Tour of the UC-Santa Cruz Arboretum

The May program will be a guided tour of the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum.

Meet outside Norrie’s Gift Shop at the Arboretum. Our tour guides will be club member Steve McCabe, noted succulent expert who recently retired from the Arboretum, and docent Mike Clark. This arboretum specializes in Mediterranean-climate plants (California, S Africa, Australia, New Zealand) and also specializes in plants that are attractive to hummingbirds.

General admission and guided-tour fees will be covered by the club for those members who register in advance by Thursday May 11th with club President Sonia Dyer at sonia.dyer@sbcglobal.net or 408-629-5735, or cell 408-858-4027. Since relatively few participants chose to ride the scheduled tour bus for our last field trip, this one will be drive-yourself. If you wish to carpool, please make your own arrangements.

For general information about the arboretum, see http://arboretum.ucsc.edu/visit/index.html. For a map of their grounds, see http://arboretum.ucsc.edu/visit/garden-map/index.html. For driving directions, see http://arboretum.ucsc.edu/visit/directions/.

Keep in mind that weekend drives over the mountain can be slow due to crowds of beach-goers, so get an early start. You may wish to have breakfast in Santa Cruz, or spend some time before the tour visiting one of the plant nurseries in the neighborhood for a Mother’s Day gift. Kathi Cambiano recommends Dig Gardens https://diggardens.com/ 420 Water St, Santa Cruz.

There’s also:
      San Lorenzo Garden Center 235 River St,
      The Garden Company 2218 Mission St,
      Far West Nursery 2669 Mattison Ln,
      Capitola Nursery 3116 Gross Rd Capitola,
      Hidden Gardens Nursery 7765 Soquel Dr Aptos.

Reviews of these stores can be found on Yelp at https://www.yelp.com/search?cflt=gardening&find_loc=Santa+Cruz%2C+CA.