week in the ground, safe and sound.

I woke up at 5.30am with a very uneasy feeling that it might be asking a bit much from everyone to make his happen. Matt and I were up at the garden shed picking up tools by 7.45am and met Emily and Ryan for 2 hours of plant placement from 8am to 10am. Nate and John came at 9am to join us.

Nate fixing the fence

A relentless stream of plants left the Regent's parking lot, Emily and Ryan coordinating sets of about 35 plants per grouping. With 4 groupings designed by me, and each grouping being repeated 7 times down the street, it was a straightforward though hectic task to drop them off on the path for me to place in the exact spot they were to be planted. Randy from SF Scrap metal generously donated his time and equipment again to use a forklift to move pallet loads of plants for us.

Tina from Baked dropped off some delicious pastries in the middle of all this - what a treat! Everyone really enjoyed those. Especially the lemon bars!

Heads down...

At 10am the volunteers were supposed to arrive, and Emily and I had calculated we'd get about 5 hours of work out of them before they dropped from exhaustion. The initial trickle of helpers was slow, but by 11am a band of people led by Carlin were planting their way down from the top of the street, almost faster than I could place plants ahead of them!

Matt coordinated moving the large Agaves into place, and removing pups from them for later use, with Ryan. Everyone worked quickly and cheerfully and by 1:30pm we'd done about 20 of the 28 groupings!  Jim and Paloma coordinated pizza for everyone from Goat Hill Pizza, and we ate and drank heartily.

Matt and Ryan on Agave duty

After lunch we plowed on, managing to complete all but 4 groupings. Fresh and enthusiastic volunteers showed up to invigorate the crew, and people jumped right into moving mulch into bags to take up to Pennsylvania Garden. Emily coordinated a team spreading mulch there - and guess what? Now we don't need to set up a mulch delivery in spring! Miracle.

Finally by 4:30pm we'd pretty much had enough, and started waving goodbye to people. We picked up all the trash and empty pots, put away all the un-planted plants for tomorrow's session, and took all the tools back to the shed.

Jackie and I collected up and labeled the saved Agave pups, and I took the trash and recycling home. (Almost) DONE!

Before...

After!

A million thanks to all the volunteers from today - Bruno, Mary, Jan, Bette, Mary, Angela, Lissette, Joshua, Dominic, Rich, Luke, Jennifer H., Jennifer L., Diane, Cath, Mike, Matt, Rob, Roxanne, Ian, Tanya, Nate, Ross, Ashley, Trina, John, Carlin, Jackie, Randy, Eliot, Gillian, Heather, Riley, Anna, Bruce, Maulik, Jessica, Janet, Paloma, Jim, Bonnie, Beth  - you are all amazing!  Hope we didn't miss anyone here!

More photos by Emily can be seen by clicking here.

Now, who has any energy left for finishing this job on Sunday? :)

Delivery Day Extravaganza Photo Essay

It was an extravaganza today because of all the work that was done! Over 400 plants delivered, many bags of mulch well bagged and then moved to Pennsylvania Garden, and Jackie single handedly removed all the graffiti from the fence. They said it couldn't be done - well she did it! Many thanks to John, Carlin and Jackie who volunteered today, and the drivers from Village Nursery who helped too.

Jackie & Carlin

Driver extraordinaire John

lovely non-graffiti wall!

Regent's Cab-Nursery

Best Neighborhood EVER

John, John, & John moving plants

I'm going to keep this post short, because I want the main point to come across really clearly. Our neighborhood is the best neighborhood, ever. I'm including Dogpatch and Potrero Hill, residents, renters, owners, and the local businesses. Even passerby have had thoughtful, supportive things to say about the gardens. I have never met so many kind, dedicated and overwhelmingly knowledgeable people.

Many thanks to Randy from
SF Scrap Metal

Pat & Steve: part of the way
way better business bureau!

Jackie is always lending a hand!

It is a very long list of people I need to thank for helping make Pennsylvania Street Gardens what it is, but today I have to thank our volunteers Jackie, John K. and John P. for coming to help unload plants. A huge thanks also goes to Steve, owner of Regent's Cab, who has been incredibly helpful throughout this entire street park installation. Steve has been very gracious and not only has he let us store plants on his lot, he has rearranged the lot so we can easily move plants in and out. Today Steve was a major help in connecting us with Pat at SF Scap Metal. Pat generously donated the time of her forklift driver Randy and equipment so that we could safely and quickly unload very large Agaves. These are the wonderful people that are making the beautiful street park happen, and I am incredibly grateful to them!

BRC installation workday

BRC ready for plants

John demonstrated expert
fennel removing technique

With the help of many volunteers we were able to get a great number of things done today! The first order of business was to plant 57 plants in 3 BRCs (bio-retention cells; just think planting bed in the shape of a parking spot). Annie, Matt, John and my mom Debbie arrived at the street park at 9am to get things in order for the workday. Plants were loaded into John's pickup truck and unloaded at the corresponding BRC site, all according to Annie's wonderful planting diagrams. After we hauled all shovels, gloves, buckets, and whatever else was needed for the workday down from Pennsylvania Garden we got to work putting in the plants. Did I mention we were being filmed during all of this? Peter from the San Francisco Parks Alliance (SFPA), our fiscal sponsor, was there to document our work for the SFPA website.

A gorgeous donated
 Yucca from David

Around 10am Anna, Mary, Jackie, Wendy and Carlin arrived, and got to work planting out the last BRC. Holes were dug, plants lovingly placed, dirt patted down and mulch spread. By 11am we were wrapping up with the BRCs and moving on to the next task. With fresh recruits Jenny and Luke, a crew started digging out the fennel from the planting beds. Luckily Anna brought a great tool for the job, and John gave everyone a quick tutorial on how to get rid of that nasty fennel. The remainder of volunteers worked to distribute the mulch pile at the North end around the garden. By covering the path with a burlap cloth we were able to keep from spilling mulch onto the path in order to keep it nice looking.

A finished product!

At some point David came by with news of a gorgeous Yucca that was available for us to plant. John and Matt dashed off in the pickup truck to retrieve the plant, which has made a lovely addition to the park. Meanwhile, Eliot had arrived and he worked with Jackie to water the BRCs and some of the street trees at the north end. Anna and Mary also put in the last of the cacti that had remained in pots from the previous workday. It was after 1pm when we broke for lunch, and we all celebrated a job well done will we lounged on the yet to be placed boulders eating pizza from Goat Hill and drinking Naked Juice. Many thanks to Jessica who was able to arrange for Naked Juice to be donated for our workdays!

Boulder Delivery

Previously we had rocks delivered to create the wheel stops along the pathway. Today we had another delivery, and these were definitely in the boulder category! Mike drove all the way from Red Bluff with these boulders, and I chatted with him while we waited for the remainder of the boulders to be delivered by a landscape supply company, Lyngso, from South San Francisco. Some of these new boulders will go into the BRCs on Sunday, and others will be added as additional wheel stops along the pathway. Lovely!

Our First Wholesale Plant Delivery!

Wholesale plants yay!

There are many milestones in a gardener's life. Milestones like learning how to properly dig and plant, harvesting the rewards of your hard work as fresh vegetables, fruit or flowers, and loosing a favorite plant to disease, age or weather. Ok, and sometimes neglect. Or maybe a dog stomping it to bits, but hey, that is urban gardening! Back to the point about milestones.

About 100 plants

Today we received our first delivery of plants from a wholesale supplier, called Village Nurseries. Steve at Regent's Cab was kind enough to let us store the plants there until our Planting Party this Sunday January 20th from 10am-1pm and 2pm-5pm. SF scrap metal was also nice enough to let me borrow a platform dolly to move all the plants, as the truck was too big to back into Regent's parking lot. What great neighbors!

I talked with a bunch of other neighbors today too. Many people stopped to chat as I waited for the delivery to show up, and all had great supportive things to say about the park. Fregosi Paint & Co. donated paint so that I could cover up graffiti on our message board, and by the time I had picked up the trash onsite, repainted the message board and talked with neighbors, the delivery truck arrived. What a great morning!

Yucca is not Yucky

Wendy's first tree!

One of our youngest volunteers today, Sophia, asked me 'Why are they called Yuccas? Are they yucky?' They are anything but yucky! For starters, they come in a variety of colors and some are variegated. You can uproot them, leave them behind a shed for months, practically forgotten, and they will re-root when you plant them again*. They also thrive in our environment with almost no additional water after their first rainy season. All winning qualities in my book!

*not that I endorse this type of (non)care, but I'm just saying they will live and don't go looking behind our shed at the garden...

Today we had a mighty team assembled to put in Yuccas, Cacti, move mulch, and clear the site of trash. There is always trash to be cleared! Our mighty team in alphabetical order: Anna, Annie, Carl, Carlin, Eddy, Emily (ok that's me), Linda, Masashi, Matt, Matt (of Annie and Matt), Patrick, Sophia and Wendy. Everyone picked up trash, and then divided up into work groups. Eddy and Matt brought a ton of Cacti and Yucca that we had been storing at Pennsylvania Garden down to the site, the rest of us hand carried a few Yuccas, and everyone got to work digging holes and placing plants. Annie had to leave early to go to work, but she did a great job instructing everyone on where things went and why. Hopefully we put everything in the right place!

Mighty cactus tamed by Eddy, Carl, Matt and Matt

We also had numerous, like almost a dozen, people stop by and say hello and thank you. Everyone had a story to tell about the site, and say how impressed they were with how things were changing for the better. Becky stopped and told us a story of how she used to come to this block and watch the jack rabbits race the train as it went by, back when she was a little girl. Martin, seeing us working across the way as he shopped at Center Hardware with his family, even came over and made a large donation in the form of a credit at Center Hardware. What a great guy!

At the end of the +2 hour workday almost everything was planted, picked up and put away. Did I mentioned the trees were also watered using our new irrigation system? Love it! Can't wait to make all the arrangements for the upcoming plantings on January 20th and 21st. Stay tuned!

Graffiti No More?

Ryan showing the fence before

after finishing for the day

It would be great if the new, beautiful redwood fence on top of the retaining wall never saw another blemish of graffiti. This is of course very unlikely, but to try and make things a little less inviting Ryan and I went out on the Saturday before Christmas to work on the fence. While Ryan prepared the boards for installation I crawled around to the backside of the fence, and with paint donated by Fregosi & Co., I painted over the graffiti facing the train tracks. Hopefully it will look OK from 18th street, as I can see the backside of the fence as I walk to the garden from my house. Next, I helped Ryan install bracing and boards so that the fence would effectively be closed off, and no longer allow anyone to crawl behind it. By the time we were finished it was dark, so we used the headlights from our car to get the final photo. Ta da! Next up is to sand the graffiti off the face of the fence and then plan the entire fence up with spiky things. Graffiti no more TBD...