Rancho Peñasquitos Sharing Garden-3rdTour

Dawn Standke has been a Master Gardener since 2005 and has put her considerable horticultural skills - and a great deal of passion over 31 years – into creating an urban garden that takes advantage of San Diego’s mild climate to produce an abundance of delicious food and pollinator-attracting flowers all year. Her 1/3-acre pie-shaped lot at the end of a cul-de-sac is largely hidden from the street. After walking through a small low-water front garden you turn a corner to find a deck/potting area densely shaded by a South African plum tree. Mama bobcat has reared kittens for five years in a row under this deck (https://youtu.be/5seuQrOa4I8). Continue around the corner to the large back yard. Dawn’s handyman Jose has created many garden structures that allow her to grow a wide range of fruits and vegetables in different ways. The wood and hardware cloth “Tomato Fortress” holds tomato plants growing in hydroponic Dutch buckets, well-protected from birds and 4-footed marauders. Next you will see the outdoor kitchen, complete with a wood burning fireplace. Turn to your right and climb the “stairway to heaven” that will take you up what was once a steep slope to see the blueberry cage, flowers, fruit trees, and vegetables. There are many varieties of citrus, mulberries, a white sapote, passion fruit, tree spinach, Surinam cherries, guavas, pomegranates, a cherimoya and other rare fruit. Come down the stairs to visit the mermaid in the pergola, then continue on to see the “horizontal hydroponics” where Dawn grows edibles with small root systems.

Visitors are welcome to bring home a cutting of her purple-flowered Gregg’s Mistflower, the number one butterfly-attracting plant in her yard. (Dawn jokes that she needs butterfly air traffic control for all the butterflies visiting the mistflower!) (https://youtu.be/RhQEJ8zZ5Pw?si=Gkkx7SUtbeCw07b5).

Dawn has written a number of gardening articles for the San Diego Union-Tribune, including most recently one about low-water flowering trees for San Diego County (https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/01/10/garden-mastery-wow-what-is-that-tree/).

Address and google map link are included in the registration confirmation email.