From Botanicals to Bioswales with the Wednesday Walkers
Below is Lori A's excellent summary of walker and Piedmont park commissioner Jack F's great walk last Wednesday to Linda Park and the Fairview Bioswale where we met City of Piedmont Parks & Project Manager Nancy K. There’s lots of wonderful information to enjoy.
Wednesday Walkers stop to smell the roses (camphor, sage, lavender and rosemary, too)!
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From Botanicals to Bioswales with the Wednesday Walkers
The voices of nearby students and the fragrance of local botanicals wafted through the air as the Walking on Wednesdays (WoW) group gathered at the Exedra for our weekly trek through Piedmont. The Piedmont Recreation Department’s group had a good turnout of 40 walkers and four K-9 best friends at the Exedra for another special walk.
Park Commissioner, Jack F, and his canine companion, Kojak, led the walk. Jack’s goal was to shepherd the group down to Linda Park to meet with Park and Project Manager Nancy K at the oak woodland there. Along the way he introduced the walkers to some of the fragrant plants in our urban landscapes.
We all know the adage to “stop and smell the roses,” but Jack explained how their scent reaches our noses. A rose's perfume is produced by specialized cells in the flower petals which manufacture volatile organic compounds. These molecules evaporate easily, which is why you can smell a rose from a distance. Roses use their scent to attract pollinators like bees and beetles, and it is usually strongest in the morning when pollinators are most active. A rose quickly loses much of its fragrance once the petals wilt because the living petal cells stop producing fresh scent molecules.
Jack then introduced us to one of his favorite fragrant garden plants, lemon verbena. He even brought a bag of leaves along for us to squeeze and sniff. When the leaves are gently crushed, rubbed, or brushed against, they release their distinctive citrus fragrance, similar to freshly grated lemon zest. The fragrance comes from volatile oils stored in tiny glands within the leaves, which are released when the foliage is disturbed. Some group members reported drinking lemon verbena tea, and someone had even tried lemon verbena ice cream—an elegant treat.
Our olfactory glands on overdrive, the group headed down Magnolia Avenue toward the Piedmont Police Department. Right outside the back door is a camphor tree. Its eucalyptus or menthol fragrance comes primarily from the aromatic oils contained in its leaves, twigs, and wood. Jack produced a bag of camphor leaves so that we could smell them for ourselves. Products with camphor include over-the-counter muscle pain ointments, cold sore treatments, vapor rubs, and medicated lip balms.
The WoW members headed down Magnolia Avenue with Jack and Kojak in the lead to the Piedmont Swim Club. The garden outside the main entrance is planted with many California native plants including Cleveland sage. It produces one of the most distinctive and powerful fragrances among California’s native sages. The aroma is often described as a combination of sage, pine, camphor, and a hint of spice. Many walkers rubbed their fingers on the sage leaves to release the aromatic essential oils. The fragrance serves an important ecological purpose, helping make the foliage less attractive to many herbivores while creating the aromatic quality for which California sages are so well known.
Our next fragrance stop was at the corner of Magnolia and Jerome Avenues, where the front garden contained three types of lavender: English, French and Spanish. Lavender produces its scent in tiny glandular hairs that cover the flowers and, to a lesser extent, the leaves and stems. These microscopic glands are like little balloons filled with essential oil. When you rub a lavender sprig, you're breaking some of these oil glands, releasing a burst of aroma. Even after the plant dries, those oil-filled glands remain intact. That's why dried lavender sachets can smell wonderful for months—or even years—especially when you gently squeeze them and rupture more of the oil glands.
Having experienced four fragrant plants under our noses already, the group continued down Magnolia until it intersected with Grand Avenue. We crossed the street and headed north on Grand until we reached Linda Avenue, where we turned left and walked up to meet Nancy at Linda Park which is gradually being restored to an oak woodland. Oak woodlands are one of the most distinctive natural features of Piedmont providing a living connection to the landscape that existed here long before the city was developed. The valley oak, coast live oak, and other native oaks can be found throughout Piedmont, often mixed with native shrubs, grasses, and other trees. Their broad canopies create a characteristic woodland environment—part forest, part open meadow—that gives many Piedmont neighborhoods and parks their special sense of place.
Nancy showed the walkers photographs from 1971 of a barren hillside with a few straggly oak trees that is becoming the beautiful oak woodland of Linda Park. She explained that the slope, now a luxurious carpet of fescue grass, was hydro-seeded with four varieties of wildflowers. Neighbors have also provided lots of California poppy seeds. In the spring the hill is colorful mosaic of the different blooms. She asked that visitors give the understory plants a chance to establish themselves and to walk gently and carefully on the grass, or perhaps sit on the benches that are provided—more are coming—to enjoy the peace and tranquility of the oak trees and natural environment.
We left Linda Park and walked back down Linda and Grand, crossing the street at Ace Hardware to explore the bioswale at Grand and Fairview Avenues. A bioswale is a landscaped, vegetated channel designed to capture, slow down, and filter stormwater runoff from impervious surfaces like parking lots and streets. Nancy met the walkers at the bioswale, completed in October 2025 to comply with Alameda County’s clean water program for Piedmont. The City had to dig down 24 inches to the proper soil profile and plant vegetation that would filter runoff water before it flows into the Bay. The plants in the bioswale include Sea Lavender, California Gray Rushes, and Coyote Mint. The walkers couldn’t get close enough to smell the vegetation, but Nancy did some impromptu weeding in the midst of the fast-growing rushes.
The WoW group’s last fragrance stop came as we headed up Fairview towards Oakland Avenue. We stopped at a house that had a cascade of rosemary over its front wall. Rosemary is an aromatic evergreen herb native to the Mediterranean region. It is used both in cooking and as an ornamental landscape plant. The walkers then continued up Oakland Avenue, turning right on El Cerrito Avenue before returning to Magnolia and heading uphill to the oak woodland of Piedmont Community Park.
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