“Our hope is to educate and inspire people to use native plants in their home gardens. These plants require less water and other inputs while supporting local populations of our bird and insect garden allies.” – Katrina Frey About 20 of us showed up at West Road Winery, Frey Vineyards, for the Memorial Day Monday morning tour of the native berm at 11700 West Road in Redwood Valley.
At the end of the driveway, the big green metal shed, almost an acre in size with their production tanks inside, is surrounded by acres of grapes, a regular pond and a bio-filter, water-filtration pond. Plans are for the tasting room and offices to be up and running by the end of the year. In 2018, Frey Vineyards began propagating the three most common milkweed species native to Mendocino County — showy milkweed, woollypod and narrowleaf — in their vineyard fence rows to support Monarch butterflies.
By 2020, they began the creation of a berm, a demonstration garden, led by master gardener Carolyn Brown — with assistant gardeners Andy Hill and Carissa Chiniaeff — for Monarch butterflies and pollinators at the new site on West Road. The goal of the garden is to have plantings that provide continual bloom throughout the season to provide forage for beneficial insects. The 300-foot berm, running east to west adjacent to the driveway, highlights native plantings showcasing chaparral plants on the hot, sunny, southern slope and woodland plants on the cooler, shady northern slope.
A meadow o.