Happy Birthday and congratulations to the Mother Garden turning 50 years old this summer! The Mother Garden, and its offspring, the Nursery were featured in the May/June 2024 issue of Made Local Magazine. Check out the story here. The nursery is open April – October, Sat & Sun, 10am-5pm.
Join us at the Sonoma County Seed Swap!
20% off everything! We’re staying open two more weekends: November 5&6, 12&13 10am – 5pm 15290 Coleman Valley Rd (upper driveway), Occidental CA Don’t miss your last chance to bring home some new green friends – just in time for rain!
As the number of guests in our retreat program has increased in recent years, so has the volume of food scraps that our kitchen produces. For decades, our chickens, goats, garden hot heap compost piles, and vermiculture (worm) bins were sufficient for processing our kitchen compost, but as we’ve ramped up our integrated food system, […]
After a long Covid hiatus, on-site tours of the gardens led by real live humans will resume this April! Join us 1st and 3rd Sundays of the month at 1pm, starting at the nursery (upper driveway) April – October. More info on in-person tours here. Or watch a new virtual tour! On a very hot and dry day in the summer of […]
The old saying “Don’t miss the water ‘till the well runs dry” couldn’t be more apt in this year’s unprecedented drought. Wells and reservoirs are drying up around the county, the CA State Water Resources Control Board is implementing restrictions throughout the Russian River watershed, and neighboring small farms have been forced to cancel their […]
Pictured above: Doug Gosling, Mother Garden Biodiversity Program Director, in the OAEC seed vault with the new Kent Whealy dedication plaque. It is our great pleasure to announce the dedication and naming of the OAEC seed collection after seed preservation visionary and mentor, Kent Whealy. Kent Whealy recognized in the 1970’s that the collapse of […]
For over 2 decades, OAEC has had a deep collaboration with Food For Thought (FFT), a food bank in Forestville that serves over 700 clients living with HIV/AIDS and other critical illnesses. After many years of volunteering with FFT, Doug Gosling, OAEC’s Mother Garden Biodiversity Program Director, helped to establish the garden there in 1999 and […]