The last tour of the year occurred on August 4^th and there was a great showing of Master Gardeners interested in learning from each other. We started off at a prolific property on Congress Valley Road where vegetable gardens are intermingled with pollinizers and chickens (well maybe not the chickens, but they and their offspring were definitely present).

In addition to the vegetable gardens, there are a few fruit trees interspersed amongst the many olive trees. Italian plum and a 4-type hybrid apple stood out .

Within the gardens is a bed of Floriani red flint corn, grown specifically for making polenta. This MG's latest interest is to take garden areas and make them pollinator-friendly. It's succeeding in a big way and attracting lots of bees. He's also converted a vegetable bed into a California native garden, probably as a result of his time spent leading similar efforts at the Las Flores Learning Garden.

We all admired the tree in the front yard –maybe a bit too much. One visiting MG was curious and picked at a spot. You can see what's underneath the papery bark, prompting the question, “is this what inspired paper"?

Next up, we toured a re-imagined backyard in downtown Napa. The first time many of us were on this property was during a tour in 2021. What a transformation greeted us. A straight-forward lawn, bordered by trees, shrubs and flowers was replaced by a lush native habitat with softscape walkways–a pollinator paradise. This MG absolutely followed all the gardening rules. The area was lasagna composted about a year ago and planted with a variety of pollinator friendly vegetation. Among the many varieties planted were aster monch, lion's tail, buddleia, verbena, coreopsis, gaillardia, and yarrow, all featured in the Las Flores Learning Garden's Pollinator garden that this MG leads. The lawn was also removed from her front yard and mulch covers it. The front yard is covered in bark mulch awaiting her decision about what to plant in the shady area.

Fall fast approaches, and with it comes the perfect time to consider adding native trees, shrubs and flowers to create your own pollinator garden. A great resource for ideas to get you started (or improving) a native habitat for pollinators is: https://arboretum.ucdavis.edu/pollinator-gardening.  The Napa chapter of the California Native Plant Society, https://chapters.cnps.org/napa/ , has information about planting and care of California natives and holds semi-annual plant sales at their location in Skyline Park. In addition, plan a trip to the Las Flores Learning Garden at 4300 Linda Vista in Napa to tour the pollinator and native plant gardens.

Napa Master Gardeners are available to answer garden questions by email: mastergardeners@countyofnapa.org. or phone at 707-253-4143.  Volunteers will get back to you after they research answers to your questions.

Visit our website: napamg.ucanr.edu to find answers to all of your horticultural questions.