Everyday Encounters: A Tiburon landscaper cultivates beauty with native plants

Paradise Drive resident Barbara Yonkow hangs out with her dog, Bruno, at Blackie’s Pasture on June 30. Yonkow has spent 30 years working as a landscaper. (Francisco Martinez / The Ark)

Barbara Yonkow sits on a bench in Blackie’s Pasture June 30 with her 9-year-old dog, Bruno. She’s waiting for a phone call about a potential new job designing a kitchen.

There’s a reason she isn’t waiting for the call in her Paradise Drive home.

“We get horrible reception over there, and the Wi-Fi calling is wonky too,” says Yonkow, 58. “So, I’m like, ‘I’ll just go to my office right here at Blackie’s Pasture.’”

She visits the open space nearly every day and says she enjoys that the park gives her room to throw a ball for Bruno, a luxury compared with other dog parks. The people are also a plus, she adds.

“Never really met a dog owner here that I didn’t like, which is, you know, sometimes difficult,” she says.

Yonkow, who has lived on Paradise Drive for three years, grew up in Fairfax, biking to and from school and riding horses out in Sleepy Hollow. She says she appreciated the nature and “real down-to-earth people.”

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