Lake Tahoe property owners who wish to improve their residential or commercial landscapes have two public demonstration gardens to visit. On the south shore, the South Lake Tahoe Demonstration Garden is on the northwest side of the Lake Tahoe Community College campus, on Al Tahoe Boulevard. The North Lake Tahoe Demonstration Garden is located on the new campus of Sierra Nevada College on Country Club Drive at Route 28 in Incline Village.
Demonstration gardens are important resources for residents because they display many kinds of plants and designs. The Tahoe demonstration gardens are available year-round to display high-altitude gardening and landscaping techniques, with an emphasis on using native and adapted plants. This is especially useful information at Tahoe because of the limitations of our short growing season and the generally nutrient poor soils. People can find out how vegetation looks in any season, except when the snowpack gets too deep. They can observe what plants look like after being buried each winter. With this knowledge, they can make better-informed decisions about how to landscape their own properties.
In South Lake Tahoe, the demonstration garden has been in place for a decade. It has a variety of plants in planting beds with trails between them. In the last five years, the Tahoe Resource Conservation District has installed several new displays of best management practices, which reduce water runoff and soil erosion, protecting the lake’s water quality. One interesting exhibit is a mock-up of a sloping driveway leading up to a garage. The driveway displays several types of paving surfaces, including paving stones and pervious concrete. This relatively new product, if installed with a proper gravel base on flat or gentle slopes, can infiltrate rainwater through the pavement into the soil below.
The North Lake Tahoe Demonstration Garden, a nonprofit corporation, was originally on the old campus of Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village. A year ago, the volunteers on the board began transplanting specimens to the more spacious home of the garden on the new college campus, at the corner of Country Club and Route 28. Ecologic Design, Inc. professionally designed the new garden. It is located near Incline Creek, on the college green, and is graced by many tall Jeffrey pine trees.
The mission of the garden is to create and maintain a garden that will demonstrate the components of environmentally friendly and aesthetically pleasing landscaping, emphasizing best management practices, defensible space, and use of native plants. A 150-square-foot gazebo, now at the old garden, will be relocated to the entrance of the new site, adjacent to the west parking lot. This structure will be the meeting place for weekly gardening classes once the garden is near completion.
The new garden in Incline Village will also display several best management practices, including a driveway with various paving surfaces. Additionally, the garden will display several attractive ways to stabilize steep, eroding slopes. This generally requires structures, such as terraces or retaining walls, to create nearly flat surfaces for plants. Retaining walls made with treated wood, interlocking concrete blocks, rock, and riprap will be demonstrated at the garden. There will also be several kinds of native and adapted grasses grown side-by-side, shown in both mowed and unmowed condition. In a section of the garden with highly flammable green leaf manzanita shrubs, volunteers will create a defensible space demonstration.
Sturdy interpretive signs will be designed and placed in both gardens. They will feature easy-to-read explanations and color illustrations of the techniques and designs shown. Such signs are very expensive, as are construction materials, plants, and irrigation systems. Both demonstration gardens are supported by volunteers and donations. Material suppliers are encouraged to donate and install their products. The gardens would be excellent places for creative exhibits, such as a cutaway view into an underground infiltration system.
Both demonstration gardens will hold workshops and volunteer days next spring. New ideas and suggestions to improve the gardens are welcome. To reach the Board of the North Lake Tahoe Demonstration Garden, call Jan Steinmann, (530) 546-4429, or Amy Roberts at the Nevada Tahoe Conservation District, (775) 586-7223, ext. 1. For details about the South Lake Tahoe Demonstration Garden, call the Tahoe Resource Conservation District, (530) 543-1501, ext. 110.
The Lake Tahoe Report 089
Air Date: 2004-10-19
Video Segment: Demonstration Gardens
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