55. Humboldt Botanical Garden

I was pleased to finally have the chance to visit the beautiful Humboldt Botanical Garden near Eureka, CA in late July.  While I was working for Lutsko Associates years ago I helped with the design of these gardens.  It was a very exciting project for me and I have followed its progress ever since.This public garden includes about 44 acres of land adjacent to the College of the Redwoods, a hilly area with views of the Humboldt Bay and ocean beyond.   It is run by a non-profit group of enthusiastic people with a rotating core of volunteers taking on the monumental tasks of fund-raising, administration and maintenance of the garden.  They first conceived of the garden in the early 1990’s and hired Lutsko Associates Landscape Architects soon after to create a master plan design for the property.  I became involved in 2000, becoming the project manager for the first phases of detailed design while working for Ron Lutsko.  I thoroughly enjoyed helping to design a series of themed gardens to display different collections of plants that grow in the Northern California climate.  At the time they were years away from construction, but by 2006 the first gardens were complete and they were welcoming visitors.  Now they have a really nice series of mature gardens, greenhouses and other great features.

A Sequence of Gardens

When you walk into the botanical garden you first see a large lawn and vegetable garden that will eventually hold a visitor center and terrace.  Below that are three themed gardens stepping down the gentle slope that were installed several years ago and are looking great.  A central path links them together, and creates a nice view corridor. 

Sara’s Garden

First along the path is this garden that focuses on attractive and fragrant flowers that are suitable for cut flower arrangements.  It is a memorial garden dedicated to the late Sara Goosby by her friends and family. There are beautiful flower displays here and a nice wood and steel pergola supporting climbing Roses.  The eye catcher when I visited was a red-flowering Dahlia with black leaves.

Dedekam Ornamental Terrace Garden

This garden was designed as a series of terraces stepping down the hill to display ornamental plants.  It groups plants by colors on each terrace, creating an impressive rainbow-like effect.  The ‘blue terrace’ was looking especially nice, including the unusual Sea Holly (Eryngium amethystinum) with spiky platinum-blue flowers. 

Lost Coast Brewery Native Plant Garden

A personal favorite of mine, this large garden displays California native plants and contains a square sitting terrace at the center that serves as termination to the main path coming down the hill.  Barbara Groom, the owner of Lost Coast Brewery became interested in the garden when I was involved in the design work, leading to her sponsoring this garden and she now serves on the Board of Directors.

Rainwater Feature

One of the more interesting features of the garden design was a series of water channels that are intended to carry rainwater through several of the gardens in interesting ways as a seasonal water feature, with the water emptying into a low lying planted area.  Although the main source of this rainwater is intended to be the roof of a yet-to-be-built visitor center, these channels still work as an interesting part of the current pathways.

Moss Family Temperate Woodland Garden

This garden is named after Larry Moss who passed away several years ago.  When I was involved in the early 2000’s he was President of the Humboldt Botanical Gardens Foundation and I very much enjoyed working with him on the design, his enthusiasm and plant knowledge were quite impressive.  This garden is nestled in a sort of valley between two hills further into the property.  Its topography made it more difficult to design and envision, with a need for many different stairways to connect paths running along the slopes.  One of the great existing features was an area of native Irises that were highlighted and enhanced as part of the plantings.  It is a bit tough to get good photos of this hilly and lush garden, but it really is looking great.

Worth a Visit

Next time you are in the Eureka area be sure to make a visit to Humboldt Botanical Garden, well on its way to becoming world-class.  Beyond the core gardens are acres of hiking trails through the woods, and many other features worth seeing, including a really fun sculptural feature called "All Happy Now", a grassy spiral mound by artist Peter Santino.

References:

Humboldt Botanical Garden web site http://www.hbgf.org/

Lutsko Associates Landscape Architects – project page for the garden: http://lutskoassociates.com/projects/humbolt-botanical-garden/