Every spring, Rich Santoro opens his backyard bulb garden in San Jose to visitors, who saunter around the thousands of colorful tulips, daffodils and irises. Santoro — known as “The Bulb Guy” — planted 15,000 bulbs last fall that are in bloom now, but he’s decided to take a year off from public visits — for a very personal reason.
Last year, just weeks before the garden opened to the public in March, Santoro and his wife, Riza, endured the deaths of her sister, Carmen Felisilda, and her brother, Mauro Huelar Jr., to COVID-19.
Felisilda lived around the corner from the Santoros’ Berryessa home — they bought their homes a month apart from each other in 1976 — and Santoro says she’s at least partly responsible for the annual garden show.
Back in 1985, Santoro and his wife went to show her sister a Cadillac El Dorado they’d bought and discovered her in the front yard with an apron filled with daffodil bulbs. Santoro assumed bulb gardening was difficult, requiring special fertilizers and maybe even an English accent. But he watched her and was hooked. He and his wife went out and bought 50 daffodils and buried them in their lawn.
The rest is history, and Santoro’s garden has attracted more than 2,000 people during his weeklong viewing and raised thousands of dollars for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital in honor of their late son, Boom. You can read more about his efforts at www.the-bulbguy.com.
“Carmen was a wonderful person and an aunt to my kids that any brother-in-law would pay for. She was simply amazing,” he said. “I decided to close the garden for one year just for the family to bask in the ripple effect she created.”
They’re planning on having dinner in the garden in Carmen and Mauro’s honor this Sunday, enjoying the color and remembering their lives.
STILL BLOOMING: Of course, if you can’t wait until next spring, Nola’s Iris Garden at Prevost Ranch is another popular location to walk among the colorful bulbs.
Gary and Nola Prevost say the irises are starting to bud and should be ready for April 9, the expected date when the public can visit the garden at 4195 Sierra Road in San Jose. After that, the garden will be open Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through an undetermined date in May. Get more information at www.walking-p-bar.com.
The Prevosts are working hard to get the gardens in shape in time for the opening, but it’s only the two of them doing it this year, so they could use some help. Any active gardener who wants to help with work including weeding, cleaning picnic tables and cleaning paths, can email them at info@walking-p-bar.com. Volunteers will be paid with irises of their choice.
SCIENCE CHAMPS: Presentation High School finished Women’s History Month on Wednesday by celebrating some of its own recent history, bringing home the Outstanding School Award from this month’s Synopsys Science and Technology Championship. Nine students and a teacher from the all-girls Catholic school in San Jose won awards at the competition, which included schools from throughout Santa Clara County, and some qualified for the California Science and Engineering Fair on April 12.
The teams of Danica Kubota and Jia Gill and Arshiya Anand and Alexandra Mull won first-place awards for their projects, which explored using artificial intelligence to determine the best locations for firebreaks during a wildfire and reducing the amount of wiring needed in a vehicle. That’s a long way from my science project days of creating volcanos with baking soda and vinegar.
Source: www.mercurynews.com