By Elizabeth Cloutman

Business Profile

Common Ground Organic Garden Supply and Education Center in Palo Alto has been a popular gathering place for Mid-peninsula organic gardeners for nearly three decades. Now, after 29 years at the same location on El Camino Real, Common Ground is scheduled to relocate nearby at 559 College Avenue on Sept. 9. The original site will be torn down and the block redeveloped as office space.

“Our owner (James Baer, owner of Premiere Properties Management) has been great, just by being flexible,” said Common Ground manager Patricia Becker. “He’s found a new location for us, and is paying for a new floor and new register and seed counter.”

Common Ground Garden Supply is a non-profit project of Ecology in Action, an organization dedicated to biointensive gardening and minifarming, which uses methods for growing foods that maintain and improve the soil’s fertility. Compared to commercial farming, biointensive gardening and minifarming uses 1/8 the water, half or less the purchase fertilizer and 1/100 the energy per pound of food produced, according to Common Ground’s fall class schedule flier.

Dave Smith and Paul Hawken, currently the owners of Smith & Hawken, a retail gardening supply and furnishings company, founded Ecology in Action in 1970, Becker said. “It started with a Palo Alto recycling program and also involved with developing bike lanes in the area.” When Smith and Hawken left, John Jeavons became the director of Ecology in Action. Jeavons is a researcher, developer and consultant on small-scale food production, using biointensive culture. His documentary, “Circle of Plenty,” aired nationally on PBS in 1988.

Common Ground features quality gardening tools and other equipment; organically grown plants; magazines, books and pamphlets on organic gardening; compost, organic fertilizers and pesticides, as well as organic (untreated) and open-pollinated seeds - seeds that have been gathered from plants.

“We don’t carry hybrids or genetically modified organisms,” Becker said.

Flower, vegetable and herb seeds can be purchased in packages or in bulk. “You can buy 1/4 teaspoon of seeds and get the proper amount for your garden,” Becker said.

Becker noted that Common Ground carries the Edible Garden book series by Los Altos author Rosalind Creasy and local honey and beeswax from Los Altos Hills. The store has Saturday classes and a reference library on biointensive and organic gardening.

Ecology in Action also publishes Bountiful Gardens, a seed catalog, annually and the Ecology Action Newsletter quarterly.

For more information, call 493-6072 or logon to either www.growbiointensive.org or www.bountifulgardens.org.