Category: From the Gardens

From the Gardens

17 Jun, 2022

A Fond Farewell to the Burbank Chestnut

It is with very mixed emotions that we must announce the removal of the Burbank Chestnut which has graced us with its elegance, shade, and carbon storage since 1931 on the south side of the portico at the Santa Rosa Avenue entrance.  This tree is badly infected with Oak Root Fungus (Armillaria mellea) and must be removed for the safety of all who enjoy our beautiful park.  This fungus is a common killer of older trees in California’s landscape, and is prevalent in the downtown area of Santa Rosa.   We don’t know exactly when Luther Burbank bred this tree, but...

Rose Arbor with 'Fourth of July' Rose

From the Gardens

10 Apr, 2019

Garden Bed Sponsorships 2018

This time last year we created a new program – Garden Bed Sponsorships – and asked local businesses and individuals if they’d like to sponsor a specific garden bed for the year. We are very grateful to the following businesses and neighbors who took us up on the offer.  With their help, we have: completed the first round of plant replacements in the Rose Garden (plants, like people. eventually grow old) cleaned up and replanted the bed just outside the Tupper St gate (extra thanks to the women from Bank of Marin who contributed “sweat-equity” on this project) mulched and...

Multi-Grafted Mania

From the Gardens

28 Mar, 2019

Multi-Grafted Mania

Meandering around the Gardens in late March and Early April results in finding hidden treasures if you know how to look for them. This is the time when some of the more intriguing experiments on the property show their colors. If you wander by the demonstration bed with the story about the 20,000 prune trees and look closely, you’ll see that some of the almond rootstocks have been multi-grafted. One of these little trees has a peach, a pluot, and an almond all flowering at the same time! Hopefully we’ll get to see some very different fruit forming on each...

Rachel's Fruit Salad Tree

From the Gardens

17 Feb, 2016

’Tis the Season to Graft Your Fruit Trees!

Greetings all! I’m sure most of you are familiar with the story of the 20,000 prune trees Mr. Burbank delivered to Warren Dutton in 1881, earning Burbank the nickname of “The Plant Wizard.” To accomplish this task, Mr. Burbank used a technique known as June Budding, where individual buds of one plant are spliced onto the stem of another plant. They call it “June” budding because often this process is accomplished when the rootstock of the plant is actively growing. This time of year, when plants are dormant, we use a different grafting technique that involves a rootstock and a...

From the Gardens

17 Mar, 2015

Multi-Grafted Apple Tree

Luther Burbank was an avid grafter. He grafted everything from fruit and nut trees to tomatoes and potatoes. One of the advantages to grafting is to reduce the time until a tree fruits by 2-7 years!!! In most cases, new grafts will fruit in less than two seasons, and in some exceptional cases, fruit will bear on the same season that the graft was made. His most popular contribution to grafting was the 20,000 prune trees where he used the technique of “June Budding” to deliver a seemingly impossible order to a local businessman (Mr. Dutton) within one season, earning...

Follow:

Newsletter Signup

Visit our sister site:

Luther Burbank Experiment Farm
Sebastopol, CA