LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Special Districts and the University of California Master Gardeners of Lake County are working together to provide three free workshops titled “Gardening in harmony with local conditions and resources.”

A recent study by UC Berkeley researcher Lynn Ingram and her colleague Scott Stine from California State University, East Bay found that when looking at geological time spans, extended droughts have been the norm for most of California – not the exception – and that the last 150 years have been unusually wet.

With the possibility that the recent drought may not be over, local residents need to adapt gardening practices to the environment and stop following the New England model of what a beautiful garden should look like, according to Special Districts. Once that concept is understood, the details of its implementation are easy.

UC Lake County Master Gardeners will show participants how to have an aesthetically pleasing, low water use, low maintenance garden that is in harmony with local climate and resources, and provides habitat for native pollinators and beneficial insect species, thereby greatly reducing not just water use but the need for pest and disease control.

Learn what and when to plant, how and when to irrigate, sources for suitable plants, seeds, soil, compost and more.

Join them for one of these informative talks coming up on Saturday mornings in three convenient locations around the county:

– 10 a.m. to noon, Feb. 21: The Little Red School House, 15780 Bottle Rock Road, Cobb.
– 10 a.m. to noon, Feb. 28: Lucerne Alpine Senior Center, 3985 Country Club Drive.
– 10 a.m. to noon, March 7: Lakeport Senior Center, 527 Konocti Ave.

For more information, contact Jan Coppinger at Special Districts, 707-263-0119.