Dimond Park Native Plant Garden
Oakland
Size: 15,000 square feet
Showcase feature: A charming bit of open space within the urban grid, Dimond Park features an extensive native plant garden containing more than 80 species of California native plants. Some of these are "the stars of the California flora as seen through the eyes of the nursery trade." Others are locally native species plants, native to the Sausal Watershed. The designer, Michael Thilgen of Four Dimensions Landscape Company, will lead a tour of this garden at lunchtime. Bring a picnic and blanket and settle down for a brief talk before taking a guided tour of this lovely garden.
Other garden attractions:
- Ivy, blackberries, and acacias were removed by hand (no chemicals used here!).
- Don't miss the 'before' photos of the oaks with their ivy understory.
- The garden received no dry season irrigation this year.
- The adjacent stream restoration project is an amazing story in itself. The plants used in this project are natives taken from cuttings and seeds of remnant plant populations found in the Sausal Creek Watershed.
- Dedicated members of the Friends of Sausal Creek grow plants for this garden at the native plant nursery in Joaquin Miller Park. (The Nursery is also on this tour.) Ask the volunteers for a tour of the creek if you are interested.
- Work in the garden and creek restoration project was conducted in partnership by the Friends of Sausal Creek and the City of Oakland.
Gardening for Wildlife: If you plant it, they will come—birds that is. This native plant garden is living proof. The more than 50 species of birds seen in Dimond Park include golden-crowned and white-crowned sparrows, Nuttals, downy and hairy woodpeckers, violet-green swallows, vireos, flycatchers, Bewick’s wrens, ruby crowned kinglets, cedar waxwings, warblers, western tanagers, black headed grosbeaks, and orioles. Northern harriers, red-shouldered and Cooper's hawk prowl for unwary rodents and birds.
Dimond Park is fondly called a “bird magnet” by a resident ornithologist because it is near water, and provides shelter, nesting areas, seeds, and bugs for food. This garden also demonstrates the ecological principle of "edge-effect" where several habitat types (urban landscape, park lawns, and streamside vegetation) come together.