Graduations at Blake 2013

May 20th, 2013

Two graduation ceremonies were held in the garden this weekend. On Saturday, May 18  a reception and awards ceremony was held for the graduating students from the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning. The graduating students are from the Master of Landscape Architecture, the Master of Urban Design, and the Bachelor of Arts in Landscape Architecture programs. On Sunday, May 19th, the Conservation Resource Science students celebrated their Alternative Graduation. The band Gemini Journey accompanied the ceremony.

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Posted in Education |

New Bench for the Formal Garden

May 20th, 2013

Blake Garden received a beautiful ash and steel bench made by students from the Introduction to Materials and Construction  Class taught by  Professor Linda Jewell and Ray Freeman.

 

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Posted in Design/Build, Education |

Merritt College visits Blake

May 20th, 2013

The Landscape Horticulture Class from Merritt College taught by Chris Gramp held their final class in the garden on Friday.

 

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Posted in Education |

Calday 2013

April 21st, 2013

Cal Day was on Saturday, April 20th and the garden was open for visitors. About 150 people came to picnic, tour, play and make in the garden. Many came from the campus Cal Day activities and others were from the Kensington neighborhood enjoying the beautiful sunny spring day.

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Posted in Community, Education |

New Compost Area at Blake Garden

April 9th, 2013

We applied for a grant through UC Berkeley’s sponsored TGIF (The Green Initiative Fund) Program and received funding to build a new compost area that would enable us to use the front loader to turn the compost piles rather that physically turning them by hand.

The staff members at Blake decided on a site location and design. Student interns and volunteers helped with the construction under the guidance of Mike Frappier, our staff stone work expert.

This project has enabled Blake Garden to:  dramatically reduce green waste, recycle material on site, increase efficiency of compost production, reduce risk of repetitive stress injury, eliminate $3000 in green dumpster fees, and save more than 250 hours of labor.

All of the grant project posters will be displayed on Earth day at the 10th Annual Sustainable Summit hosted by the Chancellors Advisory Committee on Sustainability (CACS) April 22 2:00-3:00 at UC Berkeley Campus in Sutardja Dia Hall with other events ongoing until 5:00. Public is welcome!

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Posted in Design/Build, Sustainability |

heavy rain impacts Blake Garden

December 4th, 2012

Within the last few days we have gotten over 5 inches of rain. A tributary of Cerrito creek runs through the garden and is impacted by urban runoff. The video is of water blasting through the garden after a big down pour on Sunday morning. We recently repaired the base of the waterfall with volunteers from St. Mary’s High School along with our staff, volunteers and EDSET interns from Albany High school. The repair seems to be holding up and was done just in the nick of time.

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

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Posted in Education, Restoration, Video, Water |

Sea Creature Succulent Garden

December 3rd, 2012

We found an interesting design in a landscape magazine of an “Underwater” theme garden made with succulents. We have just finished some construction at the front entrance of the greenhouse and thought we would give the design a try. The plants we used are echevarias, sedums, aeoniums, aloes, agaves, euphorbias along with some interesting rocks, sea glass and shells. Our Albany High School EDSET interns Micaela and Carl helped by  the planting the beds.

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Posted in Education, Flora & Fauna |

Berkeley HS photo students at Blake

December 2nd, 2012

Berkeley High School students from Lucinda Daly’s photo class came to the garden in October, and took some stunning photos. Concurrently the U.C.Landscape Architecture Undergraduate students had their temporary installations  up in the garden from the Revealing the Landscape project.

Posted in Art In The Garden, Education |

November Fog & Light

November 28th, 2012

Early on a December morning the light shown through the fog in an unbelievable way. I ran for the camera as the light was changing.

Posted in Walkabouts |

Blake Garden Rainfall Records updated for 2012

October 16th, 2012

We have been collecting rainfall data since 1965 here in the garden. Rain year begins July 1st  and ends June 30th.  We are looking forward to this years rain.

Download xlsx file:
Blake Garden Rainfall Data 1965-2012 xls file

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Posted in Water |

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