The Anselmi garden: An inviting backyard mini-farm in Templeton
In the North County, flowering plants are hard to come by in the winter. Frost tends to kill anything of color except for our beautiful emerald hills.
But tucked away on a side street in Templeton is a nondescript house, similar to other houses in the neighborhood, with a well-maintained yard and shady tree. If you are invited into the backyard of Mark Anselmi’s home you will enter a cross between an outdoor living area and an urban farm.
Every inch of his yard has been turned into an area for fun or an area to grow fruits, vegetables and gather eggs from his chicken coop. Anselmi’s backyard is the type of yard you must wander through. You cannot see everything from his back door nor appreciate the history he has tucked into each little nook.
There is a window from Camp San Luis Obispo hanging from a trellis. In the summer the trellis and window will be flush with trailing roses from a nearby rose bush.
Behind the trellis Anselmi has hidden two raised beds with red and white onions. “Rojo” garlic grows in one of the beds. They are being well fertilized by a pick-up load of manure he brought home last October and has been composting in the garden ever since.
To the right you will find a bench Anselmi built with two birdhouses gracing either end. The lumber used in this bench is from the old drive-in theater that used to be on Theater Drive in Paso Robles.
Further down the path you will find raised beds and half-wine barrels. This spring they will be filled with vegetables Anselmi has started from seed.
In the middle of the raised beds, along the winding path, is the chicken coop. As Anselmi says, “It is more of an aviary.” He built the chicken coop and then surrounded it, sides and top, with a chicken wire fence and roof. His chicken coop is home to six very well-mannered hens which provide Anselmi and his family with eggs daily. Beside the chicken coop, he has dedicated a raised planter to growing greens for the chickens year-round.
Anselmi pickles and cans the produce he grows and dries the herbs from his garden. He won first place last year at the California Mid-State Fair for his chard, onions, cucumbers, basil and mint.
Running along the back fence are several almond trees. His grandfather used to be an almond grower in Paso Robles, and he remembers hand-picking almonds and selling bags to neighbors to earn money. He planted the almond trees as a homage to his grandfather.
Hanging from almost every tree or above the raised beds is a birdhouse that Anselmi made. Never one to waste wood, one of his birdhouses is from a favored birch tree he lost to pests. Just past the raised beds is a beautiful in-ground pool and lawn. At one corner of the lawn are trees with a hammock and the other corner an outdoor kitchen.
Anselmi recalls many happy memories of pool parties with his kids for Girl Scouts, birthdays and many hot, hot summers.
One final space, tucked back behind another trellis growing a “Cecile Brunner” trailing rose, is a bench surrounded by lavender. As it re-seeds and self propogates, Anselmi digs up and moves it throughout his landscape. Even though only a few plants are blooming, his use of herbs, winter vegetables, and hardscapes add interest to what could have otherwise been a bland winter garden.
Tami Reece is a 30-year gardener and food preserver living in Paso Robles. Email her if you know of a unique and beautiful garden at havefaith9696@gmail.com.
Gardening tips
- Keep a garden journal so you know what worked last year and what you want to try next year.
- Challenge yourself to do something new every year. This will be the first year Mark Anselmi only grows plants he started from seed, for example.
- Don’t forget to add flowers to your garden. One year Anselmi planted very few flowers and had a poor harvest. Now with his numerous lavender plants and other flowers, his garden is full of bees.
- Collect local history or other objects to add hardscape to your garden.
- Don’t be afraid to move plants or replace plants that are not growing well.
This story was originally published February 16, 2016 at 2:14 PM with the headline "The Anselmi garden: An inviting backyard mini-farm in Templeton."