City Gardens Series: Maggie Marks of Garden for the Environment, Part 2

In this episode, Maggie picks up where she left off in Part 1, with her taking over programming duties at GFE 10 years ago. She dives into the story of how GFE was founded more than 30 years ago amid a historic drought in California. The intent was always to create a teaching space, something that distinguishes GFE from other gardens around The City.

We talk about biodiversity and how that's such a motivator for the work they do at GFE. That coupled with things like native vegetation means that the garden itself, for passersby, might not always be what we tend to think of as "beautiful." But, as Maggie points out, the plants are doing exactly what they need to do—living in a symbiotic fashion with other plants, animals, and insects.

​Maggie goes over how the garden has responded to the pandemic. They had to cancel (postpone?) a live event they had planned to commemorate 30 years and switched their education programs to Zoom. Needless to say, something was missing.

The upside was that they were able to reach more people virtually during the pandemic. In 2021, for the first time in three decades, they offered their "Get Up" program online. Maggie expresses her gratitude for the advances in technology that the pandemic forced onto GFE.

Garden for the Environment is open to the public every day from dawn until dusk. Follow them on Instagram.

We end this episode with Maggie's idea of what it means to still be here through it all.

We recorded this podcast at Garden for the Environment in the Inner Sunset in April 2022.

Photography by Jeff Hunt