Welcoming Nature into Our Gardens with Maile Arnold

2:00-3:30pm: The Talk at Heron Hall, Laguna Environmental Center

4:00-5:30pm: A Special Tour of Maile’s extraordinary gardens in Sebastopol

$40 for both the Talk and Tour, pre-registration required. 

$15 for the Talk only, pre-registration required.

Heron Hall, Laguna Environmental Center, 900 Sanford Road, Santa Rosa, CA

Join us for this very special two-part event with gardener-extraordinaire, Maile Arnold.  Learn about gardening and landscape design that attracts pollinators and creates natural pest control through the use of perennials and annuals with long blooming seasons. Discover new ways to attract a diversity of birds and insects to your garden, as well as to provide a glorious display of color and texture throughout the year.  Maile’s slides will highlight plant beauty and diversity, as she shares what she has learned through the years of gardening without herbicides and pesticides to provide a healthy balance in the landscape. Maile’s informative and inspiring presentation in Heron Hall is from 2:00-3:30pm and will include a brief look outside at some of the plants buzzing with insect life in the Laguna Environmental Center’s native plant landscape.

After the talk, a smaller group of pre-registered participants will be invited for a private tour of Maile and Warren Arnold’s gardens in southern Sebastopol from 4:00-5:30pm.  Directions provided at the talk, and only people who attend the talk are allowed on the tour (no “tour-only” option available).  This tour will be a unique and wonder-filled opportunity to see first-hand their vibrant garden (even in the fall!) of annuals, perennials, vegetables, espalier fruit trees, and goats, sheep, and chickens.  Maile will share gardening tips and lessons she’s learned through the years, including the importance of building soil health and welcoming diversity into our gardens.  Toward the end of the tour, Maile will give a brief demonstration of how to propagate plants from cuttings.   

With a BA in Biochemistry and an MS in Environmental Education, Maile Arnold is an accomplished landscape designer and has been raising food (vegetables, meat, dairy, and fruit) on her Sebastopol homestead for 38 years, all without the use of artificial chemicals.  A fifth-generation gardener, Maile loves sharing her passion for sustainable gardening and landscape design that embraces beauty and natural balance.