QUARTERLY MEETING

August 10, 2005 | Garden Conservancy Office, San Francisco

Minutes:

1. INTRODUCTIONS

   During introductions, Carola Ashford reported that they completed their first plantings at Alcatraz earlier in the day and noted that, "it felt wonderful to get to that point with the garden restoration." Lucy Tolmach noted that she does historic resources inventories.

2. WEB SITE STATUS

   Steve Cancian reported that he had received some feedback on the outline he presented at the previous meeting and that he had made initial contact at UC in his effort to secure a faculty sponsor for the web master student position that will be needed to create and maintain our web site. He is optimistic that either Louise Mozingo or Linda Jewell will make that commitment when he assures them that we will do all the work. Steve proposed that he draft a job description for posting and that he work with his existing committee to select a student for the position. He noted that the best time to post job ads is the first week in September.

   For our next meeting Steve's goal is to have a power point presentation illustrating what the web site pages might look like.

3. DOCUMENTATION PROCESS

   The chair opened the discussion on alternative approaches for accomplishing our initial full documentation. Several comments were offered noting that this nationwide program is a huge undertaking and needs financial support from the federal government. It was also noted that in order to secure funding the program (volunteers) need to first demonstrate its validity and level of support. Steve added that one of the objectives of our web site would be to demonstrate the need for the program.

   Tom Brown suggested the Elvinia Slosson Research Fund as a possible source of seed money for our efforts. Anthony Veerkamp added that the National Trust for Historic Preservation is a likely source of seed money and offered to assist us with the application. Such funds could be used to pay site photography expenses.

   One approach for getting the documentation work completed is to seek students who may need a thesis topic from either the landscape or history departments at UC or other northern California institutions. Steve suggested that we could post a job ad for such a position and that it could be funded or not.

   Another approach is for our membership to take on responsibility for doing the research and documentation. This would be accomplished by dividing the tasks into many, small tasks and dividing the work among many. Chris volunteered to look at how best to break the tasks down into logical and manageable assignments.

   The Sonoma State archaeological department and the North West Information Center in Sonoma were recommended as sources of pre-historic and historic information on landscapes.

4. DOCUMENTATION CRITERIA

   Chris Pattillo read the criteria for Identifying Historic Landscapes that was prepared by the national ASLA HALS group. (Available on their web site: www: asla.org/groups/hppigroup) We agreed that our criteria should consider the following:

   • Site size: a smaller site would be easier for our initial efforts
   • Threatened Status: If a site were threatened either by loss or poor stewardship, and our efforts would encourage better stewardship, that is a plus.
   • Proximity: we prefer to work on sites that are easily accessible to our membership.
   • Public Landscapes: the site should be publicly accessible.
   • The site should clearly be a "landscape" and not a building.

   The chair read the list of candidates for documentation including those sites for which a HALS short form had been provided, and all other sites that have been mentioned during our previous meetings. This includes:

   Nominations with Short Forms:

   • Children's Fairyland in Lakeside Park, Oakland
   • Dunsmuir Historic Estate, Oakland
   • Kaiser Roof Garden, Oakland
   • Mills Hall on the Mills College Campus, Oakland
   • Oakland Museum of California Gardens, Oakland
   • Olompali State Historic Park, Marin County
   • Ruth Bancroft Private Garden, Walnut Creek
   • Piedmont Way Parkway, Berkeley

   Other suggestions include:

   • Alcatraz Island, San Francisco
   • Arizona Garden, Stanford University Campus
   • Filoli Gardens, Woodside
   • Glen Oaks Ranch, Glen Ellen
   • Lake Merritt Garden Center & Wildlife Refuge, Oakland
   • Mission Delores, San Francisco
   • Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland
   • Mt Tam Amphitheater, Mill Valley
   • Pardee Home Museum Garden, Oakland
   • Pudding Creek Trestle, Fort Bragg
   • Seven Hills Road Historic Site, Castro Valley
   • Sun House, Ukiah
   • Woodminster Amphitheater, Oakland

   From these lists campaigns were made for five sites: Kaiser Roof Garden by Chris Pattillo; Olompali by Betsy Flack; Ruth Bancroft by Becky Rice; Piedmont Way by Michael Kelley and a half-hearted effort for the Oakland Museum by an unnamed source.

   After a brief discussion Tom proposed that we pursue three sites: Kaiser, Olompali and Piedmont Way. These three provide one urban and one rural site, the opportunity for some high-profile publicity, and two of the three are easily accessible for UC Berkeley students who may be tapped for support work. The Olompali and Piedmont Way sites have existing groups that are actively engaged in collecting information; we would be supporting those efforts.

   The group welcomes other's comments on the recommendation to pursue these sites for our initial efforts for full HALS documentation. Please feel free to use the "respond to all" button to convey your thoughts to the group.

5. NEXT MEETING

   Our next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday November 4th at 4pm At the Kaiser Roof Garden, hosted by PGAdesigninc