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This flower 'bed' is now in bloom

Sojourner Truth Park home to wildflower art installation

Sacramento Digs Gardening
BY Debbie Arrington PUBLISHED APR 23, 2021

These red poppies are now the stars of the flower "bed"

at Sojourner Truth Park. (Photos: Debbie Arrington)

Nature doesn’t color inside the lines. What once looked like carefully crafted blocks of seed squares has yielded a crazy quilt of calico colors.

Spring (and a little irrigation) brought out the wildflowers planted in a “bed” at Sojourner Truth Park in Sacramento’s Greenhaven neighborhood. The seeds were sown in handmade paper quilt squares fastened in place last November by internationally known artist Jane Ingram Allen with the help of Mayor Darrell Steinberg and Councilman Rick Jennings.

Allen has made such flower beds blanketed with seed quilts around the globe. As she noted during its pre-Thanksgiving installation, nature makes the magic happen.

“I’m putting a quilt down to cover the Earth,” she said during the planting ceremony. “It will change over time. Nature will control it.”

Allen used the North Star quilt design, as a nod to the park’s namesake Sojourner Truth, a former slave, abolitionist and suffragist.

“The North Star was part of the secret code for escaping slaves,” Allen explained. “If they saw this quilt hanging outdoors, they knew which way was north—the way to freedom.”

But when the flowers bloomed this spring, it was difficult to tell any design. Instead, the bed bloomed in waves.

In late March, white sweet alyssum flowers popped out on the white bands that bordered each quilt square. Next, yellow tidytips bloomed in their little triangles, edging politely into the neighboring spaces. Then, the golden California poppies filled in the quilt’s center with a sprinkling of bright bluebonnets and lupines.

Here's the planting design for the flower bed last November.
Below: What it looks like now.

Now, the quilt is a mass of red poppies, buzzing with bees. Purple sweet peas wind up the woven mulberry canes and grapevines that form the bed’s head and footboards. Those trellises were made by members of the Sacramento Weavers and Spinners Guild.

The neat outlines of the quilt blocks are only a memory as nature paints with a broader brush.

“With time, the color pattern will become very abstract,” Allen predicted. “That’s nature’s way.”

See for yourself. Located on Gloria Drive, the park is open daily dawn to dusk.

Red flowers in a planting area resembling a bed

On Earth Day, Allen sent us a reminder about the display and to urge others to check it out, too. “I thought people might enjoy going to see the spectacular wildflowers blooming now in Spring 2021!” she said.

For more on Allen’s living art, check out her website, too: http://www.janeingramallen.com/

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Garden Checklist for week of May 19

Temperatures will be a bit higher than normal in the afternoons this week. Take care of chores early in the day – then enjoy the afternoon. It’s time to smell the roses.

* Plant, plant, plant! It’s prime planting season in the Sacramento area. If you haven’t already, it’s time to set out those tomato transplants along with peppers and eggplants. Pinch off any flowers on new transplants to make them concentrate on establishing roots instead of setting premature fruit.

* Direct-seed melons, cucumbers, summer squash, corn, radishes, pumpkins and annual herbs such as basil.

* Harvest cabbage, lettuce, peas and green onions.

* In the flower garden, direct-seed sunflowers, cosmos, salvia, zinnias, marigolds, celosia and asters.

* Plant dahlia tubers. Other perennials to set out include verbena, coreopsis, coneflower and astilbe.

* Transplant petunias, marigolds and perennial flowers such as astilbe, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis, dahlias, rudbeckia and verbena.

* Keep an eye out for slugs, snails, earwigs and aphids that want to dine on tender new growth.

* Feed summer bloomers with a balanced fertilizer.

* For continued bloom, cut off spent flowers on roses as well as other flowering plants.

* Don’t forget to water. Seedlings need moisture. Deep watering will help build strong roots and healthy plants.

* Add mulch to the garden to help keep that precious water from evaporating. Mulch also cuts down on weeds. But don’t let it mound around the stems or trunks of trees or shrubs. Leave about a 6-inch to 1-foot circle to avoid crown rot or other problems.

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