The Eureka Garden Tour
9. The Ryan Garden
At last, we were ready to move on to the ninth and final garden of the day: the Ryan Garden on E Street. This particular garden is part of the Ryan Historic House and Garden Project. The house is being restored by College of the Redwoods while the gardens are being developed by volunteers. The mission of this particular garden is to demonstrate how inexpensively you can garden, showcase native plants and their medicinal properties, beautify the neighborhood and teach about history in Eureka. Anyone interested in volunteering at this garden may contact Melanie Kuhnel at 407-0695 or Clair Perricelli at 443-0493.
This garden has a variety sections. We entered into the Native Plant Garden. I loved how green and woody waste was piled up to create boarders around the garden beds.
We wandered through the cottage garden into the Antique Rose Garden (which was the site of the original Ryan House). The first Ryan to settle in the area was James Talbot who captained the second boat to enter Humboldt Bay in 1850. He is credited with establishing and naming Eureka (this information was provided via a handout produced by an autodesk educational product on a brief history of the Pierce Ryan Property).
Entering the fence in to the backyard of the Ryan House, is a beautiful garden including an orchard, vegetable and herb gardens, the Annie B. Ryan House and Dye and Cottage Gardens.
This garden concluded our day. We were amazed we’d made it to all nine gardens! I asked the volunteers at one of the gardens how many visitors they had counted that day, and their tally marks recorded over 275. There were likely more.
I wish to thank all of the Humboldt Botanical Garden Foundation, the hosts of the gardens on the tour, as well as all of the volunteers for making our Sunday a beautiful one! I look forward to attending tours in the future. Thanks for all of the creative inspiration.
Happy gardening!
—Alegria Sita
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