Once withering on the vine, Monterey Peninsula College’s horticulture program blossoms.

A small patch of paradise sits tucked under a grove of ancient oak trees on the Monterey Peninsula College campus today, but it wasn’t always so. Just a couple of years ago the college’s native plant arboretum was lost to nature. Non-native ivy and poison oak spread rapidly throughout the garden that had once been tended by students led by the former chair of the Ornamental Horticulture Department, Cathy Haas.

Haas retired in 2012, at a time when community colleges everywhere were making tough choices due to tight budgets. Haas wasn’t replaced, and the volunteers who kept the ivy and poison oak at bay moved on. The department itself was untended and was facing a similar fate as the arboretum. But Haas’ teaching partner, part-time adjunct instructor Margot Grych, wouldn’t have it. Grych recruited enough students, “by just a hair’s breadth,” to prevent the classes from being axed.

MPC currently lists 20 different ornamental horticulture classes, but only three are taught each semester, all in the evening. Classes include the basics of horticulture, to propagating plants, garden design and pest management. The program attracts both hobbyists who want to develop their green thumbs and students working toward a career in the industry. The school awards a certificate and an associate’s degree in science for ornamental horticulture.

It’s a program worth fighting for, says student Lloyd Ferguson, who joined Grych a few semesters ago in her efforts to grow the program. While Hartnell College in Salinas caters to agriculture students, MPC gives students who want to go into gardening, landscaping and related businesses an alternative. Ferguson says the classes have given his own life a clear purpose and direction; he plans on transferring to CSU Monterey Bay to study environmental science.

Under the care of the teacher-student duo, the arboretum is now flourishing once again. Ferguson started the MPC Horticulture Club, which has about 40 students on its roster. His enthusiasm prompted him to single-handedly rip out the poison oak. (He did it wearing a triple-layer of gloves and keeping the special cleanser Tecnu on hand – lots of it.)

Club members added raised beds lined with rocks found on site, arranged in beautiful swirling patterns. And because the classes and club meet in the evening, much of the work is done at night using battery-powered lanterns.

From there, the students’ enthusiasm overflowed into other areas around the department’s greenhouse and an entrance to the Life Sciences building.

“This used to be all weeds,” Ferguson says, pointing to a small area wedged between a sidewalk and the building. It’s now a pleasing arrangement of succulents and other plants. Ferguson and Grych explain the cuttings come mostly in the form of donations from the yards of local residents. “It’s like [the folk story] Stone Soup in a way,” Grych says.

With no funding, she and the students have been able to grow something out of nothing, she says. More native plants were donated by nearby Cypress Nursery as it went out of business in September.

The club also raises money for projects using donated cuttings. In October, members raised $500 during the MPC Harvest Festival by arranging succulents in small pumpkins and selling them.

Now the club members are embarking on their biggest project yet, taking their gardening skills to a more prominent area on campus. The idea came from Grych, who wanted to honor the school for its 70th anniversary as well as bring the campus together in a positive project after recent tensions emerged between the faculty and administration over contract negotiations. The plan is to plant mosaics made of succulents in a couple of curved planting beds that frame the main entrance to the campus lawn area, where thousands of students pass daily. Currently, the beds are barren, with some weeds and overgrown patches of ornamental grass.

The mosaic design employs the Fibonacci Sequence, described as “nature’s mathematical spiral.” Participants are arranging succulents in cardboard pizza boxes, each box like a jigsaw piece that will fit into the mosaic. The goal is to finish the boxes by the end of this semester for transplanting into the new garden.

Back at the arboretum, the ivy and poison oak are a memory, as native species like anemone bush, hummingbird sage, coffeeberry and ceanothus now grow. Students seeded the area with California poppy seeds this fall. The club will continue to raise money to add in features like small metal plant identification stakes and benches.

Grych and Ferguson see good things sprouting from their work, beyond the poppies that will bloom come spring.

“We’ve been dormant, but we’re putting our roots down,” Ferguson says.