- Author: Sherry Blunk
Took a detour to Woodland to check out the Mezger Family Zinnia Patch- a free to pick flower patch where all they ask in return is that you pick extra flowers to deliver to folks that cannot make it out themselves! Remember part of the magic of zinnias is that cutting their flowers promotes more future blooms- no risk of this patch running out of flowers.
I had a wonderful time ogling all the flora and fauna and admiring the persistence of the busy pollinators, including many species of bees and wasps, moths and butterflies, and hummingbirds.
The Mezger Family Zinnia Patch is open daily dawn-dusk, typically through late August. So, grab your clippers, buckets, and sun protection and prepare to spend a few hours creating and sharing some botanical art. Additionally, there is a table onsite where you can clean and prepare your bouquets and occasionally there are donated vases and supplies for use. You can also leave any extra vases/containers you have at the table for future visitors.
2024 Mezger Family Zinnia Patch location*
11990 County Road 96, Woodland
*The Zinnia Patch relocated to the above locale in 2022. For previous visitors, the current Patch is ~0.25 miles from the original site (12410 Road 99W) and there are signs from the old to new location.
![Photo of zinnia field, with rows flowering plants separated by bare dirt rows Photo of zinnia field, with rows flowering plants separated by bare dirt rows](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/mgyoloblog24/blogfiles/107777.jpg)
![Orange bucket filled with red, yellow, and pink zinnia flowers Orange bucket filled with red, yellow, and pink zinnia flowers](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/mgyoloblog24/blogfiles/107778.jpg)
![Close-up of light green butterfly feeding on pink zinnia Close-up of light green butterfly feeding on pink zinnia](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/mgyoloblog24/blogfiles/107782.jpg)
![Close-up pink zinnia flower Close-up pink zinnia flower](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/mgyoloblog24/blogfiles/107780.jpg)
![CLose-up of orange zinnia flower underside, looking up towards the sky CLose-up of orange zinnia flower underside, looking up towards the sky](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/mgyoloblog24/blogfiles/107781.jpg)
- Author: DJ Andriessen
In 2012, Delta Elementary Charter School (DECS) teachers and the Administration in Clarksburg decided to write a grant to use the money to create a learning garden dedicated to a past principal, Don Fenocchio. With great delight, they received the grant money and successfully created a beautiful community/school learning garden. It was a great success for the first few years. All the funds for the grant were used.
As with all schools, teachers and students come and go, and with the passage of time and the pandemic, those in charge of the garden left, and those interested in maintaining the lovely garden went with them.
Fast forward to 2023, when Kathy Brown, UCCE Master Gardener-Yolo, came to town. With her daughter and her family moving to ‘The Burg,' Kathy was able to familiarize herself with the area.
When she first saw the garden, the once beautiful raised beds were growing only an abundance of Bermudagrass, as was the rest of the area. Areas were filled with trash meant for removal but never removed, and all the original drip and irrigation systems were inoperable.
She went to work. With the help of her family, friends, the local garden club, and farmers and their crews in the area, they spruced up the old garden. Kathy is a force of Nature!
Then, Kathy started working with the DECS teachers and administration and, in May, held a student learning day. Each class came to the garden and planted seeds in the raised beds. The Clarksburg Garden Club and fellow Master Gardener Jalena Rusaw aided her. The event was a huge success.
After the event, we discussed the possibility of creating a junior garden club during the school year and holding weekly after-school sessions in the garden. This would teach students the importance of growing food and plants that attract pollinators.
This blog will share with you the trials and tribulations of our efforts.
Wish us luck!
![photo by DJ Andriessen photo by DJ Andriessen](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/mgyoloblog24/blogfiles/107516.jpg)
- Author: Lorie Hammond
In conjunction with Davis Farm to School, I have been developing a partnership, as a Master Gardener, withGanHaverim Preschool in Davis. It began with a teacher workshop in early June, at which we planned the preschool summer garden. Then teachers planted sunflowers with their preschool classes in pots to take home, and in large pots to enjoy at school. As a follow-up, on June 27, I worked with both preschool classes (ages 2-3 and 4-5) to discuss the life cycle of the sunflower and its relationship with pollinators. I used a large poster I drew of stages in the life cycle, bringing real sunflower seeds (black seeds sold as birdseed) to illustrate the importance of seed production. Then children participated in an art project to express what they had learned.
Sunflowers are such a wonderful and showy summer flower that they always captivate children's attention. I brought real sunflowers (from Trader Joe's- mine weren't ready yet) and placed them in a tall vase in the center of the table. Then I gave each child a piece of recycled cardboard (about 8” x 10”) as a background, and told them they could make a sunflower any way they liked. I also brought cut outs of green paper (long shapes for stems, and triangles for leaves), yellow triangles and diamonds for petals, real sunflower seeds, and white glue with brushes. Each group of two children shared a glue. Eight children at a time did the project, in about five rotations so that everyone could participate.
After children completed their collages, I asked them to tell the story of their sunflower. Either the teacher or I wrote it down on the cardboard. Finally, they were given a treat: a sticker of either a bee or a butterfly to place on their sunflower to “pollinate” it.
As a long-term school garden teacher, I have always found it powerful to combine science and art lessons. Children participate in a lesson, then express their understandings through art, and sometimes through statements about their art. We learn more about how children think if we do not force children to copy a model, but rather allow them to express themselves as they choose. Collage materials provide a nice opportunity for even young children to create realistic but varied images.
A partnership between Gan Haverim, Davis Farm to School and me as a UC Cooperative Extension Master Gardener is developing through workshops with teachers and occasional activities with children. What could be more fun on a summer day than preschoolers making sunflowers?
- Author: JD Trebec
When I first bought my home in central Woodland six years ago, there wasn't much in the yard to interest dragons: a mature orange tree that produced amazingly delicious navel oranges in the winter, a human-planted valley oak on the street out front, and squirrel-planted valley oak too close to my neighbor's fence line that looks ready to wallop my workshop. The rest of my small yard was Bermuda grass that burped up a fluffy clouds of invasive oxalis in the early spring and then reverted back to tired looking grass when the summer heat arrived. Nothing of interest, really, for a dragon. They aren't that interested in acorns or sorrel salad, and thankfully, they don't care for amazingly delicious oranges either because, of course, dragons are carnivores.
I quickly (well maybe not so quickly, it took a couple years) dug up and lasagna'ed the lawn and set up some garden beds and patches of native plants. It was only a few years after that that I started to spot the dragons: a flame skimmer resting on a corn stalk, a blue-eyed darner lurking among the peach leaves. This left me somewhat confused because I did not believe that dragons would be interested in my land-locked urban lot.
I'm talking about dragonflies of course and there are no bodies of water anywhere near me. Everyone knows that dragonflies are aquatic insects, right? How did they end up here? I wondered if they had blown in from Cache Creek somehow or maybe hitched a ride over from the Yolo Bypass. They didn't seem to stay long. It wasn't until recently when I saw about a half dozen of what appeared to be four-spot pennants darting and swooping about ten feet overhead in the early evening that I began to put it all together.
Dragonfly larvae are aquatic, but the adults certainly aren't, and with a cruising speed of about 16 kilometers per hour (10 mph), why wouldn't they stretch their wings and see the world? Just like birds or, closer to the mark, butterflies, many species of dragonflies migrate. While the migratory routes of butterflies like the Monarchs are well known, dragonfly movements are still something of a mystery. However, one of note, the appropriately named globe skimmer dragonfly, has been tracked from India to East Africa and over to Middle Asia, a total distance of 14,000 km (8,700 miles). https://india.mongabay.com/2021/11/high-flying-dragons-how-the-globe-skimmer-migrates-across-the-indian-ocean/
Like the Monarch butterfly, dragonfly migrations may take several generations as the insect swarms (I find the collective name ‘flight' more appropriate for dragonflies) follow a shifting path of ancestral pools. Some dragonfly flights follow the same flyways as hawks, and groups like the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory have added the occasional bug count to their seasonal observations of birds of prey. https://www.parksconservancy.org/park-e-ventures-article/smaller-winged-creatures-flying-through-headlands
I can't say for sure that the changes to my yard have inadvertently resulted in a bit of dragon habitat, but likely there are some additional tasty bug snacks now that merit a dragon flyby. I am happy to host them so long as they stick to eating mosquitoes, gnats, and any pests that are eyeballing my garden, and leave the oranges to me.
A Dragon(fly)! Blue-eyed darner (photos by JD Trebec)
and a Damsel(fly)! Arroyo bluet
Note: Accuracy of amateur insect identification may be questionable beyond the Genus level!
- Author: Joy Humphrey
I have a thing for tiny vases. Not fairyland tiny, just, you know, small. Wandering around in any shop, I will home in on any vase that is under six inches and ignore the proper sized ones with the result being that anyone bringing me a bouquet of flowers will find me looking perplexed in my cupboards wondering what in blazes I'm supposed to put the huge thing in. It's not that I don't like big vases of flowers—they are abundant and glorious and make any tabletop pop. It's just that I'm drawn to the sweetness of a tiny bouquet sitting unexpectedly among the unopened mail on my crowded desk, or the little pop of color it provides on my white bathroom counter or the cheery floral faces sharing space with the napkins on my breakfast table.
I also find it less daunting to fill a small vase, and I'm more likely to cut the flowers in my garden knowing I won't be decimating an entire patch to fill a large vessel. One of my favorite flowers to snip is tickseed (Coreopsis). It blooms profusely, so there are always plenty for my vases as well as for the landscape. Another favorite is pincushion flower (Scabiosa). I find the pale purple-blue color goes with everything. Yarrow (Achillea) is wonderful and long-lasting, but since mine are newly planted this year and still small, I hesitate to cut the few blooms I have, although I couldn't resist the yellow of my ‘Little Moonshine.' I was surprised that impatiens and begonias make good choices for a tiny bouquet. When snipping off some leggy stems of each, I decided to put them in a vase and was pleased that they were long-lasting and had the added bonus of putting out roots--beautification and propagation at the same time.
When it comes to arranging, sometimes I like to feature one type of flower and keep it simple. Three roses in a small vase shine very nicely on their own. But most of the time, I'm filling in with cuttings from my herb garden: tall sprigs of rosemary, mint that needs to be cut back anyway, lemon balm. Bolting parsley makes a lovely delicate arch, and sprigs of lavender never go amiss.
I know it's popular to go big, but I think I'll continue to go small, making tiny bouquets for every room, and happily losing track of time while experimenting with different floral and herb combinations. (I do need to buy some bigger vases, though.)
![Martha Washington geranium 'Elegance Imperial' Martha Washington geranium 'Elegance Imperial'](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/mgyoloblog24/blogfiles/107711.jpg)
!['Burst of Joy' roses with pincushion flowers and herbs 'Burst of Joy' roses with pincushion flowers and herbs](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/mgyoloblog24/blogfiles/107718.jpg)
![Begonia Begonia](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/mgyoloblog24/blogfiles/107719.jpg)