Paradise Hills Native Garden, 6800 Potomac Street, San Diego, CA, 92139
In 2017 a group of Southeastern San Diego community members began advocating for improving the covered landfill at Paradise Hills Community Park with a native plant demonstration garden. The proposal was met with interest by the City of San Diego, but no funds were available.
So we founded Paradise Gardeners, a California Garden Clubs, Inc. member club, to apply for grants and obtain funding to make it happen.
On September first of 2020 we began the physical aspects of the project with the planting of eight native Engelmann Oaks in the parking area. After the addition of walking paths and the installation of boulders, the first larger scale planting happened in March of 2021. Installation phases are largely completed, but work is ongoing, aided by community volunteers and allied groups, including the Master Gardener Association of San Diego County. The installation phases have been fully funded through grants received. The City has provided gravel for improving and adding walking paths. Interpretive signage has been installed and continues to be added.
We need more volunteers for weeding, mulching, planting, maintenance and planning – please contact us if you’re interested in this project. Your membership and donations are also vital to the garden’s success!
Creating a Nature-Partnering Demonstration Garden
Environmental concerns prohibit installation of irrigation systems, so native plants are selected that need only modest hand watering to become established. Once established, these plants require little to no supplemental watering.
Many plants are particularly interesting in spring. Benches, including rustic log benches, are added.
The demonstration garden roughly follows the perimeter of the covered, 1960s era landfill, and is now composed of five associated gardens— a Pollinator Garden, a Western Native Garden that includes a small stand of oaks, cypress, and redshanks (trees planted west of the landfill perimeter), a Woodland Garden (cypress and oak trees south of the landfill perimeter), an Ethnobotany Garden, and completing the loop, a Butterfly Garden. The Ethnobotany Garden provides information about the indigenous Kumeyaay Nation that has historically lived in, and traveled about, our area. The plantings in this area share the many ways the Kumeyaay used the plants for materials, tools, fuels, food and medicine.
