Garden designer Nan Sterman to speak at Ramona Garden Club meeting

Expert garden designer Nan Sterman will give a presentation on cultivating fresh herbs and spices at the Ramona Garden Club’s Sept. 10 meeting.

Sterman, a botanist, horticulturist, educator, expert garden designer and journalist, designed the newly renovated Botanical Building at Balboa Park in San Diego.

Her topic for the meeting, Cultivate Flavor — Grow Your Own Fresh Herbs and Spices, will cover embracing the flavors of fresh homegrown herbs and spices. Sterman will detail how to grow garden herbs and spices in pots or in the garden.

She will also discuss how to spice up a garden with trees, shrubs and grasses.

“A feast for your eyes that also tantalizes your taste buds,” she said.

The club meets at 12:15 p.m. at Mountain View Community Church, 1191 Meadowlark Way.

Sterman has reported on horticulture, agriculture and gardening in San Diego County for 20 years.

She designs gardens, and educates gardeners primarily about plants and gardens that thrive in California and other Mediterranean or arid climate regions.

She also writes, hosts and produces “A Growing Passion,” television show about the ways plants power the world. The show airs on public television in San Diego, on CREATE TV nationally, and online at AGrowingPassion.com.

The Botanical Building at Balboa Park project has been under construction for the past several years, and Phase 1 of the renovations are complete. Phase 2 of the renovations, which will include exterior landscaping, is underway.

The interior designed by Sterman is based on a dream of Alfred D. Robinson, who described his vision for the building in an article for the “California Gardener” magazine.

The 13,000-square-foot botanical building was originally built as a feature of the 1915 Panama-California Exposition. Designed by Carleton M. Winslow, it is laid out on the park’s mesa in an east-west line. The Lily Pond in front of the building goes straight south to intersect the main east-west walkway where the park’s museums sit, along with The Old Globe theater.

After her redesign the architecture and plants are more in balance and the space is brighter,” Sterman said.

“When you look at the redwood siding and those beautiful, soft green window panes, and then the colors of the foliage and the textures of the plants, they create an art piece together, whereas before it was just strips of wood,” she said.

“Now they’re part of the whole gestalt, and the plants are an anchor. It feels like there’s really a high, tall dome and really high, tall ceilings. It didn’t feel that way before. Ultimately, you want an interplay of the lath and the plants.”

For more information about the Ramona Garden Club, call the club’s President Robert Holton at 720-346-8677.