Green Wednesday: Watershed Wisdom and Garden Renewal
By Kathleen Scavone, Environmental Contributor / Rayna Jeremias, U.C. Master Gardeners of Napa County
Green Wednesday: Gardening and Ecological Insights
Every Wednesday Napa Valley Features brings you Green Wednesday, featuring articles from environmental voices and the UC Master Gardeners of Napa County. These contributors share research-based horticultural advice, insights on sustainability and climate topics relevant to our region.
Summary of Today’s Stories
In "Putah Creek Watershed Flows Through Our Lives," Scavone explores the ecological, cultural and historical significance of the Putah Creek Watershed, from its indigenous roots to modern-day conservation efforts.
“A watershed is our everything.” — Kathleen Scavone
In "The Magic of (Re-)Growing a Garden," Jeremias shares lessons learned from transplanting beloved plants during a hasty move and discovering unexpected gifts from a resilient new garden.
“Our new home has given me a garden full of gifts, from volunteer trees to forgiving soil.” — Rayna Jeremias
Putah Creek Watershed Flows Through Our Lives
By Kathleen Scavone
NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — Streams crisscross the surface of Napa County like veins. The waters of these creeks are elixirs of life, nourishing myriad species over time. Who among us hasn't experienced the joy of creek play as a child? Catching frogs, wondering at water striders that “row” on top of the rippling, dappled water that is colored by reflected olive-colored bay leaves and blessed blue sky? The Putah Creek Watershed is one of three vital watersheds in Napa County that also include Napa River Watershed and Suisun Creek Watershed.
Just what is a watershed? The U.S. Geological Survey website defines it as "an area that drains all the streams and rainfall to a common outlet such as the outflow of a reservoir, mouth of a bay, or any point along a stream channel. Watersheds can be as small as a footprint or large enough to encompass all the land that drains water into rivers that drain into San Francisco Bay, where it enters the Pacific Ocean. The word ‘watershed’ is sometimes used interchangeably with drainage basin or catchment. Watersheds consist of surface water — lakes, streams, reservoirs and wetlands — and all the underlying groundwater."
Putah Creek begins its zigzagging down to Lake Berryessa from its headwaters in the Mayacamas Mountains in Lake County. Its source is attributed to springs set upon Cobb Mountain's eastern side, nestled among native willow and alder trees that provide shade for trout. The waterway surges 81 miles through Lake County down to Lake Berryessa. Then the creek traverses downstream, creating the border of Yolo and Solano counties.
The Putah Creek Watershed is 71 square miles and spans elevations of 4,722 feet at Cobb Mountain, down to 13 feet at Toe Drain in Yolo County. The counties encompassed in this watershed are Lake, Napa, Solano and Yolo, and they are enjoyed for their natural beauty, boating, fishing and trails for hiking. Putah Creek Watershed holds two drainage areas — an upper drainage, which is the area upstream of Monticello Dam, and a lower drainage area located between Monticello Dam and the Yolo Bypass.
The watershed encompasses an array of ecosystems that stem from a variety of factors such as microclimates, elevation and geology. The nature of the watershed is its oak savannas and steep topography along with rolling hills that all form natural communities that include chaparral, grasslands, riparian habitats, oak and coniferous woodlands. Here you can find the California State Rock, serpentine, which comes in black to green tones and can be categorized as metamorphic as well as igneous, containing peridotite straight from the earth's mantle. You can also scout out some unique sedimentary stratigraphy such as sandstone, copious conglomerates and shale within the watershed.
The original stewards of the Putah Creek Watershed span back in time over thousands of years. In Lake County the Lake Miwok people called it puta wuwwe, or grassy creek. In Napa County the original stewards were the Patwin tribes, who called it Liwaito. Documents originating from Mission San Francisco Solano or Sonoma Mission tell us that the indigenous people were named Putto or Puttato. Putah Creek was once named Arroyo de los Putos in 1844, then Puta Creek in 1845. The creek's name was at first rejected by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names since it resembled the Spanish word for “whore.”
For a brief time the creek was named for a fur trapper named Ewing Young, when it was called Young's River. A portion of the creek was once called Walnut Bayou since the banks of the waters were shaded by native California black walnut trees. Historian and ethnologist Hubert Howe Bancroft's (1832-1918) maps ascribed the creek as Putah Creek, and the name was adopted by the U.S. Geological Survey.
People of the past and present have been — and still are — stream-keepers who work to protect and manage the water that sustains all of us. Caring communities of folks such as those at the Putah Creek Council along with scientists at UC Davis' Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology's Putah Creek Biomonitoring Program study the watershed and support biological monitoring.
Biomonitoring management objectives include removal of invasive species within the watershed; providing community awareness of the watershed; allowing safe, healthy recreation; and expanding research of the watershed's conditions.
Biomonitoring of Putah Creek has been ongoing for more than 20 years. PCBP folks survey the wildlife and fish of the watershed since it is a significant habitat for so many animals and also provide an important environment as a corridor connection for the Berryessa mountains into the valley as well as an essential migratory flyby for avian species between northern California and the Central Valley.
PCBP has noted more than 250 bird species, including wood ducks, several types of herons, kingfishers, Western scrub jays, lesser goldfinches, migratory warblers and swallows along with numerous mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish species. Fish species include steelhead trout and Chinook salmon.
Plants found in the Putah Creek Watershed include narrow-leaf milkweed, California buckeye, various sedges, sticky monkey flower, Gooddings willow, red willow, white alder, toyon, coyote brush, oaks, California wild rose, elderberry, American dogwood, bigleaf maple and many other native plants that provide important habitats for wildlife and the health of the watershed.
A fun fact about Putah Creek is that a Rolling Stone magazine article explained that singer John Fogarty, formerly of Creedence Clearwater Revival, named his famous song “Green River” after Putah Creek since the waters sometimes green up during low-water times due to vascular plants and algae formations. Fogerty frequented Putah Creek when he resided near the town of Winters, and the rest is music history.
Along Putah Creek you can note a subtle sound intermingling with breezes alongside copious flowing water and distinctive quail call. You are near blackberry brambles that play host to fat bees while cattails sway with redwing blackbirds. It's not long before you realize that water is our connecting flow. The water that attracts the complex web of life provides a bond to land beyond our watershed. Through the miracle of migration, Putah Creek connects us to South America and the Arctic. A watershed is our everything.
—
Kathleen Scavone, M.A., retired educator, is a potter, freelance writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora and Fauna Tour of a California State Park,” "People of the Water" and “Native Americans of Lake County.” She loves hiking, travel, photography and creating her single panel cartoon, “Rupert.”
The Magic of (Re-)Growing a Garden
By Rayna Jeremias, UC Master Gardener of Napa County
NAPA VALLEY, Calif. – Growing a garden takes patience, planning, a little (or a lot) of work and a bit of magic. As for me, I'm terrible at planning, good at working and have very little patience, so thank goodness for the magic that takes place within our soil.
My husband and I bought our home in November last year. The property had so much potential for gardening, and I couldn’t wait to get started.
The yard had been neglected for many years, so we began by clearing out overgrown bamboo (not for the faint of heart or hand), digging up hundreds of “naked lady” bulbs (which I am storing and hope to give away at the Master Gardeners’ Fall Faire on Sept. 20) and trying to guess what trees had been planted already. I stopped my husband from ripping out grapevines and a few trees, reasoning that once we knew what they were, we could make that decision together.
With its hand-painted murals and custom stained glass, this home had obviously been loved by the previous owners. I felt their efforts should be preserved where possible. But work on the house needed to come before gardening. Home projects left practically no time to get the ground ready for plants that I've been lovingly growing for almost a decade.
Among the plants I brought with me: a tea rose that I found near death in a 4-inch pot at a nursery, a Japanese maple tree given to me by a fellow Master Gardener and a small manzanita tree purchased from the California Native Plant Society a few years ago. All of these treasures would have to withstand the dig-a-hole, drop-it-in and pray method. I knew the soil should be amended first, but I just didn’t have the time to do it.
I was lucky that my plants survived, but I don’t advocate transplanting with haste. If you have the time to follow transplanting guidelines, you should do so.
Yet nature is remarkably resilient. The day of transplanting, I dug a few holes here and there, went to our old house with a shovel, donned some gloves and got to work. The Japanese maple proved the most difficult as it had a long taproot. Fearing I had traumatized it, I stuck it in a garbage bag along with my tea rose and some other plants I couldn't bear to leave and headed back to my new home.
Time was not on my side. More dire projects needed my attention, and when I found time to plant, I literally did everything wrong. The ground was so hard I was barely able to dig a hole the size of the existing root ball, let alone a slightly bigger hole, as one should. All my fertilizers and rooting hormones were packed away, so this not-so-little maple tree went into the hole as it was. I didn’t have any mulch to put over the freshly dug soil, nor did I provide shelter from the crazy winds in the Carneros area.
Within a few weeks, the maple’s remaining leaves turned brown and fell off. I feared it was a casualty of our hasty move but waited to see what would happen come spring.
My patience was rewarded 10 times over. By January I could see new buds forming all over my maple tree. My tea rose, which I thought for sure was a goner, started sprouting new leaves, and the grapevine had bud break. This old vine is now laden with fruit that is slowly getting plumper, and my chickens snack on its leaves.
The decision not to cut down trees also paid off as two of them turned out to be greengage plums. One of them will be a challenge as it has been allowed to grow upward of 30 feet, and the only creatures enjoying its sweet fruits are the barn swallows. This winter I will start pruning the tree back so we can enjoy the fruit, as well.
Another surprise of our new garden is the mimosa (Albizia julibrissin), which is sprouting all over our backyard. I have long been an admirer of this beautiful tree and planned to buy one someday, or to start one from seed, but nature has taken care of this for me. I will need to be selective about which sprouts I allow to remain as this tree is known to be invasive.
Our new home has given me a garden full of gifts, from volunteer trees to forgiving soil. And it has taught me patience, the ability to stand back and let nature do what it does and then relish the magic.
Events
Workshop: Join UC Master Gardeners of Napa County for a workshop on “Adding New Excitement to Your Succulent Garden” on Saturday, July 26, from 10 a.m. to noon, at University of California Cooperative Extension, 1710 Soscol Ave., Napa. Learn how to add interest, structure, biodiversity and movement to your succulent garden with companion planting. Register here.
Library Talk: UC Master Gardeners of Napa County with Napa Public Library will host a free talk on “Beautiful and Protective Firewise Landscaping” on Thursday, Aug. 7, from 7 to 8 p.m. via Zoom. Learn how to make your home more firewise and how to landscape with fire safety and resilience in mind without sacrificing beauty. Note that the meeting will not allow entry after 7:15 p.m. Register to receive the Zoom link.
Tree Walk: Join UC Master Gardeners of Napa County for a docent-led tree walk of Fuller Park in Napa on Sunday, Aug. 10, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Historic Fuller Park is an arboretum with many exotic and native trees planted over the past 120 years. Meet at the corner of Oak and Jefferson streets in Napa. Registration required.
Help Desk: The Master Gardener Help Desk is available to answer your garden questions on Mondays and Fridays from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. at the University of California Cooperative Extension Office, 1710 Soscol Ave., Suite 4, Napa. Or send your questions to mastergardeners@countyofnapa.org. Include your name, address, phone number and a brief description of the problem. For best results attach a photo.
—
Rayna Jeremias is a UC Master Gardener of Napa County.
Explore These Related Articles:
Browse All Napa Valley Features Stories
Kathleen, this article is wonderful. I have lived by Putah Creek most of my life and did not even think about its length before. I would love to be able to refer to this in the future if there is a way to get a copy of this article.
Wonderful article Rayna! Having seen your amazing property, I can understand your challenges! This story inspires me!