The Real Dirt

Do you have an undeveloped garden area you'd like to turn into a landscape that grows native plants and supplies habitat and food for pollinators? Perhaps you'd like to do most of the work yourself, but have no idea where to start?

Located between playing fields and pickleball courts along a popular bikeway into the main CSU Chico campus, the Biological Sciences Greenhouse is a state-of-the-art botanical and agricultural research facility.

Gardening becomes increasingly difficult as we age, yet the garden beckons as strongly as ever, notes Butte County Master Gardener Kay Perkins.

No doubt you have seen many species of oaks living in wild areas of Northern California. But native oaks can also be attractive and beneficial additions to the home landscape. There are fifteen species of oaks native to California.

There is a bit of ancient Rome and a taste of old Egypt at the Master Gardener Demonstration Garden at the Patrick Ranch. Butte County MGs are practicing espaliering, the early horticultural art of training and pruning a tree or shrub to grow flat against a support.