Gardens & Conservation
My father, an Englishman, taught me to love gardening, eventually leading me to a PhD in Horticulture. I turned my front yard into a native plant garden using the city Mulch Madness Program. I help the teachers at CGHS in their gardening classes and help maintain the Outdoor Learning Environment. I got involved with the St. James Church Community Garden and rebuilt the irrigation system and provide general infrastructure maintenance and then expanded into landscaping and maintaining the solar panel array and even raise bees there.
St. James Church Community Garden. Volunteers collect produce weekly for Salvation Army Kitchen. It is also a meditation and prayer garden.
I help maintain the solar array at St. James Church, 92 panels, by annual washing and year round weed management. Tom, another parishener is helping me clean the panels of the ash from the recent firestorms.
I have been a beekeeper for 10 years and member of Sonoma County Beekeepers Association. Bees provide pollination service to the St. James Church Community Garden as well as providing honey I give away.
This is a rain catchment system I built in my side yard to provide 500 gallons of water for my garden and backup water supply in case of earthquake disaster. Rain catchment, rain gardens, and groundwater recharge are now important parts of conserving water during drought. I recommend going to Daily Acts to get more information.
Rotary asked me to help rebuild the Serenity Garden at Petaluma People Services. Rotary awarded me the honor of the Paul Harris Award for my help on the project and all the community service I do.
A local tech company asked to help develop a work day in the park system so I worked with city park staff to mulch South Gate Park with wood chips and prep containers for local residents to plant flowers and food garden.
I sponsored and mentored Eagle Scout to refurbish 4 benches on Washington Creek Trail. These benches were buried by prior flood incident and now useable.
Besides 4 benches the Eagle Scout team also sanded and repainted the bridge over Washington Creek in Prince Park.
I built a cargo trailer for my ebike and here I am hauling water containers to Casa Grande HS where I load up on recycled water to water plants in the parking lots during the drought. Trailer can also be used for tools and cargo up to 100 lbs. For many jobs in town now I can use one of my ebike trailers instead of my pickup truck.