We are excited to announce our upcoming events for 2019. Packed with lots of interesting, fun and educational events, workshops and trips. Please be sure to mark your calendars and save the dates these events, you won’t want to miss out on. Our events page will be updated as details and sign ups are released for each event so be sure to check back!
Happy New Year!!!
Happy New Year from the Santa Ynez Valley Botanic Garden. Wishing all our members, supporters and community a wonderful year ahead. Thank you for all your support making 2018 a very successful year for the garden. We are looking forward to 2019 and planning lots of exciting events, workshops and field trips for the new year!!
The Garden Featured on Getaway Itinerary
The garden was recently featured in this blog post plotting out a fantastic weekend getaway with a stop at the garden as part of the plan. Thanks for mentioning us in your post and visiting the garden and adding your wishes to our wishing tree! Be sure to check out the other great local places to visit on the rest of the blog post here: Happily Ever Adventures
Where's Sparkie?
Do you know where Sparkie is?? “Where’s Sparkie” is a regular feature in the Santa Maria Times featuring the adventures of Sparkie and readers guess where he is from the photos and clues for a chance to win a prize. The location he visited this month looks quite familiar! Looks like he had a great time exploring this botanic garden!
Images courtesy of Santa Maria Times
Check out Sparkie’s adventures: Where’s Sparkie
Gratitude to Los Olivos Rotary
The garden was glorious this evening as Los Olivos Rotary met at the Botanic Garden and took a tour of the garden. They took note of the growth of a tree they donated many years ago and were impressed at the growth and development of the garden. We are so grateful for their continued support of the garden creating a great place for the community to enjoy.
Photography in Nature
It was a beautiful day in the garden for the photography in nature workshop hosted by the Santa Ynez Valley Botanic Garden. The creative energy and excitement was flowing as photography enthusiasts gathered and learned great tips and then explored throughout the Garden and photographed with professional photographers. The results are many beautiful photos we look forward to seeing and sharing! Thank you all for participating and to photographers Jose Villa, Derek Glas, Angelina Hernandez and Bill Henderson for making this a great day in the garden!
NatureTrack visits the Garden
Throughout the past month NatureTrack has visited the garden every Thursday afternoon. Steve Schulz our Master Gardener greets the students at the kiosk and lead a 15 to 20 min. walk through the garden talking about the plants, habitat, ecology etc. depending on the age of the children and the science curriculum they are studying. NatureTrack typically has 4 to 5 educational activities/stations set up in both the garden and the park adjacent to the botanic garden. Thank you to NatureTrack for visiting the garden and to photographer Sierra Byers for sharing these photos of their adventures in the garden who remarked “I sure enjoyed learning from you that day we were there and so did the students!”
NatureTrack’s website for more information: https://naturetrack.org/
Arbor Day in the Santa Ynez Valley Botanic Garden
With fall being a great time to plant trees, we celebrated our annual Arbor Day at the Santa Ynez Valley Botanic Garden on October 14th! 9 various native trees were donated by generous supporters of the garden and planted in the garden by volunteers. There was a display of some of the top trees of the Santa Ynez Valley provided by local nurseries, Manzanita Nursery and Windmill Nursery. Also in the garden was a scavenger hunt in the garden to locate and identify trees by their leaves, a fun “Thanks Tree” craft project for kids, displays of how to plant trees, a display on how to count the rings on a tree, an on site Arborist answering questions and providing great information reading in the garden with the library and mulching and composting demonstration and information.
In addition to all that, with the amazing community effort, 3 owl boxes were installed into the garden on Arbor Day as well. An exciting addition to the garden that we look forward to watching and learning from. They were very carefully installed by Troop 42 Scouts and Adults. Holes were dug by B&B Landscape, Steel Supplies were donated and welded by Vaquero Energy and many others were integral in making completing this project. We are so thankful for everyone’s contributions for this exciting addition to the garden!
Girl Scouts Visit for Outdoor Workshop
The Girl Scouts recently visited the SYV Botanic Garden and had a fun outdoor badge workshop with fun activities and a a tour of the garden exploring all the different areas and learning about native plants and culture. They took a brek from their activities for a tour of the garden and visited Chumash huts in the garden a favorite place for visitors to explore and learned from SYV Botanic Garden members how native plants were used by the Chumash for different things. They also discovered several native plants bearing fruit including the rose which had ripe rose hips and our grape vine bearing fruit. They all sampled the fruits and learned about edible native plants for animals and plants. We enjoyed their visit and look forward to seeing them again soon!
Propagation Area Progress
Our propagation area is looking fantastic and nearing completion thanks to the beautiful craftsmanship of Stonescapes Custom Masonry and Custom Hardscapes for the wonderful pavers. Thanks to everyone’s generous support our goal to start propagation this fall is near, we are looking for donations and leads on a few items to complete the project: stainless steel table, sink, hoses, brooms, buckets, potting soil, pearlite and peat moss. We are excited to start this new resource for our community, please let us know if you have any of these items to contribute!
Acorn Village Forest School students make Mothers Day Gifts in the Garden
04/23/2018
A gift to Mom
“ The best projects we do at Acorn Village, are the ones where we use only materials from the land, throughout the whole project.
While at the Santa Ynez Valley Botanic Garden, we connected twigs from the ground, carved and sanded the twigs to make handles for our new paintbrushes.
We then found some yucca growing on the hill at the garden. We harvested some leaves from the yucca and pounded them with rocks into strong fibers. The next task was to separate and dry the fiber. The fiber became new bristles in our paintbrush, which we will attach with some yarn and waterproof glue.
After that, we are going to search for some cochineal beetles on the prickly pear behind the Botanic Garden, and we will scrape those off to paint with.
The children will make lovely Mother’s Day cards with our handmade brushes, to go with the salve we are making with beeswax and plantain, also harvested partly at the SYV Botanic Garden.
This project is so wonderful.
Enjoy a few of our pics from our paintbrush prep.”
Photos and writing, provided by Tracy Roberts
Gratitude From Tinkergarten Class on National Public Lands Day
In honor of National Public Lands Day, our Tinkergarten class wanted to share our gratitude to you and all of the people who make it possible for us to hold class in the Santa Ynez Botanic Garden in River View Park. We know that our park would not be here for us to learn and play in without a great deal of effort from all of you and all of the parks and recreation maintenance personnel. In our Tinkergarten classes, we teach children and their parents about sustainability and how important it is to care for and support our parks. The children in our class created a Thank You poster for you and your staff, decorated with paints the children made themselves from natural materials. Please accept the attached photo (with the only Tinkergarten Explorers we could wrangle to stand still!) with our sincerest thanks for all that you do.
We SO love our park!
All the best,
Katherine Naphy
Tinkergarten Leader, Santa Ynez Valley
Tree Updates- May 2013
70 Five and fifteen gallon native trees were donated and planted three years ago by volunteers, Valley Schools, Valley residents and Valley businesses. We have waited patiently and now the trees are fully established and growing quite well. The canopy is quickly becoming large enough where we can begin planting under the trees, starting next year (2014).
The Non-Profit SYV Botanic Garden is seeking donations towards a Potting Shed, designed by Arcadia Studio.
A composting area is included in the plans as well as earthworm casting boxes and storage for tools. The potting shed will be of educational use, where students from SYV Schools and Valley residents will learn the art of propagation and later help assist the botanic garden with planting the plants.
The permit process will begin as soon as the funds are available. If you or someone you know would like to help fund this project and/or become a volunteer, please call 350-0360 for details. Thank you!
Santa Ynez Botanic Garden
April 2013
On April 9, 2013 the board of “SYV Botanic Garden” received some wonderful news. The distinguished “Garden Club of Santa Barbara” awarded the Botanic Garden a generous Grant in the amount of $ 3,500.00.
It is the Garden Club’s request that the funds are used towards the construction of the Children’s Theatre and outdoor class room. Thanks to the Grant, the Garden is closer to starting the project. A sincere and heart felt “THANK YOU” goes out to all distinguished members of the Garden Club of Santa Barbara, on behalf of the board members and volunteers of the Botanic Garden, and the SYV community. Santa Ynez Valley Botanic Garden is a non-profit organization who operate, grow and rely on donations, grants and volunteer work by the community. If you would like to participate, make a donation or visit and enjoy the Botanic Garden, you can find us at: River View Park/West side, Buellton CA 93427
www.syvbotanicgarden.org
Tier I and II Outdoor Classroom and Garden Photos
