Cabrillo horticulture student Carrie Knoop checks moisture in the soil in one of the existing Cabrillo greenhouses Sentinel photo by Bill Lovejoy

Botanic Gardens projected to be tourist hot spot

APTOS — Work is under way at Cabrillo College on what will be the county’s most lavish horticulture complex, complete with a native plant arboretum, sweeping bay views, even an espresso bar.

Those who study at the $6 million Environmental Horticulture Center and Botanic Gardens center still will learn the ins and outs of greenhouse management, pesticides, beneficial insects and meteorology. But they’ll be doing it in a much more impressive space.

More than $5 million in local money and state funds will go into the center. The local cash is part of an $85 million capital-improvement bond approved by county voters in 1998; private donations will cover equipment and landscaping.

Tourist destination
The facility will likely make Cabrillo part of the tourist circuit when it opens on 11 acres in early 2003.

Aside from training students for horticulture careers, the center will be geared to the public, with a retail store, community center, seminars, conferences, small library, nursery and garden. Admission to the grounds will be free. Docents and self-guided tours will be available.

"We’ve been dreaming about this 20 years, but it was always just too ambitious," said Richard Merrill, 60, founder of Cabrillo’s horticulture program.

"Can’t you see them coming up here Sundays with the family?" Merrill asked, walking the property as heavy equipment rattled in the background. "Have your little cafe latte over there, your kids playing over there. We’ll build tunnels and little rooms out of plant trellises for the kids. We’ll have gardens attracting butterflies and birds. ... Nature will be the baby-sitter."

Since 1979, the Cabrillo program has been centered on an acre crammed with rust-roof shacks, greenhouses and a few portable toilets.

The expansion also will allow for new programs like horticultural therapy, which explores the calming and healing potential of garden environments.

A new addition
The improvements are coming as the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum goes through a rough patch, with some volunteers claiming the administration is marginalizing the university’s Mediterranean gardens near the western edge of campus.

"The arboretum has always been a stepchild," UCSC arboretum volunteer Edna Vollmer said. "I really don’t know why they are treated so much better at Cabrillo."

But Ray Collett, who helped found the UCSC arboretum, said Cabrillo’s plans will complement, not compete with, UCSC. But he agreed UCSC’s gardens don’t get the attention they deserve.

"You have, or at least you had, this extraordinary business of high-tech money, and that attracts a lot of attention from the UCSC administration," Collett said. "They are looking at those huge bucks and not so much horticulture and education right now."

UCSC’s administrators, in several letters to arboretum staff last year, stated they do value the arboretum and want the center to expand its research, educational programs and community outreach.

"We really aspire to this becoming a singular botanical garden and an international resource," campus spokeswoman Elizabeth Irwin said. "People do not appreciate this locally as much as we want them to."

But she called the Cabrillo and UCSC centers "two completely different worlds."

Irwin said Cabrillo’s garden center is a job-training vocational area while UCSC’s center is largely research-oriented focusing on Southern Hemisphere plants, including New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

A question of timing
The story of Cabrillo’s new project is one of unexpected good fortune.

The original center was "put together with spit and chewing gum. Then the earthquake happened in 1989 and most of the buildings here were condemned. We had to find money to remodel," Merrill said.

He sought state cash to rebuild, but thinking his request might languish in bureaucratic limbo, sought local money, too. Eventually state and local bond measures yielded $5 million, a sum that stunned Merrill.

But the funding came with the condition the center move somewhere else on campus.

Moving turned out to be no hardship.

"They gave us this incredible spot on a marine terrace."

Plans for the new center will be displayed at the college’s 23rd annual Spring Plant Sale, set for 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, May 12, and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, May 13 near the East Campus entrance. Admission is free. For $25, visitors can attend a "presale" 3-7 p.m. Friday, May 11. A silent auction of rare and exotic plants is planned.

Contact Dan White at dwhite@santa-cruz.com.