By Donna Hemmila

Lauri Twitchell first made her mark on Blake Garden as a student in the UC Berkeley landscape architecture program.

"I made this for a design project," Twitchell says, pointing to a patch of paving bricks between the stone grotto and reflecting pool that showcase the grand entrance to Blake House, the official UC president's residence.

Like generations of UC students who have used the historic garden as a laboratory, Twitchell had an opportunity to practice her skills there while she earned a master's degree in landscape architecture. Now she is garden manager, overseeing the care and preservation of 10.5 acres of redwoods, creeks, pools, statuary, winding paths and thousands of botanical specimens, both rare and native.

For Twitchell, Blake Garden reflects the successful grafting of her previous career to a lifelong love of gardening. Before entering the landscape architecture program, she was a full-time professor of printmaking at the Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine.

"It's a perfect job for me," she says as she strolls along the creek meandering through the redwood grove. "It pulls together everything I've ever done in art and design, education and gardening."

Soothing souls. Twitchell has a hard time choosing a favorite spot in the garden. From majestic views of the Golden Gate Bridge to tranquil perches along the rambling creeks, what's not to like? Garden visitors certainly share the sentiment. On a foggy February morning, a young mother parks a baby stroller on the banks of the gurgling creek where the sound has lulled her infant to sleep. The mother sits cross-legged on the ground, smiling in the respite the creek has given her.

A few feet away Natasha Liu digs in the moist black earth transplanting moss. The Kensington resident has been volunteering in the garden for seven months. She has an idea, she tells Twitchell, to write poetry on one of the boulders guarding the creek bank. When it rains, the words written in chalk will wash away. Twitchell agrees to the project, giving Liu another opportunity to express her creativity in the garden – something she says she treasures.

"I have post-traumatic stress disorder," Liu says. "It's really calming here. It's a good atmosphere for me. I can't really have a job, and this is something for me to do."

In the garden, there is never a lack of something to do.

Hidden in the hills of Kensington three miles north of the UC Berkeley campus, Blake Garden requires the nurturing of five gardeners, including Twitchell. The Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning department uses the garden for classes as do East Bay community colleges and UC Berkeley Extension. Work-study students and volunteers aid the gardening crew in the upkeep and constant improvement projects.

"A lot of things probably wouldn't have been done or developed without the students," says Twitchell.

Growing history. Long before Anson and Anita Blake, both UC Berkeley alumni, donated their estate to the Landscape Architecture Department in 1957, their garden and the vast collection of botanicals were open to university students. Anita Blake's sister, Mable Symmes, was one of the first graduates of UC Berkeley's landscape program. When the Blakes bought the original 22-acre site for their estate in 1922, Anita and her sister designed the garden.

Anson Blake and his brother, Edwin, made their fortunes in the family quarry business. Each built a home on the property. When Edwin died, his half of the estate was subdivided and his house and two surrounding acres were left to the Catholic Church. The home now houses the Carmelite Monastery on Rincon Road across from the garden. Anson and Anita Blake bequeathed their estate to the university with the provision that they live there until their deaths. After the widow Blake passed away in 1962, the university used the house as a dormitory for women graduate students.

"They didn't feel safe in the wilds of Kensington," Twitchell jokes, so the housing arrangement lasted only two years and the house remained empty.

In 1967, the Regents designated the imposing Mediterranean house as the official UC president's residence. President Robert Dynes divides his time between Blake Garden and his home in San Diego, and the house is used for university functions. The demonstration organic kitchen garden on the property grows food for the president's table and cut flowers for events.

Kids' paradise. The garden is a favorite elementary school field trip destination, and Twitchell is hoping to expand that educational resource. Next to the kitchen garden she's creating an outdoor classroom. A tree brought down in a recent storm provided 30 stumps for seating under a shady oak.

In March, children from Franklin Elementary School in Oakland will visit, the first time children will be bused to the garden, extending the welcome mat outside the immediate neighborhood. Twitchell thinks the compost pile and worm bins will be a hit.

"These are urban kids," she says. "Probably some of them have never seen a redwood grove."

Digging in. In the six months she has been garden manager, Twitchell has been getting to know the meandering twists and curves of the land and looking for ways to enhance its beauty. The gardeners have been working to free a tributary of Cerritos Creek overgrown with invasive blackberry vines and acacia. At one turn they uncovered a wooden footbridge built by students in the '70s, and they plan to rebuild it. From the greenhouse, a student has set up a Web cam to document how rapidly the creek rises during a storm. The information will be used to apply for creek restoration grants. A doctoral student is mapping the topology of the garden to document the flow of other creeks and runoffs. As it has been from the first sprout, the garden is a living source of knowledge.

"You really learn your plants here and propagation techniques," says Roshie Ravan, as she transplants clumps of ferns to a patch of shady earth outside the greenhouse. "It's a great tool for the department."

Ravan, a work-study student who has been toiling in Blake Garden since 2005, earned a bachelor's degree in December. She's working in the garden until June while she searches for a job in an architecture firm. Ravan has used the garden many times as a resource for class projects and ideas for plant selection.

"It's a wonderful hands-on resource for the profession," she says. "I learned so many valuable skills I can carry on with me."

Donna Hemmila is the editor of Our University.