Inspiring and educating San Francisco South Bay and Peninsula plant enthusiasts since 1963

September 10th, 2025, 7:30pm

Wild by Design: The Evolution of the High Line Gardens

by Richard Hayden, Senior Director of Horticulture, Friends of the High Line

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The High Line gardens are world famous for their unique ability to evoke a natural beauty and four season interest in a very challenging urban environment. This talk will highlight the plants, techniques and planning – including recent input and new garden designs from High Line designer, Piet Oudolf – that allow the gardens to evolve, succeed and continually inspire.

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Since 2022, Richard Hayden has been the senior director of horticulture at the High Line, an historic, elevated rail line on the west side of Manhattan. Richard began his career with 20+ years as a Los Angeles-based landscape designer. Following that he was director of horticulture at Gamble Gardens in Palo Alto and project manager at the La Brea Tar Pits Museum. He also found time to serve as board chair of the Pacific Horticulture Society, on the board of WHS, president of the LA District of the APLD and vice president of the Metro Hort Group.

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October 8th, 2025, 7:30pm

Flowers or Bust: Turning Passion into Purpose

by Charmaine Turbow

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The following topics will be covered in Charmaine's talk:

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• Why and how she started her unique farm in the heart of Silicon Valley

• A summary of what she grows, and how she plans and utilizes her space

• Display garden versus having a cut flower business

• How she shares her flowers

• A hands-on demo on designing a centerpiece with audience involvement

 

Charmaine’s background in her own words: “I was born and raised in Vancouver, BC and spent most of my childhood in our neighbors’ gardens, running through forested areas and wetlands, and foraging roadside berries! My mother loved gardening and I credit her for instilling the same passion in me. After finishing a degree at UBC in Cell Biology and a minor in Genetics, I came to California in 2001 to attend chiropractic college. Even though my career as a chiropractor flourished, I never lost the desire for earth and flowers. In July of 2009, in search of a home, Dan and I set foot on a property in Los Altos and were sold by a quaint, well-kept garden and the sweet taste of fresh apricots. This became our home and foundation for starting a family and what we did not know at that time, a flower farm. I am now the mother of three wonderful clowns, still a flower enthusiast and the “Head Farmette” of Turbow Farms, which was started in 2018. Along with my children (who are generally helpful with farm operations) and my husband (who is the de facto COO of the Farm), we grow common and not so common specialty cut flowers. We share our fresh harvest through our hands-on collaborative workshops and team building events, flower bouquets, arrangements & seasonal offerings.”

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November 12th, 2025, 7:30pm

Food Forests in Suburbia: How to Create a Microfarm and Still Have a Life

by Lisa Stapleton​, Chair, Calif. Rare Fruit Growers Santa Clara Valley Chapter

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Maybe I could grow more fruit in my garden? That’s a key takeaway many visitors have when they visit Lisa Stapleton’s home orchard on a Silicon Valley suburban tract-home lot of less than a sixth of an acre. Her small plot is home to more than 100 fruit varieties—including heirloom and rare varieties of apples and oranges, to exotics and tropicals like pineapple guavas, passionfruit, palm berries, avocados, bananas and more. Join us if you’ve ever wondered if you could grow a lot of your own produce on a small plot of land. Lisa will cover how to plan, select and nurture fruit plants growing very close to each other.

 

Lisa Stapleton is the “Queen of Fruit Tree Dense-pack” and has written about plants, the environment and technology for more than two decades. She is a longtime member and current chair of the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the California Rare Fruit Growers, and has written for The Fruit Leaf, The Fruit Gardener, Organic Gardening, Terrain environmental quarterly, InformationWEEK, and InfoWorld. Her San Jose microfarm is located on a 7,000-square-foot plot that provides year-round fruit, and she is currently working on a masters in environmental studies at San Jose State University. She grows unusual varieties of citrus, apples, pears, peaches, figs and pomegranates, as well as thornless blackberries, mulberries, palm berries, jujubes, serviceberries, peaches, avocados and pineapple guavas.

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December 10th, 2025, 7:30pm

Holiday potluck only, no speaker

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January 14th, 2025, 7:30pm

Our Winter is Different: Seasons in California Native Gardens

by Helen Popper, author and CNPS member

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Do you have California native plants in your garden? Have you been frustrated by garden maintenance recommendations originating in England or the East Coast? Helen Popper understands that California’s gardening seasons are different from those in other parts of the world, that our ‘winter’ makes maintaining a California native garden distinctive. Helen will begin with a discussion of the local progression of seasons and how central that is to understanding the timing of maintenance. She will tell us how to maintain California native plants throughout the year, while emphasizing winter tasks we can do in our gardens right now.

 

Helen Popper grew up in the Bay Area, took horticulture in high school and has been a long-time member of the California Native Plant Society. Her professional path diverged from plants and led to her current position as professor of economics in the Business School at Santa Clara University. She has been honored as one of the ten best garden authors of California by Live Outside, and will have her book California Native Gardening: A Month-by-Month Guide available at the meeting.

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February 11th, 2025, 7:30pm

Chanticleer Gravel Garden

by Lisa Roper, Horticulturalist at Chanticleer Garden

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For the past 11 years, Lisa Roper has managed the Gravel Garden at the renowned Public Garden Chanticleer in Wayne, Pa. A gently sloping sight planted with a mix of fine textured grasses, gray-leafed Mediterranean plants, drought tolerant perennials, annuals grown from seed and hardy succulents, the gravel garden is a stunning and unique landscape. Lisa will discuss some of her design choices, favorite plants, combinations, planting techniques and the importance of editing. She will also touch upon her photography techniques. 

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Lisa Roper is the Gravel Garden and Ruin horticulturist at Chanticleer, a public garden in Wayne, PA, where she has gardened for the past 35 years in various parts of the garden. Lisa also photographs Chanticleer Garden weekly for What’s in Bloom on the Chanticleer website. Lisa has a BFA in fine art from The Cooper Union in NYC where she studied fine art and photography. She is a graduate of the Longwood Gardens Professional Gardener Training Program. Lisa has been a guest gardener at Stellenbosch University Garden in South Africa and Great Dixter in East Sussex, UK. She is also a contributor to The Art of Gardening, design inspiration and planting techniques from Chanticleer.

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March 11th, 2025, 7:30pm

Landscaping for Fire Protection

by Nikki Hanson

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April 8th, 2025, 7:30pm

Gardening for CA Pipevine Swallowtail and Other Butterflies in the SF Bay Area

by Tim Wong

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Tim Wong, garden manager at Sisterhood Gardens, will speak about how the mixed use spaces at this San Francisco community garden have been successful in attracting native pollinators and have also supported the creation of new dahlias. Tim will share his experience in attracting California Pipevine swallowtail butterflies, and his initial findings in hybridizing dahlias, the flower of San Francisco.

Tim’s love for butterflies started in his youth, raising butterflies from caterpillars in his backyard in San Mateo County. Today, Tim is a Senior Biologist at the California Academy of Sciences, where he has worked with the museum’s living collection for the past 15 years. Tim works on horticulture in the Osher rainforest exhibit and coordinates the living butterfly display. When not in the rainforest, Tim may be diving in the Philippine coral reef aquarium or feeding the museum’s colony of African Penguins. Outside of the museum, Tim can be found tending a growing collection of Dahlias, many of his own hybrids, and tending the butterfly resource plants of Sisterhood Gardens.

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May 13th, 2025, 7:30pm

Vendor and movie night: Sexual Encounters of the Floral Kind

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Talks about pollinators, both their importance and how to offer them a top-notch habitat, have become popular in recent years. But what about how that pollination actually happens? Sexual Encounters of the Floral Kind takes us into the world of pollination, indeed, inside the flowers themselves. This film was commissioned by David Attenborough and produced by Oxford University for a TV series called “The World About Us”. It may date from 1981, but the story it tells (and shows!) about the unusual ways plants coerce insects, birds, mammals and spiders to engage in behavior that fulfills the act of pollination is still fresh, astonishing, delightful and at times, hilarious.

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