Cultivating Community: Concordia's Heritage Garden

An organic vegetable garden, orchard, and native garden in Irvine?  Who knew?  It's the Heritage Garden at Concordia University.  A group of faculty, spearheaded by English professor Thea Gavin, began it just over a year ago on a weedy hillside on the north end of campus.

Thea's vision and enthusiasm are contagious. Her husband Steve is all in as the irrigation specialist. She has gotten labor and materials from Concordia students (especially from the dedicated Student Garden Club), colleagues, friends from the Orange County chapter of the CA Native Plant Society, the Irvine Ranch Conservancy, and more.

White Sage (Salvia apiana) overlooks Shady Canyon and the hills beyond.

The garden has a spectacular city view from its hillside perch.  Yet it brings to mind the old country gardens I remember from my college days at UC Davis, a.k.a. "the agricultural extension."  Organic vegetables and fruit trees are surrounded and interspersed with native plants, and a few ornamental flower patches. The garden has what few homes in Orange County have: space!

Sweet Peas, which like our coastal weather.

As a university venture, many lofty words describe its goals and benefits.  I learned a new phrase: "Ecosystem Gardening."  Natives are foundational to the garden, and I've never seen natives and vegetables getting on so well.  (They get watered separately.)

These native perennials were donated by the Irvine Ranch Conservancy (extra inventory from revegetation projects), planted last July (not ideal!), and have been thriving.

This synergy was waiting to be revealed.  At the base of the garden lies the wild side of Mason Park. Remnant wild patches of native elderberry and sagebrush rim parts of the garden.  Most delightfully, when the southern end of the garden was freed of invasive mustard, milkweed and other natives sprang up in its place.

What a delight when natives appear on their own!  The Monarch butterflies have not yet found this Narrow-Leaf Milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis), which I am assured is much healthier for them than the showy, garden-tolerant South American milkweed you'll find at the nursery.

At the center of the garden is a circular planting of local natives.  A thriving Elderberry was the first item planted, in recognition of the Acjachemen native people who lived here long before westerners.  Thea learned that an elderberry was at the center of each of their villages.

Coast Sunflower (Encelia californica) is still in bloom, and California Mugwort (Artemisia douglasiana) is lush,  because of water from the fountain. 

The garden is designed to welcome wildlife.  Features include perches made of branches, rock and log piles to shelter lizards, and a bluebird nest box, currently holding some baby birds.

Western Fence Lizard, a.k.a. Blue Belly (our most common lizard), sunning on his very own rock pile.

Community has been essential to the garden's creation. Many faculty, students, and community hobbyists participate in the huge task of clearing away invasive weeds, planting natives and food plants, and tending the garden.  The garden's vision broadens a little as each person adds to it.  Dori and her OCCNPS friends are helping to create a wildflower meadow.  Meadows are the rarest native habitats, requiring lots of weeding.  When I first visited, a whole family was gardening, or catching bugs, depending on age.  Next visit, nine kids from Village of Hope were checking up on the corn they had planted six weeks before.

The kids are mulching their corn; next they will plant pumpkins.

The heritage garden includes Dudleyas, as every Southern California native garden should.

Which Dudleya is this, and why the odd growing habit?  I don't know, but Thea gave me one to take home!

If you want to get your hands dirty, or just gawk, and take home a bit of the harvest of the day, all are welcome at the Heritage Garden Wednesdays from 3 to 5 pm during the school year.  Check for special events on the Garden's Facebook page.  Get directions and a parking permit from the Concordia entrance gatehouse, and join the fun.

Professor Thea Gavin, the force behind the garden, with elderberry tree and young helper. 

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