QUARTERLY MEETING

November 10, 2015 4PM | Cohen-Bray House, Oakland

Chair: January Tavel
Recorder: Chris Pattillo
Attendees: January Tavel, Betsy Flack, Cathy Garrett, Fred Rachman, Chris Pattillo, Patti Reidenbach and Nancy Donald

We met at the Cohen-Bray Home in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland and were given a tour of the site and Victorian-era home by Nancy and Patti.

In addition to the house there is a garage on the property with an exceptional collection of historic tools.

1. Cohen-Bray House Project

   Nancy and Patti talked about what they are interested in having our membership do. They are a study center and currently have a 3-year garden teaching project underway. This is being done by Victory Lee of the Victory Garden Foundation. The project involves telling children what the site used to be like. Having a series of period plans would enable them to show what the property looked like when the land was open countryside, when it was used for ranching, or farmland. They have most of the information but need a set of maps at the same scale that show changes in the creeks, the circulation systems, etc.

   Chris described how a HALS drawing would record what the garden looks like currently and suggested that it might be good to record the site now before it undergoes more change.

   Nancy and Patti passed around historic photos of the house and garden that show what the garden looked like in the past. They also have a plan of the garden drawn 15 years ago. Cathy mentioned the Stanley Smith Group in the mid-West that offers grants to create healthy gardens. The Pardee Home Foundation, a historic garden similar to Cohen-Bray, received a grant from this group.

   One possible source of help to prepare these exhibits could be work-study students from UC Berkeley. Chris noted that Linda Jewell did confirm that the work-study program still exists and a HALS project might be a suitable student project.

   The Cohen-Bray Foundation is supported solely by memberships. We are invited to join. They are a certified non-profit, have been recognized by the Garden Conservancy, and are on the National Trust's list of historic gardens. The house is listed on the National Register and is an Oakland landmark.

2. HALS Heroes Program

   ASLA has offered us $5000 for HALS Heroes projects. They are particularly interested in involving students to do this work.

3. HALS Challenge

   Chris Stevens, HALS NPS, sent us the HALS Challenge theme for 2016 which is to document a National Register Listed Landscape. Chris also sent the winners of the 2015 Challenge. This year California swept the competition. 3rd place went to Hannah Dominick who documented Union Bank of California Plaza in Los Angeles. Denise Bradley and Janet Gracyk won 2nd place for Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae, Marin County, and 1st place was awarded to Janet Gracyk, Chris Pattillo, Sarah Raabe, Jill Johnson, Gordon Osmundson, Lorena Garcia Rodriguez and Genny Bantle, for Sunset Headquarters in Menlo Park, San Mateo County. The Nut Tree and Mansion Inn were also submitted from California.

4. Member Needs Survey

   January passed out copies of the results of the survey taken to ask members for feedback on the format of our organization. The survey shows strong support for changing to 2 meetings/site visits per year + 2 conference call meetings. Preferred meeting times are weekdays at 4:00 or 5:00 or Saturday morning. We also discussed hosting a social event like dinner once per year. Comments were made about varying the venue for our events. Patti offered the Cohen-Bray garden as a venue for a picnic meeting.

5. Announcements
   • January attended the National Trust conference and learned about a new product by ESRI that can be used for mapping: Story Maps, a simplified form of GIS type mapping tool that integrates things like a narrative and historic images. It is similar to what the Olmsted Center has online. This might be useful to convert our data of potential HALS sites into something more user friendly, more visual. January will do some more research and report on what she learns more. This could also show the public gardens that the Garden Conservancy and Strybing Arboretum mapped some years ago.
   • Cathy brought up that we need to be thinking about who may be interested in serving as the chair of our group when January chooses to step down.
   • Betsy mentioned that Sunset is doing a book on the Ruth Bancroft Garden -- the site of one of our very early HALS meetings and another Garden Conservancy project.
   • Chris announced that David Driapsa became a fellow in ASLA for his work as the HALS Liaison Coordinator. He served in that position for six years. Also, Christopher Stevens with HALS at NPS in Washington received an award from ASLA for Outstanding Service.

6. Future Meetings

   We agreed on the following meeting dates and venues for 2016:

   • February 9th, Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. -- we will have our first conference call "meeting."
   • May 7th, Saturday at 10:30 a.m. -- we will meet in Sacramento. Cathy will lead a tour of the Capitol grounds and we will also visit.
   • July 12th, Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. -- conference call "meeting."
   • September 24th, Saturday at 10:30 a.m. -- we will visit the Laguna de Santa Rosa and Western Hills Nursery and then have a party/picnic at Betsy Flack's garden in Sebastopol.
   • November 15th, Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. -- conference call "meeting."

   More details later but put these dates on your calendars right now.