PORT ANGELES — Local gardener Selinda Barkhuis will share her knowledge of growing a variety of fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers on a typical city lot in the center of Port Angeles during “Gardening for Food in the City,” the next Green Thumbs Garden Tips series event, set for noon to 1 p.m. Thursday.
To join the presentation, go to extension.wsu.edu/clallam and select the Master Gardener Zoom presentation link or call 253-215-8782 (meeting ID 950 1260 2676, passcode 100052).
Barkhuis will focus on the challenges and opportunities of gardening in a highly hard-scaped urban environment with a water-thirsty growing season.
She will provide lists of fruits, herbs and vegetables that have proven to grow well locally, and offer tips on choosing the right fruit for the right place, using water wisely, and extending local gardening to an all-year-long growing season.
Barkhuis has gardened for food for many years and uses intensive and organic gardening techniques (together with a few favorite power tools) to grow a wide variety of edibles and flowers on her property in Port Angeles’ city center.
Her garden was featured in the 2012 Master Gardeners Petals & Pathway Garden Tour. She has been a regular presenter on a wide variety of gardening topics since then.
Barkhuis got her first taste of gardening for food in the city as a third grader in the Netherlands, growing vegetables and a few flowers in her own “school garden” along-side several hundred other third and fourth graders who were allotted 70 square feet of garden space to grow the same starts in the same pattern at the same time. Each little plot was crowned with three sunflowers.
Fifty years later, Barkhuis feels quite lucky to intensely garden 10,000 square feet of residential real estate in the center of the City of Port Angeles. She also recently completed WSU Extension’s Home Horticulture Training program and highly recommends it to anyone who is ready to take gardening to the next level.
Sponsored by WSU Clallam County Master Gardeners, the Green Thumbs Garden Tips education series seeks to provide home gardeners with education on research-based sustainable garden practices in Clallam County.
The series is offered via streaming presentations from noon to 1 p.m. the second and fourth Thursday each month through October (in November, December and January, one program is offered).
For more information, call 360-565-2679.
