The OAEC Mother Garden Nursery is closed for the 2025 season.
As OAEC marks our 30th Anniversary, the Mother Garden celebrates its 50th! The garden and nursery are in a transitional year with some big changes afoot. The nursery is taking the 2025 season off to celebrate our achievements, make improvements, and re-imagine our vision for the program moving forward.
The other big, related news is that our dear Doug Gosling, aka Dougo, is retiring. The Mother Garden wouldn’t be what it is today without Doug’s steadfast tending of these gardens for over 40 years. Doug’s sacred love for plants, vast horticultural knowledge, and whimsical sense of beauty in the garden are inextricably woven forever into the fabric of this land. Doug has grown countless food crops and unusual herbs over the years, introducing them to the OAEC Kitchen and has been instrumental in creating the farm-to-table philosophy that characterizes the relationship between the Mother Garden and the OAEC kitchen. Doug founded the seed exchanges at the Ecological Farming Conference and Bioneers Conferences 30 years ago, and co-founded the West County Seed Exchange, all of which are still some of the most well-attended seed swaps in the state and will continue long after his retirement. He has been widely recognized for his role in revitalizing the art of seed saving heirloom varieties – the impact of his life’s work could be considered “heirloom” in and of itself! Doug is now resident Gardener Emeritus.
When we produced our first Plant Sale as an experiment in 1995, we had no idea that it would strike such a resonant chord of interest with the local community for the organically grown vegetable seedlings and unusual perennials propagated from plants onsite. We couldn’t be more proud of all the “Daughter Gardens” that have sprouted up all over California with the plant material that came from here! If you haven’t already, we invite you to watch this video, read this article that came out last year in Made Local Magazine, check out our 30th Anniversary Timeline that includes many proud Mother Garden milestones, and read Doug Gosling’s poem Invocation to the Seed. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank all of our dedicated customers and donors for your support of the Mother Garden Nursery project over the years.
Stay tuned as the Mother Garden Biodiversity Program evolves! Subscribe to the general OAEC Newsletter and follow us on Instagram to stay up to date on all programmatic news, including future nursery and seed swap announcements.
Interested in visiting? Come by for a Garden Volunteer Day hosted every Wednesday from 10AM-4:30PM or attend a Public Tour led on 1st and 3rd Sundays of the month at 1PM between April-October. Please note that the main site continues to remain closed to the public for drop in visitors.
