Parking – Drive to the end of Young’s Valley Road, Walnut Creek and look for the Tour sign, which will direct you to turn left. Please drive slowly and watch for pedestrians. Continue past the native garden (on your left) and the restrooms and a couple of picnic tables (on your right). A small parking lot is located at the end of this short road. Additional picnic tables are located in the large field adjacent to the restrooms.
If you should park in the very large parking lot on the right you will need to walk back to the road you drove in on, then walk to the left to find the garden, restrooms, and picnic tables. (Look for the Tour sign.)
Showcase Feature
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er walnut orchard, now part of the Walnut Creek Open Space, not only offers miles of hiking trails, but also houses a peaceful, well-tended native plant garden that contains plants local to the Walnut Creek/Mt. Diablo area.
During the pandemic three friends—Jill Dresser, Judy Franceschi, and Mary Ann Jervis—who live nearby, decided to reinvigorate the original native plant garden, which was untended, and had become weedy. They now get together once a week to care for the garden.
Valley oaks provide shade for the boulder-lined, gracefully meandering garden beds, which contain a pleasing selection of hardy native plants; from a sweetly-scented buckeye with an understory of the purple-blossomed wildflower gilia, to large beds bursting with the springtime splendor of California wildflowers such as Chinese houses, poppies, and clarkia.
Another section of the garden is home to the rare Contra Costa and Mount Diablo manzanitas and other great plants for local wildlife, including aster, sages, and wild rose.
Don’t miss the bed in which the purple-blue Ithurial’s spear mingles with electric yellow buttercups.
Other Garden Attractions
- Mugwort soap will be available for sale: proceeds will benefit the Tour. Venmo and credit cards payments will be accepted.
- Restrooms, plenty of picnic tables, and free and ample parking are available at this location. Bring a picnic to enjoy in this tranqu
il spot! - Only new plants receive water.
- Eagle Scouts have built the fence and kiosk.
- Check out the “What’s in Bloom Now” pages that have been created for each month of the year: you will find these attached to garden’s entry gate.
Gardening for Wildlife
Many birds and bumble and carpenter bees visit the garden. Western fence lizards bask on the boulders, ground and fox squirrels frequently burrow and scamper through. Narrow leaf milkweed was planted for the increasingly rare monarch butterfly (milkweed is the only plant the monarch can lay its eggs on).
Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include valley oak, California lilac manzanita, wild rose, sagebrush, black sage, aster, snowberry, buckwheat, and coffeeberry.
Talks in the Garden
12:00 “Mugwort and the Bay: Herbal traditions in native gardens”
1:00 “Hardy native plants for inland gardens”
At least partially wheelchair accessible? Yes.
Photos
Click to see as a slideshow:
