LOSING YOUR LAWN

TURF-FREE GARDENS OFFER DESIGN CHALLENGES--AND REWARDS

From Arroyo Monthly Magazine, March, 2014

At long last, the lawn has become passé in Southern California, and it’s about time. 

Lawns are perpetually thirsty and California is in the grip of a record drought. Many municipalities are paying residents to rip out conventional grass and replace it with drought-tolerant landscaping. (In Pasadena, the rebate is a dollar per square foot of turf, up to $2,500.)

Still, even scoundrels have redeeming qualities and lawns have theirs: providing a soft, durable play space that’s easy to incorporate into a garden. “When you have grass, artistically it ends up being a fairly simple design,” says Laramee Haynes of Pasadena-based Haynes Landscape Design. A strong design becomes more vital in the absence of grass, he says, because the assemblage of plants replacing it can look “too busy.” 

Despite the challenges, losing one’s lawn presents opportunities. Many lawn-liberated gardens in the San Gabriel Valley are exemplars.

The story continues on the Arroyo Monthly website.

Flights of Fancy: South Pasadena Butterfly Garden

When Barbara Eisenstein and her husband, Jim, moved into their South Pasadena home a dozen years ago, it was like many in the neighborhood: an architecturally significant home — a 1910 craftsman — surrounded by a fairly banal garden. The grounds were mostly lawn, albeit studded with mature trees. A few birds perched in the oak, but it wasn’t the miniature nature preserve that encircles their home today.

Over the years, the lawn lost ground and was supplanted by wildlife-supporting native shrubs, including ceanothus and sages, and herbaceous plants such as monkey flower, penstemons and yarrow. Today the garden pulses with vibrant colors, bird song and the slurping and munching of lizards, caterpillars, butterflies and other small dinner guests.

Read the rest of this piece on Arroyo Monthly's website.

AND check out the extensive sidebar (exclusive to the print edition and reproduced here) on how to attract these popular butterflies:

SWALLOWTAILS

In addition to the giant swallowtail, two others frequent local gardens. Named for the tiger-like stripes on their yellow wings, Western Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio rutulus) will drink from a variety of plants commonly found at nurseries, including lantana and aster family plants such as zinnia. Eisenstein grows native seaside daisy (Erigeron glaucus) and a variety of sunflowers. These swallowtails deposit their eggs primarily on sycamore trees, but they also use poplars, cottonwood, willows and alders.

The anise swallowtail (Papilio zelicaon) is also abundant here, because exotic sweet fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) has become a roadside weed and wildland invader. Skip the fennel; attract it with native plants from the carrot family.

COMMON BUCKEYE

Despite the name, these small brown butterflies are uncommonly lovely. Their wings are adorned with large eye-like spots in a kaleidoscope of blues, yellows, pinks, orange and black. “One of the reasons buckeyes are still relatively common in Southern California is because their caterpillars eat members of the snapdragon family,” says Karner. He adds, don’t panic if your snapdragons get chewed up. The plants will rebound—perhaps growing even more vigorously—and know that “you’re going to get some nice butterflies out of the deal.” Eisenstein’s garden features another buckeye host plant—native monkey flower (mimulus species).

LADIES

Painted lady (Vanessa cardui) is sometimes called the cosmopolitan because it’s thought to be the most widespread butterfly globally. This small orange and black insect migrates into Southern California from Mexico in late winter/spring. It’s the one school kids rear in classrooms. Among the plants that host its young are lupines, mallows—even a vacant-lot plant called cheese weed--and thistles. Native and exotic mallows are easy to grow. Lupines provide a gorgeous blue accent in a native plant garden; they are nature’s complement to orange poppies.

Resident West Coast ladies (Vanessa annabella) will frequent the same plants. Both species sip from sunflowers and buckwheats (Eriogonum species). Eisenstein grows California buckwheat. It sports little orbs of creamy white-to-pinkish flowers that dry to a rust color.

CLOUDLESS SULPHUR

This pretty pale yellow butterfly has become rare in recent years. It depends on native cassia and senna plants. The exotic ones found in conventional nurseries don’t do the trick, according to Karner. So ask your local nursery to order the natives, or visit the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley or Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden.

MONARCH

These charismatic orange and black butterflies only deposit their eggs on milkweed plants. The black, yellow and white-striped caterpillars nurse on the plants’ alkaloid sap, which makes them toxic to predators. Exotic milkweeds are readily available, but some research suggests they leave the butterflies more vulnerable to parasites than the natives do. A good source for milkweed seed is Butterfly Encounters.com.

When positioning milkweeds, keep in mind that some are not beauties, and the voracious caterpillars will defoliate them. It’s the butterflies that dazzle.

GULF FRITILLARY

This pumpkin-colored butterfly, with black and silver accents, is native to Mexico and the Southeastern U.S. The grey caterpillars brandish horizontal orange stripes and black spines. The insect moved into coastal California when its host plants—passion vines—became popular in gardens. Avoid blue crown passion flower (Passiflora caerulea): it’s a weedy plant that can escape gardens and damage wildlands.

Milkweeds for Monarchs

Dwindling monarch butterfly populations have prompted some gardeners to pepper their landscapes with milkweeds, the various plants in the Asclepiadaceae family on which monarchs lay their eggs. Chubby, zebra-striped monarch caterpillars gorge themselves on the plants' milky alkaloid sap, which makes them poisonous to birds.

The question for many isn't whether to grow milkweed, but how -- and which kind.

In Connie Day's Santa Monica garden, a tiger-colored monarch spars with another butterfly, chasing it from a patch of milkweeds.

"The challenge is keeping the food here," Day says, noting that a few monarchs can defoliate a plant in a couple of weeks.

Read the rest of this story in LA Times Home.

Potted

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont displays the ravishing beauty of California's wild plants. But the setting is so operatic, it can be hard to imagine this flora on a smaller stage, say, a patio or apartment balcony.

Unless you happen upon a nook where native plants are potted up for a more intimate performance.

On a foggy morning, a hummingbird swoops in for a sip of Cleveland sage (Salvia clevelandii, above). Impatiently, it probes the whorls of the petite lavender flowers. This sage is usually a sprawling shrub, but confined to a 5-gallon teal pot, the crisp reiterations of dainty leaves and blossoms have the restraint and precision of a Baroque concerto.

Many of Rancho's pots are tall. Low-growing species are raised 3 to 4 feet off the ground, offering a bird's- or bug's-eye experience of these intricate plants.

Click here to continue reading my LA Times story.

Happy Days

I find it nearly impossible to be miserable in spring. No matter how dark the evening hour, morning brings a new bloom.

These days the wildflowers are flouncing, the peas towering, and the bulbs blazing.

Pictured above is the California native Chinese Houses (Collinsia heteropylla). Named for its pagoda-like structure, this wildflower is found in oak woodlands.

Below are a couple hybrid sparaxis. Bulbs from the Cape of South Africa are generally used to a climate similar to ours (albeit not quite as dry) and lean soils. Here they're growing in decomposed granite, amongst California poppies.

When I first planned this garden I had pretty much one thing on my mind--lure birds. Over the years I've become more absorbed in the plants in and of themselves. And I've added plants purely to feed or please me.

But the birds still come and remind me not to stray too far from my original purpose. Below is a white-crowned sparrow, identifiable by the racer strip on his head.

White-crowned sparrow in ceonothus.

Now Blooming

The big bloom has begun around my yard. February through June is prime flowering time. Here are a few highlights, including Anna apple (above).

I added more South African bulbs this year, including this Babiana hybrid I bought from Jim Duggan Flower Nursery in San Diego. Jim is the source for species South African bulbs. You can buy a few of the Dutch hybrids in some garden centers, but Jim grows a wide selection of species bulbs. (More on South African bulbs.)

At the other end of the spectrum: volunteer sunflowers (from the bird feeder).

Desert Bluebells (Phacelia campanularia) are great for hot spots and easy to grow. You can find Botanical Interest seeds at many nurseries.

Three of my Ribes species have been blooming for about a month, including aureum, sanguineum glutinosum (below)

and viburnifolium (below). The latter has such tiny flowers, they're easy to miss.

R. aureum (Golden currant) is especially easy to grow and will reseed readily in the garden. I like to snip small branches and bring them in for a small, delicate arrangement.

This year I added the Ribes cultivar 'Dancing Tassles' to my garden. It's similar to sanguineum glutinosum (above) but with even longer, dangling flower heads.

Another petite blossom that sets my pulse racing is five spot (Nemophila maculata), pictured below.

I also adore its cousin baby blue eyes (Nemophila menziesii). I bought my seed at the Theodore Payne Foundation. The foundation now has a native plant Wiki, a source for pictures and information on plants you hear or read about.

Lupines are really taking off now.

And elegant clarkia (Clarkia unguiculata) has reseeded itself around my garden.

A Word from the Water Wise

Last year I wrote about a gorgeous native plant garden for a local magazine. The piece was a general interest story on gardening with the California flora, but the homeowner and garden's designer, Eric Callow, impressed me with his enthusiasm for what I sometimes regard as the dismal science: irrigation.

Callow, a financial adviser and member of the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden board, had transfered is his talent with numbers and spread sheets to the garden, calculating exactly how much water individual plants in his garden needed.

As someone whose watering regime is often douse plants when I remember to, Callow made my head spin. So I asked him to send along some tips. Here is the first of two parts:

When my wife Elisa and I were looking for a home eight years ago, we had the good fortune to find a mid-century modern house designed by Lloyd Wright Jr. The house came with twenty thousand square feet of yard begging to be re-landscaped and I already had a deep interest and some experience with California native plants. So, it was the perfect opportunity to design and install (with help) my own California native garden-including hundreds of feet of irrigation pipe and tubing.

The garden has matured wonderfully in many ways over the last five years and has been included on the Theodore Payne native garden home tour over that period. Certain areas in the yard have been real challenges, however, with apparently healthy plants just up and dying or other plants hanging on but not prospering. I decided it was time to consult an expert, so I called horticulturist Lili Singer.

Singer is special projects coordinator for the Theodore Payne Foundation, where, among other things, she produces the above referenced home garden tour. As she checked on my garden, noting a variety of problem plants and areas, a clear theme developed: most of the time, the problem lay in how the plant was being watered. It was not just a matter of too much or too little either; Lili also analyzed cases of inconsistent watering (too much, trying to make up for too little) and uneven watering (supplies not reaching some of the roots). As a result, I’m reviewing and revamping my garden irrigation system, circuit by circuit, again.

Now, not everyone wants to start digging up and replacing valves and sprinkler heads, let alone laying pipe, but two issues argue for at least understanding some of the big concepts.

For one thing, we’re all going to be pressured to use less water in the years ahead. In fact, the package of water bills recently passed in Sacramento stipulate that urban users will reduce their usage by 20% and local water districts are required to have a plan in place to do so sometime this year. The legislation raises some serious issues regarding the justice and necessity of singling out urban users, but there’s no question that we as gardeners need to do our part to save water.

Secondly, in my experience, the average hired gardener can’t be trusted to know what they are up to when it comes to analyzing or designing an irrigation system. Indeed, I’ve had to rework an extensive drip system because a professional landscape contractor’s employee didn’t understand the following precepts.

So, here are what I consider to the big concepts for understanding garden irrigation.

1. Hydro-zone: an area of plants with similar water requirements, watered by a single irrigation valve and circuit of spray heads, drip emitters, bubblers et cetera. The valve is like an electrically controlled faucet. When the controller/timer tells it to turn on, water is released into the circuit of pipe or tubing and distributed over the area being watered.

2. Efficiency: laying down water evenly over the hydro-zone and only in the hydro-zone.

3. Pressure: the force, measured in pounds per square inch (PSI), available at the irrigation valve.

4. Flow: the volume of water that will flow to the hydro-zone at a given pressure.

5. Precipitation: the amount of water delivered to an area (hydro-zone) measured in inches.

A hydro-zone can be simple, like a rectangle of turf, or complicated such as an irregular shape or even overlapped. It boils down to a grouping of plants that can be efficiently watered from a single valve. For the health of your plants-and your own sanity-you want to place plants together that need similar amounts of water in the same seasons.

Efficiency has to do with getting water to all the plants in the hydro-zone and not to anywhere else (like the driveway, etc.). Even application is important too since an under-served section of the zone will force wasteful over watering of the remainder. Professional irrigation designers assume that their best design for placement of the sprinkler heads will be only 90% efficient. I think a well designed low-pressure drip or micro-spray (think of a tiny spray head as opposed to a pop up sprinkler) system can do better. If you use more heads or emitters, each covering a smaller area, you can cover an area more precisely.

The pressure depends first of all on what your utility delivers. It’s usually too much, so you will likely already have one or more pressure regulators to reduce it to something manageable. For example, I have 185 PSI at the street, which is reduced to 75 PSI in the yard. That’s still way too much for the faucets inside the house, so there’s another pressure regulator to bring it down to 25 PSI. So, if your irrigation isn’t working well, the first thing to do is to check the pressure with an inexpensive gauge that screws onto a garden faucet. If it’s really low, maybe someone ran your garden plumbing from inside the house!

More often than not, however, the problem is not pressure but flow. Water flowing through a pipe creates friction and turbulence so that the more one tries to cram through it, the more pressure is lost by the time it reaches the other end. Even if the pressure can be increased, there’s only so much water you can get through pipe of a given diameter. Irrigation designers refer to charts to tell them how much of the pressure they’re starting with at the valve will be lost for every 100 feet of pipe the water is being pushed through.

Let’s say your irrigation circuit is designed to pump out ten gallons minute (not unusual), but the water is being pushed through 100 feet of half inch pipe before coming out the heads. The result will be really anemic because over 30 PSI will have been lost before the water gets to the sprinkler head. If there’s 200 feet of pipe, over 60 PSI will have been lost-perhaps more than you had to begin with! Of course, whoever designed the system should have used three quarter inch or even one inch pipe, but believe me, this sort of thing happens all the time.

When the weatherman says we had an inch of rain, it means that a baking pan left outside would have that depth of water in it: that’s precipitation. Precipitation is also how irrigation is measured, that is, in inches of water per month. For example, according to WUCOLS III (a water-use classification of landscape plants created for the California Department of Water Resources) an area of low-water plants--buckwheat, sage, ceonothus and the like—in Pasadena needs about two inches of precipitation in July. This may be more than the plants need to survive, strictly speaking, but is meant to be an estimate of what they need to be healthy and look good in a garden setting.

In any case, I am convinced that having an efficient irrigation system controlled to deliver planned amounts of precipitation is a least as important as your choice of plants in saving water.

Of course, most people will continue to estimate water needs by the old “seat of the pants” method, but I predict that as the conservation screw keeps getting turned, measuring precipitation will become the norm. How to do that is another conversation, complete with charts and graphs, which I’m writing up for the second installment of Irrigation Insights.

*Estimating Irrigation Water Needs of Landscape Plantings in California

The Landscape Coefficient Method and WUCOLS III (Water Use Classification of Landscape Species)University of California (a free publication available online)

Manzanitas

Two of my manzanitas are in splendid bloom. These gorgeous plants demand closer inspection. To fully appreciate them, get nose-to-nose with their tiny urn-shaped flowers--if you can find a cluster that isn't abuzz with bees.

Pictured above is the cultivar 'Lester Rowntree.' I'm so pleased to host a plant named for this pioneer (woman) of native plant horticulture. Starting in the 1930s, Rowntree traveled around California, including remote spots (alone), observing its floral and collecting seed.

Manzanitas are slow growers, but reward patient gardeners with sinuous trunks wrapped in red bark. (Photo below from Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden.)

While watering some blueberry plants sporting petite bell-shaped flowers, I recently wondered if they were members of same family as manzanitas, Ericaceae. They are.

Which makes my 2-year-old's odd preoccupation with eating manzanita's flowers and hard, bitter berries even more intriguing. He was drawn to the flowers after observing bees supping from them.

Manzanita means little apple in Spanish--an apt description for its berries. According to Kent Lightfoot and Otis Parrish in California Indians and Their Environment (yet another excellent natural history book from UC Press), some tribes along the central coast made cider from them. The Miwok dried, pounded and stored manzanita berries, re-hydrating them later. South Coast tribes often ground them into a flour.

Talkin' Bout Regeneration

That's My Regeneration, Baby

People try to put 'em down, but native plants they get around. (Apologies to Pete Townsend.) It's been about 5 years since I started my second native plant garden.

Several of the original plantings are gone now, some dying inexplicably, others predictably. But in the last two years, my plants have started making their own design decisions. Aside from the annuals that have reseeded for several years, I now have a handful of perennials regenerating in my garden.

About 4 years ago, a gorgeous Dendromecon harfordii crashed before I could figure out why it was dying. I felt guilty. In trying to establish other plants around it, I'd probably overwatered it. Fast forward three years: a new plant has sprouted nearby (pictured above).

Meantime, in my front yard, some bird has planted a hummingbird sage (Salvia Spathacea) for me in the street strip, across the yard from its parent, rooted in a more sequestered spot. (See the photo below.)

Until this fall, a large coffeeberry (Rhamnus Californica) outside my office window afforded me a great look at many birds. I was distressed when it died. But then I remembered having seen a seedling sprouting nearby. I moved it closer to my window. It looks raring to go.

Other perennials roaming my yard: Hollyleaf cherry (Prunus ilicifolia), golden currant (Ribes aureum), pitcher sage (Lepechinia fragrans 'El Tigre').

A final note (and excuse to post a cute photo): This fall I also planted some little ones--penstemon Margarita BOP, Encelia Farinosa, Verbena Lilacina--that I propagated in a class at Theodore Payne. All summer, they sheltered in the dappled shade on my back porch. My son helped me care for them.

Casting Seed

I've been peering anxiously at little sprouts in my garden. I usually scatter wildflower seed before, during or immediately after the first fall rain. This year, dreaming of spring, I joyously tossed seed on a drizzly day.

But my hopes started to wither with the subsequent Santa Ana winds and two heat waves. Yes, the poppies had reseeded on their own, but, aside from the nonnative corn flowers, there seemed to be few other species.

I started to pull some of the overabundant poppies. Sheltered underneath I found clarkias, lupines and other seedlings. Those I'd strewn in shadier spots had survived, too.

California poppies seem to thrive just about anywhere in Southern California. (Just don't expect them to grow if you sow them in summer. In my experience, they'll wait for fall.) As Barbara Eisenstein said in a recent class at the LA County Arboretum, these annuals with long tap roots seem to condition the soil, breaking it up and making it more hospitable for future generations of plants. The first year I ripped out lawn and replaced it with natives, poppies were the only native annual that made a go of it. But as the years have gone by, more of them have taken root in the garden.

In nature, poppies plants mingle with lupines, creating a gorgeous carpet of blue and orange. Lupines also improve garden soil by hosting bacteria that convert nitrogen gas in the air into a form other plants can use.

The lupines sprouting with poppies in my parkway are probably not native to California, but they reseed in this hard-to-grow spot. (I do grow native lupines elsewhere.) I think their origin is a lovely Botanical Interests mix called Sweet Baby Blues. This wildflower mix includes several California natives including desert bluebells (Phacelia campanularia), baby blue eyes (Nemophila menziesii) and five spot (Nemophila maculata).

Elegant claria (Clarkia unguiculata) also self-sows in my garden, though I've thrown more down this year to ensure it's presence. I adore its tall spikes of pink and magenta flowers. I've also scattered farewell to spring (Clarkia amoena) and plan to try some Clarkia purpurea (look them up on Theodore Payne's fabulous California Natives Wiki).

Harder to grow--at least for me--are the two Nemophila species pictured below, Nemophila maculata and Nemophila menziesii. I've tried them in several shady or part-shade spots, but so far they favor only one nook.

I enthusiastically recommend two other plants that aren't annuals but low-growing natives that reseed easily. First, blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium bellum). I'm at a loss to explain my passion for these petite, purple members of the iris family with grass-like foliage (below). They look lovely clustered around one of my bird baths.

Blue flax (Linum lewisii) produces similarly shaped and sized blue flowers, also in clumps. Various species of Linum are native to much of the American West. I planted it to bring a little blue to my very purple native plant palette. You can find blue flax and the desert bluebell seeds on racks in many mainstream nurseries.

For more on spectacular wildflowers, click to my recent piece on the rare flowers that bloom after wildfires.

Trills and Thrills in the Garden

I'm so excited that I'm hopping up and down. Hopping like a California Towhee in the underbrush of my yard! California Towhees look a like big, plain brown sparrow, but with a longer tail.

Its presence is evidence that my humble habitat is doing its job.

I immediately emailed conservation biologist Dan Cooper of Cooper Ecological to ask if this meant I could claim my native plants are providing good habitat, superior to your average garden. "Yes," he answered. "That's awesome. They are a major indicator of native habitat, in my opinion."

I've had my yard "certified" by the National Wildlife Federation's Garden for Wildlife program. If you've got native plants, consider applying. After you fill out some forms and pay a small fee, they'll send you a sign that helps raise awareness of the role yards can play in sheltering and feeding wildlife.

Another thrill in the garden this week: My barely five-month-old California fuchsia is blooming. This native is a welcome addition to a native/Mediterranean-climate garden because it blooms when most of the other plants don't. Nevin Smith, author of Native Treasures, says its long, red tubular flowers are "a classic example of flowers evolved for pollination by hummingbirds." The hummers can thank dry garden queen Emily Green, who gave me two of the plants.

Summer Beauties

I have to stop apologizing for how my garden looks at the end of summer. Sure, it's not at its most colorful, but, you know, it doesn't look too shabby either.

Purple-black globes dangle from my native grape--the hybrid 'Roger's Red' to be precise. My coffeeberry bushes (Rhamnus californica) sport petite red and black orbs. Goldfinches are feasting on the seedheads of cosmos, but delicate pink blooms continue to emerge.

I planted two of the grapes to cover a large arbor over our backyard patio. They're lovely. And they're helping us reduce our energy use. The broad green leaves provide shade in summer, cooling both the patio and my office. In winter, the leaves blush, then drop, allowing sunlight to warm the patio and house.

We're now contemplating what to do with the grapes, which are small, seedy and sweet. My two-year-old loves to eat them, but we have more than even he can pillage. Our friend Eric Callow, a board member of Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, says he plans to make jelly. We hope to follow his lead. My copy of Edible and Useful Plants of California offers a recipe. I'm told others have made wine. Hmmm.

Back to the cosmos for a minute: I've grown them for years because they adapt well to our climate. These Mexican plants are fairly drought-tolerant and self-sow readily (i.e. sprout up year after year without replanting). You can also snip some for indoor arrangements.

Plus-Size Plant

One of my favorite California native plants for gardens is St. Catherine's Lace (Eriogonum giganteum). As its botanical name implies, it's the giant of the native buckwheats, growing four to nine feet tall and as much as 10 feet wide.

It is big and beautiful. Just when most of my other plants are hunkering down for the hot summer, St. Catherine's Lace comes on strong. First, it bursts with lacy patterns of tiny white flowers. Then, at the end of summer, the dried-up blooms turn rusty red, looking equally gorgeous in the fall. Many native buckwheats have a similar blooming pattern.

Next time you're hiking local hillsides, look for Catherine's (more widespread) relative California Buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum). California buckwheat is common in both coastal sage scrub and chaparral habitats. It sports little balls of white or pink-tinged flowers that age to a rust color. Bees love them.

Learn more about Southern California's unique coastal sage scrub and chaparral habitats.

Isn't She Lovely?

This profusion of purple is salvia 'Winifred Gillman,' a cultivar of the California native Cleveland sage (Salvia clevelandii). I adore this plant for its tiered whorls of petite violent blooms, and the maroon-tinted stems. (A cultivar is a clone, reproduced by cuttings instead of seeds. In this case, it's an interesting variation of clevelandii.)

It also smells divine--or, rather, earthly, as it's sweet-spicy-conifer smell recalls the Southern California hillsides where clevelandii grows wild. The most frequent comment I get about my front yard is, "It smells amazing." My three dear 'Winifreds' are largely responsible, although you'll get a similar aroma from several sages.

Plant salvias and your garden will be blessed with bees, butterflies and birds. Hummingbirds sip nectar from my 'Winifred Gillmans' and my Salvia spathacea (commonly called hummingbird sage), as do bees. Birds will feast on the seeds that develop if you don't prune the spent blooms. And why would you? The globe-shaped calyx (a protective structure at the base of the blossoms) is also lovely.

The only hitch: M. Nevin Smith, author of Native Treasures: Gardening with the Plants of California says 'Winifred' needs well draining soil, more so than other sages.

More on gardening with California native plants.

In the Garden

Don't Be A DeadheaderSome of my wildflowers (annuals) are blooming out. But I wouldn't dream of yanking or deadheading them. I love the birds that swoop in and gobble up the seed. My front yard is mostly packed with California native plants. But I've also planted others that can adapt to a low-water regime. That includes the humble cornflower (or bachelor's button, as some call it). Goldfinches go gah-gah over them. Which brings the birds to a nice height for my toddler to see them. If I leave the plants alone, they'll reseed themselves (no effort on my part).

Other birds appreciate my deliberately sloppy gardening, too: mourning doves gobble up seed that falls on the ground. My son tries to coax them closer. "Come and play with me," he says. Sages are one of the best plants for attracting wildlife to your garden, according to Louise Gonzales, nursery manager of the Theodore Payne Foundation. "The humming birds adore the flowers," she says, "and then the seeds are high in protein so there’s a lot of different bird species that eat the seeds. So if you don’t deadhead them, you’re feeding alot of birds." One of my favorites sages is a cultivar called 'Winifred Gilman.' It has deep blue flowers and a maroon tint to its stems. Bushtits (pictured above on 'Winifred') love to perch on them, gobbling up insects they find.

This next photo is of a bushtit perched on my Englemann Oak. Bushtits are fairly easy to identify. They're tiny and move through your yard in small flocks.

Interested in native plants? Check out these stories on local chaparral and coastal sage scrub habitat.

Planning Your California Native Garden

A FEW TIPS...

(Sidebar from my story "Going Native" in the May Issue of Arroyo Monthly Magazine. This version has been expanded for the blog. These photos are from my garden. )

First, I've got to brag: Look at these gorgeous mariposa lilies I grew this year! I picked them up last fall at the Theodore Payne Foundation, and planted them in spots where they won't get any summer water. Two other clusters didn't go, for reasons that elude me, but these did and I'm so, so happy. Okay, now your tips:

1. Study up over the summer. This is not the time to start natives. But May is a great month to visit Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont to see the plants in a garden setting. Also, study your yard, especially for hot spots. “You really need to know the exposures of your garden,” says Louise Gonzalez, nursery manager at the Payne Foundation. “And your soil type. Do you have well-draining sandy-loam? Or clay soil that drains slowly?
   
2. Read California Native Plants for the Garden by Bart O’Brien, Carol Bornstein, and David Fross. For plants from the other regions, try Garden Plants for Mediterranean Climates by Graham Payne.
   
3. Take a class at the Theodore Payne Foundation. In fall, buy your native plants at the Payne Foundation, Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden or Tree of Life Nursery (in Orange County). Most conventional nurseries don’t do a good job of stocking, caring for, or even correctly identifying natives. (One exception: Burkard’s in Pasadena.) For a cohesive look, landscape architect Guillaume LeMoine advises resist the temptation to buy one of each. “You can do a very good garden with five to seven plants. Frankly, my yard is a riot of many plants, but several do reoccur strategically.
4. Start your plants in late fall. Generally, don’t amend your soil unless it is contaminated, and forget the fertilizer. You shouldn’t need pesticides, but will want a lot of mulch.
   
5. Many of the plants are drought-tolerant, but need extra water in first few years to get established. “In general,” says Bart O’Brien of Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, “winter is when they want water and can use it. Not in summer.” Some will stay greener with a deep soak once a month, but others don’t want any summer water once they’re established.
6. Toss in some wildflowers. California poppy is one of the easiest to grow, and looks gorgeous scattered with blue lupines. I also love the bold pinks of elegant clarkia, the soft, large blooms of farewell to spring (clarkia amoena) and dainty baby blue-eyes (nemophila meniesii).
7. 
   
8. Experiment with different irrigation systems. Louise Gonzalez says sprinklers or drip work equally well. Some gardeners recommend smaller micro-sprinklers. Bart O’Brien waters by hand. In my experience, you get more weeds with sprinklers.
   
9. Let some plants go to seed before you prune them. Birds will flock to your yard. Many annuals will reseed, even some of your shrubs.
   
10. Get your garden certified as wildlife habitat from the National Wildlife Federation. They'll send you a sign that lets passersby know about the food, water and shelter your yard provides.
    

More from me on gardening with native and Southern California compatible plants.

California Native Plants

GOING NATIVE

Grow Local Flora with Plants from Other Mediterranean Climates

for a Fragrant Garden that Blooms Throughout the Year

From the May Issue of Arroyo Monthly

When Elisa and Eric Callow purchased Gainsburgh House in La Cañada Flintridge eight years ago, the garden wasn’t part of the allure. The house — designed by Lloyd Wright, the son of Frank Lloyd Wright — wowed them, but the yard was an unappealing mix of ivy and diseased shrubs. So Eric Callow, a financial advisor and outdoorsman, decided to try his hand at redesigning the grounds. He wanted to use plants indigenous to California “because they represent, literally, a landscape that is beautiful, under attack and which I know from my childhood.” The new garden is dominated by clusters of leafy shrubs, pockets of perennial herbaceous flowers and a meadow of wildflowers. Native gardens are commonly assumed to be brown and full of succulents, but desert-friendly plants are actually uncommon in local ecosystems. After all, most of California is not a desert; it has a Mediterranean climate — hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters. Most native plants are less thirsty than common garden plants, but they still create verdant, colorful gardens — even more so when they mingle with others from a similar climate.

For the past five years, the Callows’ yard has been a popular stop on the Theodore Payne Native Plant Garden Tour. The Sun Valley–based Theodore Payne Foundation has been dedicated to the understanding and preservation of California flora since 1960, but its nursery has only recently begun attracting significant numbers of homeowners and landscapers who snatch up its plants as fast as the foundation can grow them.

“People are starting to appreciate gardens for more than beauty,” says horticulturist Lili Singer, who organizes the annual Native Garden Tour. “Gardens are also about the environment and ecology. And the misconceptions about native gardens are falling away. You can do any style of garden, even formal if you don’t want a wild look.” In the Callows’ garden, Elisa points out a few of her favorites: native irises (Iris douglasiana) and coral bells (Heuchera), a delicate plant with bell-shaped flowers that dangle from long, thin stalks. “For something that’s so constructed and organized, it still has a feeling of naturalness, which I like,” she says. She’s also pleased with the many birds and bees the plants attract.

Most of the Callows’ plants are indigenous to Southern California’s two dominant hillside habitats: chaparral and coastal sage scrub. Chaparral plants are usually large evergreens and include such crowd-pleasers as ceonothus — which sports clusters of blue or white blossoms reminiscent of lilacs — and manzanita, prized for its red bark, tiny, urn-shaped flowers and berries that resemble little apples. Aromatic sages, dominant in a sage-scrub habitat, unfurl tiered whorls of petite flowers that hummingbirds adore. In the wild, most of this plant community has been lost to bulldozers.

At first, some of the Callows’ friends were unimpressed with their garden. “They’d say, ‘Why do you have all these weeds in your backyard?’” recalls Elisa, founding director of the Armory Center for the Arts. Now, many of the plants have matured, and they’re gaining more fans. “People love sitting outside when we entertain,” she says. “Our garden has a lot of variety. A more traditional garden is flat lawn and a bed around the perimeter; there’s nowhere for your eye to go. This has a feeling of depth.” And the garden itself is now much healthier.

Only five regions on earth have a Mediterranean climate — most of California, the Mediterranean itself, South Africa’s Cape area, parts of southern Australia and a slice of central Chile — and all produce plants with similar characteristics, including small, thick, leathery leaves with a waxy or hairy coat, which help them retain moisture. Because these plants need similar conditions, they make good companions in the garden.

Some well-known Mediterranean examples are lavender, rosemary, creeping thyme and rockrose. Glendale landscape architect Guillaume Lemoine of Picture This Land also recommends these plants: olive tree, tree mallow (Lavatera arborea), bay laurel (Laurus nobilis) and Jerusalem sage (Phlomis fruticosa). “One of my favorites is Santolina,” he says. “It has little red balls at the end of long stems. I like to cut and dry them.”

Dappling your native garden with Mediterranean-climate plants from various regions can extend bloom time and boost the number of larger flowers. Plants from the Southern Hemisphere can retain their blooming cycle when moved north, according to horticulturist Singer. “They think it’s summer when it’s really winter,” she says, “so it broadens our palette; we can get 12 months of color.”

South African and Mediterranean bulbs such as daffodils, freesias, gladiolus and Amaryllis belladonna are also good choices. They naturalize well in Southern California gardens, because they can tolerate our dry spells. Singer also recommends South African harlequin flower (Sparaxis), crocus and species tulips (the wild ones from the Mediterranean, not the more common Dutch varieties that struggle here).

Bart O’Brien, co-author of “California Native Plants for the Garden” (Cachuma Press; Dec. 2005), combines flora from several Mediterranean climates in his Upland garden.

But he cautions that plants from elsewhere don’t tolerate drought as well as natives. “California’s climate is the most extreme,” he says. “We have the longest dry periods.” For late summer/early fall blooms, O’Brien, of Claremont’s Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, recommends California fuchsias.

But don’t expect most of these plants to be at their best at the end of summer. They’re accustomed to slowing growth or becoming dormant when it’s so hot and dry. Still, native/Mediterranean gardens aren’t just about flowers. Varied shades — especially grey-greens — and textures of foliage are part of their appeal. “On the East Coast, when it stops raining, they let their lawns go brown,” says Elisa. “They don’t water. We have to get used to that — that things do have a splendid season. You can’t control what happens in nature, and you live with it.”

Besides, many people retreat indoors in August. “In the heat of the summer, it’s not nice to be in my front yard,” O’Brien says. “Right now is more when I want to be in the yard doing things. And now is when there’s a lot of color.”