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...

Photo Essay: Tree Irrigation Installation

John-Paul and Krissy from Urban Farmer volunteered to install the irrigation we purchased from them.  They even volunteered to come in before they went into work for the day. How nice is that? Very nice!!!

John, tireless innovator, with new mulch carrying device.  Also allows you to make mulch sandcastles, not that we'd do that...

Always doing a great job with a sunny attitude, even in the wind and rain, it's Carlin! Now all 23 trees have a drip-line emitter system in place.   

North End Phase 1 Done

Let's take a little inventory of what was delivered today before I go into all the work that went on:

25 tons of Sunset Gold Path Fines
8 boulders; size 18"x18"x18"
2 tons of 1.5" Lin Creek Pebbles
1.23 tons of 3"x 8" Lin Creek Cobble
14 CY of soil special for the rain garden
4 persimmon-pecan-ginger muffins*

*Ok these were for Kessel and Mauricio. Everything else was for the park. I guess everything was for them (to move!), but at least the muffins are edible.

Special 3 Compartment Truck - Nice!

I was at the park at 8am to receive the first delivery and the guys were already there ready to go. Love it. Truck was even on-time. Even better! I went over the diagram and notes from Andrea, our landscape architect, and they were ready to go, so I was free to leave. Which really meant I went across the street and bought some paint and supplies from Fregosi & Co. to fix the recent graffiti on our fence. I talked with the guys there and was quickly setup with all I needed. Thanks guys! Always helpful and nice.

Almost done

Everything was humming along until the DG didn't show up, so after a few phone calls things were sorted and it arrived by 1pm. I showed up around 3:30pm to check on progress, and purchase a tarp to cover the extra soil, a special item blended just for the rain garden. Buying the tarp meant taking a walk to see everyone at Center Hardware - which is also a group of the nicest, helpful people. How fortunate are we to have them in the neighborhood, and located adjacent to the park for easy purchasing? Only if a native plant nursery was next door.. but that could be dangerous!

Preparations for the North End

Annie's new plan for the north end

This afternoon I stopped by to put up a few flyers announcing the new street park and to say hello to Kessel and Mauricio who have been busy preparing the north end for a revised DG pathway and installation of the rain garden. When I arrived they were just packing up for the day, so it was a good moment to take a photo of their work for the day.

Ready to go for tomorrow!

Last Saturday the L-extension of the DG pathway was finished, which was no small feat by a group of dedicated volunteers. However, changes to the design plan necessitated that it be removed - see Annie's new drawing. I was sad to see it go, but tomorrow morning another load of DG will be arriving and a better configuration of the pathway that allows for people to continue walking down the street will be created. We are also installing the hardscape for the rain garden tomorrow, which basically means creating a specialized depression that allows water to be slowed, filtered, and drained away from the site. After the hardscape is in we will be able to plant it out with species that are happy existing in a sandy, rocky, environment where their feet occasionally get wet.

Another fine workday in the rain

Before the madness started...

Today started out clear but cold and as Matt and I surveyed the street at 8am we noticed that the mulch had been dumped right on the area where we wanted to build the last section of the path. Ugh!

Lyngso truck arrives

We went to get coffee and came back in time to meet the guy from Lyngso at 8.20am. He was delivering our 72 fine Sonoma field stone boulders, handpicked by Matt and I last weekend.

He got them off the truck, and put the pallets along the street while I unwrapped them and put the trash in bins.

Matt rolled up all the orange plastic fencing that has been protecting the street, and piled up the signboards too.

Rocks are ready

At 9am Kessel and Mauricio arrived and started operating the bobcat, moving rocks to their final places. Then all the other volunteers started arriving and it got busy!

Everyone split into groups and tackled various jobs. One group worked on the remaining pathway, where loads of dirt had to be moved to backfill the pathway, get raked flat and have decomposed granite compacted on top. The dirt down there is heavy and hard to move!

We had 9 tons of decomposed granite delivered and we still need 4 more yards - argh! We had more bender board delivered and Matt cut it to the right length and everyone pounded in the stakes to hold it.

Team hard at work

Another group was busy moving mulch out of the way at the same time. Pitchforks, rakes, wheelbarrows and bucket-loads were spread along the street - amazing how much better that makes it all look!

Another group rearranged rocks, placing them flat side down, every 9' along the street.We had just enough, but when we order more for the bio-retention cells we might intersperse a few large ones in among the current ones.

Work in progress

Lastly Matt headed up a crew removing all the yuccas and cacti from the Regent's Cab lot. Everyone was getting tired, and then it started raining... could we hold out and finish the job?

Emily and Debbie went to get pizzas from Goat Hill Pizza and sadly Emily had to go home as she was feeling sick. The rest of us plowed onwards, stopping for a pizza break. One last push in the rain though and yes - we planted ALL the plants! We cleaned up all the trash, got all the tools back to Sean the DPW guy

Ta dah!

Our first guests

There are still two mounds of mulch and that's going to be work for another day... but while I was contemplating that the very first people to officially walk down our newly opened path passed me, and I had to stop and take their photo - left. Yay!

Matt, Emily, Ryan, Debbie, Tony, Nate, Tristan, Jessica, Chris, Gennie, Gina, Carlin, Leslie, Bruce, Eliot, Bill, Maulik, Steve, Max, Carl, Kessel, Mauricio, the 7 teenagers from Millbrae, and all the people whose names I forgot (sorry - so tired!) all worked SO HARD today and made it happen - thank you all so much for contributing to this community project. You should feel very proud.

Rocking out

Today Matt and I got up early to head down to Redwood City to shop for rocks. We needed to pick out boulders to line the street and prevent cars from getting up on the nice new pathway. We went out and surveyed the myriad types of rock at rock purveyor Lyngso, and chose Sonoma Field Stone, a nice cheap option that come sin lovely colors and shapes, with a dusting of moss and lichen to boot.

We picked out 72 boulders in the 2'- 3' across range, and each one had to have two strips of plastic ribbon and a pink tag attached to mark it as ours. Lots of scrambling around a huge pile of rocks - total health & safety nightmare!

We will have them delivered next Friday for the last of our three-series let's-get-most-of-this-work-done-quickly volunteer day events.  I also ordered 8 more tons of decomposed granite, and 4 more bender boards. That should do it!

Later on we went out and pulled three large Yuccas from the Regent's Cab lot and planted them on the site. We need to get that area in front of the fence planted up quickly, as it's a prime target for taggers. Lots to do!

Care to take a walk?

Well I just walked in from today's volunteer day #2 of 3, which started for me at 7.30am this morning when Lyngso delivered 800' of benderboard and 400 stakes about an hour and a half early... good job Emily texted me because I was still in bed. Ahem!

At 9am Kessel and Mauricio showed up to start operating the bobcat and the vibrating plate machines, and around 9.45am volunteers started showing up.

Happily Mike our contractor had carved a pathway 5' wide and 400' long for us, but we needed to bury our 6" wide benderboard in 3" of dirt on either side of the path, stake it in place, then 3" of decomposed granite.

Burying benderboard isn't easy when there's asphalt or rocks in the way, so at times we resorted to raising the middle of the path instead. And man, that was some heavy work...

Everyone plugged on cheerfully though - even Alejandro and his wife who drove up from Tijuana yesterday (!) and oh, just on their weekend getaway decided to spend several backbreaking hours working on a street park project run by people they don't know (!!!)  I was completely astounded by that when I found out. Who does things like that? You people are amazing.

I went to Center Hardware as we needed hammers, and they loaned us three. Then later on Paloma and her adorable baby went and got pizzas for us all to eat from Goat Hill Pizza - yay!  Great to get support from the neighboring businesses. DPW also loaned us loads of tools which was really helpful.

However, happily we ran out of decomposed granite and had to stop with about 140' of path still to make. I say "happily" because I for one am shattered!

The path ended up being quite curvy in places - at first I was disappointed but when the rocks go in as wheel stops, and the bio-retention cells are in (four parking-spot sized areas that poke into the street to catch storm water and slow traffic) you won't notice the irregularities, and anyway - straight lines are boring.

My deepest thanks to everyone who worked on this today: Matt, Rob, Paloma, Jim, Brittany, Jordan, Eddy, Miley, Jackie, Steve, Andrea, Alyssa, Bruce, Jerad, Bryce, Kenia, Gillian, Eliot, Justin, Jordan, Jessica, Maulik, Quinton, Kyle, Jonathan, Jeffrey, Ernest, Stanley, Leslie, Alejandro, Gina, Raymond, Kessel, Mauricio, James, Bruce, Rick, and anyone else I forgot: you are amazing!

P.S. Three things got left at the site - are they yours? Describe them and I'll get them back to you. A music player, a burgundy top, and a croissant. Actually, I ate the croissant so sorry if that was yours.  ;)

Fencing and gravelling

Alan and Paul 'aving a laff.

Today I went for a peep at the work site and saw two of Richie and Eamonn's men working away at the fence they framed up yesterday. Alan and Paul said the job would be done by end of day - super speedy work!

Similarly, Mike has gone right ahead and placed a few tons of recycled asphalt and concrete grindings on the corner, to level the area where asphalt was removed. This should make a good solid base and be permeable for rainwater to run off and infiltrate well.

Recycled materials in action.

And today Heidi from FuF will be out to plant the two remaining trees on the site. It's all coming along so well - every day brings fantastic improvements to the site.

Emily and I are working away to get ready for the volunteer day on Saturday. We have 25 tons of decomposed granite and something like 60 yards of mulch being delivered on Friday. Hope you can make it out to help us shift all this stuff - going to be a lovely day and yep, we will have PIZZA!

UPDATE: This just in from our Richie! The boys are almost done with the new fence and doesn't it look splendid?

As Richie says, the challenge will now be to prevent graffiti on it, but I hope within a day or two we can start planting yuccas, agaves and all sorts of spiky and youth-repellant plants in front of that fence.