So Much More
We love our Samarkand campus with its 16 acres of cultivated gardens and trees located on a knoll above Mission Creek with wide views of the mountains.
But there is so much more.
Our one-acre native plant garden captures the floral beauty of coastal California. A fountain made from a sandstone boulder attracts birds to drink and bathe and is a lovely place to sit overlooking the garden with the mountains beyond.
Samarkand is also an arboretum with its 350 trees, many of which are labeled. There is an accompanying Tree Map available in the nature corner in the library. On the self-guided tour, as you linger at each tree, you can imagine the complex system of roots underfoot and the miles of fungal fibers uniting them.
The nature corner in the library features books and field guides on the natural history of our area. You will also find a weather monitor that gives real-time weather specifically for our campus. Our Samarkand weather station is located on the roof of the Mountain Room.
The Mountains Above Us
When my daughter and her family bought a house on a ridge looking directly into the Santa Ynez mountains, I was delighted. These are the canyons and mountains where my dad and grandfather used to explore and hunt when my dad was a boy. That first winter, when the rain clouds lifted, it revealed cliffs laced with waterfalls. In February, blooming chaparral dusted the mountains with white flowers and in April with blue blooms.
Chaparral is my favorite plant community, with its dense shrubs superbly adapted to long hot summers and short wet winters. The Santa Ynez mountains have their own climate, notably the sundowner winds which roar downslope raising temperatures and fanning fires. They are the western-most transverse range which is bent along the San Andreas fault, explaining why Santa Barbara faces south instead of west.
The mountain rocks are studded with fossils of sea creatures laid down from the millennia when the region lay under a warm sea. The rugged mountains cut off Santa Barbara from the north until late in the 19th century.
