Carter Gardens--Eureka, California

The Carter Gardens in Eureka are an excellent local gardening resource.

Carter House Inn guests are invited to help in the harvest, gathering produce for the meals.  "In addition to supplying the inn's restaurant with produce of the highest quality and freshness, the Carter
Gardens have become a center for horticultural education, home to organic gardening seminars, lecture series, and interpretive tours given by the inn's Master Gardener." (source)

The Carter Gardens' Plant Lists are a wonderful resource for planning your own gardens.

List of Herbs 

List of Flowers

List of Hotel Garden Plantings

List of Greens

List of Vegetables

Carter House Inns & Restaurant 301

Locally Delicious

Locally Delicious is a wonderful cookbook that can be utilized to design a garden based on popular, locally grown, fresh ingredients.  The Locally Delicious website is full of Humboldt-County-relevant gardening literature and advice.  Check it out!

I found my copy of Locally Delicious at Loleta Bakery, which is a charming cafe and bakery with a European vibe nestled in Loleta's downtown.  It has the best fresh bread that I've ever had and multiple varieties are baked.

So consider adding some raised beds to your garden and design and plant based on some of your favorite recipes!

Raised Garden Beds at Tudal Winery



Umpherston Sinkhole Garden--Mount Gambier, South Australia

While researching how best to make lush a border including some Hydrangea with an existing Tazmanian Tree Fern Dicksonia antartica, I happened upon a blog posting on the Umpherston Sinkhole Garden.  Its inherent interest lies in its below-ground-level orientation.  I recently photographed a below ground level garden at CornerStone Gardens which is topographically similar to the sinkhole garden.

Inspired by the Umpherston Sinkhole Garden, another lush residential garden border including Dicksonia, Hydrangea, Gunnera, etc. and several specimen shrubs and trees that I found at Singing Tree Gardens, a local nursery in McKinleyville, California with plantings that they sell installed in their own botanical garden; I am consumed with the idea of merging these plantings and gardens to create my own uniquely inspired border.  The moment when all of the parts have been found and seem to belong with one another, I am ready to design my garden border and motivated to take my ideas further and apply them to other potential/hypothetical projects, for instance, an old quarry site, which offers the same comforting below-ground-level vibe as the Umpherston Sinkhole Garden, a seemingly perfect place for a unique and stimulating garden experience.