San Jose’s 27-Year-Old Plant & Soul Native Garden on Race Street Was Given 20 Days to Clear Out After the Owner Put the Land in Escrow

The letter arrived Sept. 30. The property under Plant & Soul California’s nearly half-acre garden at 76 Race Street in San Jose was in escrow to be sold, the owner wrote, and the gardeners had 20 days to move out.

That set a last day of Tuesday, Oct. 20, for a native plant garden that has grown on the site for 27 years, KPIX reported. “There is nothing else like this anywhere in San Jose,” board member Jessicka Chamberlin told the station.

From a Repair Shop Lot to a Native Garden

The garden did not start as a garden. In 1999, founder Alrie Middlebrook, who rented the property from owner Fred Soltanzad, began turning a vehicle repair shop and parking lot into a demonstration garden of California native plants, supported by her landscape design business, according to San José Spotlight. The less-than-half-acre site also includes a structure at the back of the garden and a house at 80 Race St.

The nonprofit that grew up around it was long known as the California Native Garden Foundation. Its own history page lists Middlebrook among its founders alongside Glenn Keator, Barry Slater, David Long and Tom Bradner, and describes the Race Street garden as home to local Bay Area native plant communities that support birds, pollinators and insects.

When Middlebrook retired in 2024, Chamberlin and her partner, David Shapiro, took over her landscape design-build business and the nonprofit, renaming it Plant & Soul California, San José Spotlight reported. Chamberlin had started volunteering in the summer of 2022 and joined the board in 2023.

Monday Pizza, Classes and a Teaching Garden

Over the years the site became more than a planting demonstration. A July 2025 profile by the Buena Vista Neighborhood Association described preschool playgroups, homeschool classes, summer nature camps and volunteer days, plus free Monday Socials from 6 to 8 p.m. with wood-fired pizza and shared dishes. It also highlighted the ELSEE Garden, a teaching garden with more than 200 ecosystem benchmarks.

The plant palette is a large part of what sets the site apart. Because native plants evolved alongside local wildlife, they supply “nesting materials, shelter, pollen, nectar” and other food, wrote Heidi Broadbent of the UC Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners of El Dorado County. Adapted to local soils and dry summers, they also generally need less irrigation than conventional landscaping.

Volunteers who spoke to reporters described the place in personal terms. Delmar Duldulao, a professional landscaper who began volunteering only weeks earlier, told KPIX the work had turned out to be more inspiring than he had expected. Volunteer Karen Schaffer told San José Spotlight it would be a “terrible loss” if the garden closed.

Rent, Escrow and a $2.5 Million Goal

The money picture is difficult. Rent on the property is $8,000 a month, and Chamberlin said the group has not paid rent in 18 months and that the owner kept raising it, San José Spotlight reported. Soltanzad did not respond to the outlet’s request for comment. Neither news report named a buyer.

The group launched an emergency campaign with a $2.5 million goal to fund a counteroffer or an emergency relocation, volunteer Sofie Gmerek told San José Spotlight, which reported about $5,000 raised so far. Chamberlin estimated that buying the land would take about $2 million, plus another $700,000 for planning and infrastructure repairs such as leaking roofs.

The weekend before the deadline, gardeners held a community yard sale to raise money and awareness. Board chair Melissa Blum told KPIX the group would keep fighting until the end.

Where Things Stand After the Deadline

As of San José Spotlight’s Oct. 25 update, the sale remained in escrow and the group was still raising money, with a plan to find a new location and start again if it could not raise enough. Gardeners told KPIX they were hoping for a rescue, whether an investor or a collapse of the escrow, and that if they had to go, they wanted help finding another site in the city so their community could stay together.

At least one possible landing spot has surfaced. Paige Sweetin, chief operating officer of San Jose Opera, suggested moving the garden to the historic Irene Dalis home on the edge of downtown, though she said the opera does not have the resources to run a community garden itself, according to San José Spotlight.

For the volunteers, the choice now is between a rescue that would keep 27 years of plantings in the ground where they grew and a move that would mean starting a new garden from scratch. Native gardens have faced hard endings elsewhere this year, including Chester Perry’s three-year native plant garden in East Ridge, Tennessee, which the city mowed down after his appeal landed in a spam folder.

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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: cultivar413 – CC BY 2.0/Wikimedia Commons