Eureka Sequoia Garden Club

05/30/2026

We proudly planted all these baskets for the gazebo in Old Town! This photo by Alan Workman shows them off nicely!

05/22/2026

Garden tours at the District Meeting. Thanks to the Ferndale Garden Club for hosting!

05/15/2026

Getting ready for our meeting tomorrow on Friday, May 15 at 10am. We will meet at the Ag Center at Humboldt Hill. Looking forward to sharing flowers from our gardens and meeting our scholarship winners!

05/12/2026

Our last general meeting of the season will be this Friday, May 15th! We will be doing Bottles and Blooms, where members bring a prized flower and we learn all about it and each other. It's a really fun event. We will also offer tool sharpening and we have at least one of our scholarship winners coming to visit. Please join us starting at 10:00 a.m. at the Ag Center on Humboldt Hill. Thank you!

04/05/2026

Our zoo crew helps with this sometimes as well. Zoo crew meets every Monday from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. weather permitting.

03/26/2026

Looks like fun! Let's plan in it!

🎉 Save the date for Party for the Planet at Sequoia Park Zoo presented by our very own Conservation Council!

🌎 Join us for an Earth Day celebration of native plants and pollinators on Sunday, April 26, 2026 from 11:00am-3:00pm. Activities include a native plants giveaway, special keeper talks, conservation stations, free nature journals & animal trading cards, education activities, and more!

🐝 Activities are included with admission or membership. Native plants and nature journals available while supplies last.

03/26/2026

Holly can be invasive. Be sure to only plant native grasses. All we need are more grassy weeds! Not sure about the Virginia creeper

Feeders bring songbirds to a yard. Plants make them stay.

The difference between a visit and a resident breeding pair comes down to what's growing, not what's hanging. Seed heads, berries, and dense branching structure give birds food, shelter, and nesting sites no feeder can replace.

🐦 Nine plants that turn visitors into residents:

- Sunflower — left standing after bloom, a single dried head feeds chickadees, goldfinches, and nuthatches for weeks. They cling to the face and pick seeds one by one. Never deadhead sunflowers meant for birds

- Elderberry — clusters of dark purple berries ripen in late summer when migrating warblers, thrushes, and robins need high-energy fuel. One mature bush produces an enormous quantity of berries in a single season

- Coneflower — after petals drop, the spiky seed head remains loaded through winter. Goldfinches perch on the dried stems and pull seeds from the cone — one of the easiest bird-feeding behaviors to watch from a window

- Holly — dense thorny evergreen branches provide year-round shelter from predators and weather. Bright red winter berries feed Cedar Waxwings, Mockingbirds, and Bluebirds when nothing else is fruiting

- Serviceberry — one of the first native shrubs to fruit in early summer. Catbirds, Orioles, and Tanagers arrive before the berries are fully ripe. Plant one and you'll see species that never visited your feeder

- Switchgrass — native grass that produces seed-heavy panicles in fall. Sparrows, Juncos, and Towhees forage through the dried stalks all winter. The dense base provides ground-level nesting cover in spring

- Dogwood — spring flowers attract insects that feed warblers during migration. Fall berries sustain dozens of bird species. Few native trees offer as much to songbirds across as many seasons

- Virginia Creeper — a native vine that produces small blue-black berries in fall. Thrushes, Woodpeckers, and Flickers devour them. The dense leaf cover also shelters nesting birds from rain and wind

- Black-eyed Susan — seed heads persist well into winter. Small finches and sparrows pick them clean. A mass planting creates a seed field that functions like a natural feeding station that never needs refilling

🌱 How to make the list work:

- Arrange by fruiting season — serviceberry for early summer, elderberry for late summer, holly and coneflower for winter. Continuous food means year-round residents
- Leave all seed heads and dried stalks standing through winter — cutting them in fall removes the food supply birds depend on when feeders run empty
- Dense branching matters as much as berries — holly, switchgrass, and Virginia Creeper provide the shelter that keeps birds nesting in your yard instead of just visiting
- One serviceberry or one dogwood near a feeder changes which species show up. Berry-eating birds that ignore seed feeders suddenly appear when the right tree fruits

A yard full of the right plants feeds more birds more reliably than any feeder — and it never runs empty 🌿

03/26/2026

Here's the scoop on Daffodil show. See you there!

03/24/2026

This is a wonderful annual event! Don't miss it!

Daffodils by the River Flower Show

When: Saturday, March 28, 2026 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Where: River Lodge, 1800 Riverwalk Dr, Fortuna, CA 95540

Springtime in Humboldt County means daffodils! The Fortuna Garden Club's Annual Daffodil Show features more than 600 stems of the sunny flowers on display. This is one of three major daffodil shows in the state, drawing amateur growers and propagators from California and Oregon. Floral judges from The National Garden Clubs, Inc. and the American Daffodil Society/Northern California Daffodil Society, California Conservation Corp, and the hardworking members of the Fortuna Garden Club, a California Garden Club Blue Ribbon Club!

Free Admission

For more information, see CGCI’s website calendar (on the home page) under March: https://tool.californiagardenclubs.com/i4a/calendar/?pageid=3286&showTitle=1 #

03/24/2026

Our Master Gardeners in Humboldt are wonderful! We have several in our club.

Strong gardens start with strong seedlings.

Using a sterile seed-starting mix, providing bright light, and gradually hardening off plants before transplanting can significantly improve plant health and harvest success.

Read more: https://ucanr.edu/blog/uc-master-gardener-program-statewide-blog/article/five-common-seed-starting-mistakes-and-how

For region-specific guidance, connect with your local UC Master Gardener program at mg.ucanr.edu.



Photo credit: Barbra Braaten
Photo description: Seedlings in a tray with a grow light above.