Rambling Through Gardens in the Rain

The corn is as high as an elephant's eye...

Oren Jacob is a former Pixar chief technical officer, new venture capitalist and garden raconteur extraordinaire. And right here in Piedmont, he sometimes grows corn as tall as a two-story building.

Jacob spills over with enthusiasm as he describes his "freakishly tall" plants, which are, he says, closer to the original wild grass than to today's comparatively stubby hybrids. The Mayans of Mexico grew this corn, harvested the ears, then bent over the stalks and let them serve as a trellis for vines, he explains. Eventually the hardened stalks became the framework for small shelters.

Jacob's garden, near Piedmont Park, was one of nine stops on the free, self-guided Piedmont Green Garden Ramble on June 4 sponsored by Piedmont Connect. Each had its own story to tell. Despite Saturday's rain, a fair number of intrepid gardeners and would-be gardeners turned out to hear those stories, brandishing umbrellas as they examined edible plants, drought-tolerant landscaping and other "green" outdoor spaces. We met ramblers from as far away as San Jose.

The Palm Drive garden style is more lush, terraced landscaping than Farmer McGregor's garden patch or xeriscape. But its water needs are modest and the annual harvest so bountiful that Jacob regularly shares fruit and vegetables with neighbors by placing the home-grown produce on the rear fence.

A grafted cherry tree produces four varieties, extending its season. When the Santa Rosa plum tree grows a bumper crop, excess fruit is turned into gelato. (Follow the recipe for strawberry gelato from The Classic Italian Cookbook by Marcella Hazen, but substitute plums for the berries, Jacob says.) 

Small red Flame grapes that aren't polished off when they ripen turn into half-grape, half-raisin delicacies ("bloody delicious," Jacob says) and then raisins for a five-month-long harvest. Artichoke plants beget more artichoke plants, encouraged by a climate they love.

And then there are the giant spotted calla lilies. If your idea of a calla lily is the common, restrained white variety, you haven't met Jacob's flowers.

The giant lilies come with a story, too. A friend buying bamboo in Sebastopol found them growing in a ditch, descendants of plants thrown out by a long-gone nursery decades earlier. The ones we saw were about six and half feet high—Jacob, who's a tad under six feet tall, demonstrated by posing next to the lilies—but they can reach nine feet. 

Jacob has a soft spot for big plants. He rattles off his wins in the annual : three years ago, biggest pumpkin (about 80 lb.); two years ago, biggest pumpkin again (a monster 130 lb.); last year, biggest zucchini (24 lb.). And in 2008, he also won for "most unusual vegetable" (that giant corn).

If you want to try your hand at tall, tall corn too, Jacob says to check the Schools for Chiapas website for traditional Mayan Zapatista corn. A donation of $7 to $20 is suggested. Corn "as high as an elephant's eye" is possible, but not guaranteed (line from "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!).

The rain became heavier and other duties called, so we only made it to two of the gardens on the tour. See Jacob's garden and the edible and butterfly gardens in the attached photos.

Other stops promised chickens, low-maintenance native plants, backyard orchards and dramatic giant boulders. Several of them are front yard gardens, so if you signed up for the ramble, got the tour list but stayed indoors out of the rain, you can still drive by for a glimpse.

To read about one Piedmont family that is tiptoeing into edible gardening, check Sheila Hollander's recent blog post here.