Pollinator garden takes root at Vine Trail entrance in downtown Calistoga
Come next spring, the downtown Calistoga entrance to the Napa Valley Vine Trail will be in full bloom, thanks to a community project to beautify the land with a pollinator-friendly garden.
Earlier this month, the Napa Valley Vine Trail Coalition joined forces with local partners including Rotary Club of Calistoga, the Calistoga Garden Club and students from Pacific Union College, to lay the groundwork for the project. The groups met and pulled patches of existing weeds, installed drip irrigation lines and laid cardboard, compost and mulch before planting nearly three dozen flower and plant varieties.
“This is going to turn into a flowerful, beautiful hillside that is good for the environment,” said Vine Trail Coalition volunteer Brad White who oversaw the project, the fourth that has been planted along the Vine Trail. Another, he said, was recently planted along the trail at Markham Vineyards in St. Helena.
Native, pollinator-friendly and drought-tolerant species that were planted include buckwheat, milkweed, Yankee Point, coyote bush and sage. The varieties were chosen to attract beneficial pollinators like bees, butterflies and birds, providing a biodiverse habitat and a resting space for creatures essential to the health of the local ecosystem.
The Calistoga pollinator garden project was funded by Rotary Club and by the Vine Trail Coalition. Rotarian Bobbie Casey said the goal is to plant a low-maintenance garden that would “compliment the city” by “improving the look and by attracting pollinators.”
The effort was completed on Oct. 16 with the help of a few dozen volunteers, including Pacific Union College students and professors who took a bus into town from the Angwin campus. It was the college’s annual “Day of Service,” and students volunteered with different organizations at nearly a dozen locations across Napa Valley.
“We believe in serving the community, building a stronger network and supporting each other in everything we’re envisioning, like this garden here,” said PUC senior Britney Hernandez. “A lot of these types of projects take team effort and a lot of collaboration. If two people were doing this, it would take days, but with (all of us), it definitely becomes easier.”
Shawn Casey-White, the Vine Trail Coalition’s executive director, said that for a nonprofit organization like theirs “it really does take a village to make it all happen.”
Also essential to the upkeep of the garden, she said, are the Calistoga Depot, which is just next door to the plot and will provide water for the irrigation, and Calistoga Garden Club, whose members have agreed to maintain the garden. Garden Club member Lenor Fowler said the work should be fairly simple and will consist of adjusting the water and some light weeding as the plants become established.
For the second phase of the project, the Vine Trail Coalition is working with Visit Calistoga, the Calistoga Tourism Improvement District and Rotary Club to install a new interactive, electronic directory on the side of the bus stop at the Vine Trail’s entrance that will use a wayfinding phone app to help orient visitors entering from the trail and promote foot traffic to downtown businesses.
“The hope is that when people on their bicycles roll into Calistoga at the end of the Vine Trail on a beautiful day, they are greeted by a garden of butterflies and hummingbirds,” Bobbie Casey said. “Then they’ll see the digital kiosk, and it will lead them to the businesses in town.”
