Palo Alto Weekly July 18, 2014

Home&Real Estate

OPEN HOME GUIDE 57 Also online at PaloAltoOnline.com

Home Front DIY CHICKENS ... Hidden Villa staff will offer a “Chicken Workshopâ€? from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, July 19, at 26870 Moody Road, Los Altos Hills. In the hands-on class, participants will learn how to butcher their own chickens and prep them for the table. They will go home with fresh, organic, locally raised chicken. Cost is $80. Information: 650-949-8650 or hiddenvilla.org FEAST FOR SENSES ... This year’s Connoisseurs’ Marketplace, with a theme of “A Feast for the Senses,â€? takes place from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, July 19, and Sunday, July 20, on Santa Cruz Avenue between El Camino Real and Johnson Street in Menlo Park. The festival features the work of 250 artists, chef demos, green products, and home and garden displays — as well as live music, food and drink. The free event is sponsored by the Menlo Park Chamber of Commerce. Information: 650-325-2818 or marketplace. miramarevents.com A CUTTING GARDEN ... Mimi Clarke, formerly lead horticulturist at Filoli and now owner of Fiddle Fern Landscaping, will teach a class on “Cutting Garden Designâ€? from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 30, at Filoli, 86 CaĂąada Road, Woodside. The class will focus on materials, choosing plants and growing tips and will include a visit to the Filoli cutting garden.

Cost is $45 for nonmembers, $37 for members. Information: 650-364-8300 or filoli.org

Vegetables such as corn and kale thrive in the front-yard garden of Kerry van den Haak’s Palo Alto home.

A red cherry tomato shines in the robust, edible garden.

YARDAGE SALE ... FabMo, which gives away samples of designer fabrics monthly (for a small donation), will hold an inventoryreducing sale from 2 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, July 24, and 2 to 6 p.m. on Friday, July 25, in the workshop at 2423 Old Middlefield Way, Suite F, Mountain View.

Volunteers are needed for sort and set up Wednesday, as well as to greet, help on the floor and act as cashier during the event.

Featured items include bolts and large pieces of garment-weight fabric, as well as designer fabrics. Information: fabmo.org

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YOUNG TREE CARE ... Canopy is looking for volunteers to attend upcoming trainings on young tree care. Once trained, volunteers will go through Palo Alto

­VÂœÂ˜ĂŒÂˆÂ˜Ă•i`ĂŠÂœÂ˜ĂŠÂŤ>}iĂŠ{ÂŁ) Send notices of news and events related to real estate, interior design, home improvement and gardening to Home Front, Palo Alto Weekly, P.O. Box 1610, Palo Alto, CA 94302, or email cblitzer@paweekly.com. Deadline is one week before publication.

Fruits

Cherry tomatoes grow next to an asparagus plant, demonstrating how two types of crops can coexist.

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few years ago, when rebuilding her inherited Palo Alto home from the ground up, Kerry van den Haak decided that a vegetable garden should supplant the front lawn.

Flanked by one-story houses, she turned to tiered, raised garden beds to help mitigate the tall appearance of her two-story home.

She packed the garden beds with fertile soil, installed a drip irrigation system and planted a variety of vegetables including corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, kale, pumpkins, melons and peppers. “Some of these beds give me three crops a year, one every four months,� van den Haak said. “I grow summer crops, winter crops and in-between crops.�

Van den Haak’s garden is one of 10 sites that will appear in Common Ground’s 8th Annual Edible Landscaping Tour on July 19.

In addition to front-yard gardens, highlights include greenhouses, composting, fruit trees, and chickens and coops.

Though van den Haak is a member of the Midtown Garden Circle, a group of gardeners that meets once a month in members’ homes to trade tips and share experiences, this year marks her first taste of the Edible Landscaping Tour. “Those are really the only other gardeners

Common Ground’s Edible Landscaping Tour features 10 gardens

by Benjamin Custer photos by Ciera Pasturel

who I know in the area, so I hope to pick up some hints from going to see the other participants’ gardens,� van den Haak said.

Her introduction to the tour can be traced to a Craigslist transaction. A couple of years ago, she had plants to sell and posted an ad.

When the woman who answered the ad arrived to pick up the plants, the two started talking about gardening and have been friends ever since. They garden together regularly in van den Haak’s front yard. “My friend saw the tour advertised and asked me to see if I could put my garden in the tour,� van den Haak said. “So, I called the girls, and they came out and looked around, and they were happy with what they saw. It just takes a little encouragement for me to do things like that.�

Van den Haak considers good sun, good soil and a good water supply to be her recipe for success. The clay soil native to Palo Alto is not conducive to gardening, which is why she relies on garden beds. Though she feels it would be difficult to maintain a garden in the backyard given the quality of the soil, she enjoys nine healthy fruit trees. Unlike vegetable beds, van den Haak said, fruit trees do not need to be re-dug each year. ­VÂœÂ˜ĂŒÂˆÂ˜Ă•i`ĂŠÂœÂ˜ĂŠÂŤ>}iĂŠ{ÂŁ)

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