Guadalupe Demo Garden and Historic Orchard

Guadalupe Demonstration Garden

This garden is a demonstration of how productive a typical 20 by 20-foot plot in a community garden can be.

Address: Guadalupe Community Gardens, at the intersection of Asbury Street and Walnut Street, San Jose, CA 95110 (View map)

Directions: Our plot is towards the center, near the shade structure.

Visiting hours: Our plot is viewable when the Community Garden is open. As in all community gardens, please don't enter our plot without being invited. We offer occasional public education classes throughout the year.

View signage displayed in demo gardens

About the Garden

The UC Master Gardener's Guadalupe Demo Garden is a typical 20 by 20 foot plot in the Guadalupe Community Garden. Our goals include showing how much produce can be grown in a small area, and demonstrating best gardening practices such as soil amendment, efficient watering, mulching, crop rotation, and attracting beneficial insects.

The GDG Team grows a wide variety of vegetables, herbs, and flowers year round. The harvest from GDG is donated weekly to Martha’s Kitchen in San Jose. These donations total hundreds of pounds per year, typically in the 400–600 lb range.

We work with the Guadalupe Community Gardeners to answer their questions, and help diagnose problems. Twice a year, in the spring and fall, the GDG Team offers free presentations at the Garden.

Guadalupe Historic Orchard

Apple tree, Photo courtesy of Carolyn Kameya

The Guadalupe River Park Historic Orchard is located in Guadalupe Gardens just south of Taylor Street and the Heritage Rose Garden near the River Park trails. The orchard was planted in 1994 to showcase the trees that were grown in the Santa Clara Valley when it was known as “The Valley of Heart’s Delight” and includes a commercial section of cherries, apricots, and prunes. The family section of the orchard contains about 50 trees that a family might have grown for their own use. These include citrus, apple, peach and nectarine, plum, fig, European and Asian pear, pomegranate and persimmon. The Historic Orchard uses recycled water and is a living example of an earlier lifestyle and the economy that once fueled the Santa Clara Valley. It is also now a rare example of urban agriculture in the midst of the largest city in the Northern California Bay Area.

Demonstrating how to plant a fruit tree, Photo courtesy of Carolyn Kamya

The Santa Clara Master Gardeners work with the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy in the Family section of the Historic Orchard on all aspects of fruit tree care. This includes summer and winter pruning, disease diagnosis and treatment, new tree planting, irrigation, sun scald prevention painting, and sheet mulching. It also includes establishing an insectary of native plants for pollination, experimenting with different types of irrigation or ground cover, and grafting for improved pollination. Master Gardeners give classes to the public on pruning and other topics related to fruit tree care in the family orchard. Any fruit is donated to organizations that serve the homeless and food insecure.