Our annual native planting day in North Richmond is 5 years old! We couldn’t be more proud of this project, called Hope Gardens, where community members living in North Richmond adopt a garden in front of their house – the gardens are the areas in between the sidewalk and the street. Alongside community members and volunteers, we replace the area with what is often dead grass or weeds with mulch, compost and native and/or drought tolerant plants. The streets become more vibrant and the people and pollinators are happy.
This year, we planted 5 gardens in the months of April and May, three of which are on Market Avenue and the other two on Grove Avenue and Giaramita Avenue. We used a total of 12 native and drought tolerant plants, including: Yarrow, California Buckwheat, Mexican Daisy, Rock Purslane, Red Buckwheat, Sulphur Buckwheat, Douglas Iris, Cleveland Sage, Margarita Bop Penstemon, California Poppy, Idaho Fescue and Sticky Monkey Flower.
Below are a series of before and after photos taken from this year’s Hope Gardens days:
