Ways to Garden with Native Plants
The growing and nurturing of California native plants in California gardens takes place in several distinct contexts. Let us distinguish among them as a way to begin exploring their role in the back-yard restoration garden.
TRADITIONAL GARDENS
USING NATIVE PLANTS INCIDENTALLY
In this type of garden, native plants are mixed with exotic plants following the principles traditionally espoused by landscape architects. Focal points, axes, specimen plants, perennial borders, bedding plants, foundation plantings, ground covers, and screens are ways in which native plants are used in this kind of garden.
Xeriscaping, in which drought-tolerant native plants are mixed with drought-tolerant plants from places with Mediterranean climates similar to California's, is one example of this kind of gardening. The aesthetic is traditional, the goal low water use. Some native plants lend themselves admirably to this kind of gardening and will therefore be more readily available in “the trade”—that is, at non-specialty nurseries. Examples are many species and cultivars of manzanitas and ceanothus and perennials like penstemons, yarrows, monkeyflowers, heucheras, the coast strawberry, and dwarf coyote bush.
THE COLLECTOR'S GARDEN
Collectors may focus on one genus, such as salvias or penstemons, growing as many different species within that genus as possible. Or they may want to see how many different species from different parts of California they can grow. Design considerations are secondary to the interest inherent in each plant.
The gardener may be motivated to include plants that she has enjoyed on forays into the wild. Challenged by the difficulties inherent in bringing montane species to the lowlands, or desert species to the coast, she is triumphant when they succeed. Miniature back-yard botanic gardens satisfy the love of variety and provide horticultural challenges.
THE RESTORATIONIST
Restoration indicates the process whereby an attempt is made to return land that has been disturbed in a negative way by human activity to an earlier condition. Choosing a moment in time or a stage in natural succession is required. Natural models are selected and analyzed to provide information for the restorationist. Historical materials may be reviewed. Seeds and cuttings from nearby plants are gathered in order to preserve the integrity of local gene pools. Techniques have been developed to allow for large-scale plantings where plant survival must be relatively non-labor-intensive.
The field involves state and federal agencies, private citizens working in volunteer groups, academic research, nonprofit organizations like the Nature Conservancy, and professional environmental consulting firms. Some endeavors, such as the huge project restoring the Kissimee River in Florida, are intended to redress problems that already exist. Other projects are intended to mitigate for destruction consequent upon future development.
THE BACK-YARD RESTORATION GARDENER
In the back-yard restoration garden, the home owner looks for inspiration to the landscape he or she inhabits. He wants to make California look more like California and to fit his house snugly into that picture. Like the artist Gottardo Piazzoni, when asked if he has a religion, he might reply, “I think it is California.”
If he lives in an oak grove, he does not set out to create a redwood grove. He learns about the grasses, wildflowers, and shrubs that grow with oaks. If he lives in Riverside County or in San Diego, he may plant the endangered Engelman oak, Quercus engelmanii. If he lives in the foothills overlooking hot valleys, like the San Joaquin, he may plant a grove of blue oaks, Quercus douglasii. In mountainous areas away from the coast, he may plant black oaks, Quercus kelloggii, with their showy fall colors and sweet acorns. In the Santa Clara Valley, he may plant the largest oak of all, the valley oak,Quercus lobata, or the canyon oak, Quercus chrysolepis, or the coast live oak, Quercus agrifolia.
He finds lists of the hundreds of insects, birds, and mammals that are associated with oak trees and looks to their appearance as markers of his success with the project. He learns about the factors that are impeding the reproduction of oaks and seeks to eliminate those factors from his grove, striving for a mixed stand of babies, teenagers, young adults, the middleaged, and the venerable.
He lives with his oaks, creating ways to be among them on oak benches. He carefully harvests firewood from them. He considers different understory plants, from Ceanothus nipomensis on the Nipomo Mesa in SanLuis Obispo County to hazels on the north coast. He experiments with acorns, both growing trees from them and eating them. Perhaps he joins the California Oak Foundation and attends the symposia that focus on the ecology and preservation of native oaks. Oaks of California is a frequently consulted reference work.
The oaks enrich his life. They are a presence, leaned against, noticed, attended to, climbed, viewed from many angles. Nourishment is exchanged. ssThe family photo album may include snapshots of germinating acorns, young saplings, and thriving adults.
Or a southern California gardener might attempt to restore a “walnut woodland.” Southern California black walnut, Juglans californica var. californica, is classified as “very threatened” by the Nature Conservancy Heritage Program. These tall and graceful deciduous trees are fast-growing from seed, and a grove of them is a lovely place to be. They are often found near old California Indian village sites. The nuts, though small, are tasty and nutritious.
Design Principles
Let us explore some of the “principles” or notions behind this vision of the naturally designed garden.
USE NATURAL MODELS
Plant associations and combinations from nearby pristine areas are recreated in the back yard. The gardener seeks to gain as great an understanding as possible of the land both within and beyond the fence, an understanding that is continually applied to the planning and planting of the garden.
How does this notion apply to the urban gardener with a small fenced yard in the middle of a densely populated city? She searches out relatively pristine sections, perhaps a nearby nature preserve, the unused parts of a cemetery, or an old estate to use as models and as textbooks. In many cases, the native presence has been thoroughly erased from the fertile and buildable valley lands; in that case, she looks beyond the city streets to the encircling hills, Mount Shasta, the Santa Cruz Mountains, San Jacinto Mountain, or Mount Diablo.
REMOVE OR CONTROL NON-NATIVE PLANTS
This endeavor (thoroughly addressed in chapter 8) accounts for at least 50 percent of most garden projects we undertake. The particular weeds removed depend on the plant communities involved, and the methods employed depend on the weeds. Persistence is almost always required.
DESIGN WITH A LIMITED NUMBER OF SPECIES
Once we climbed to an alpine meadow. Masses of lupine and paintbrush lay before us, but little else. After a slight initial botanical disappointment (it had been a killing climb), I began to notice the multiplicity of effects possible with just these two species. There were random and equal scatterings of both species, there were pools of lupines set off by a few scarlet paintbrushes, there were glowing masses of deep scarlet paintbrush dotted with sky blue lupines. Paintbrush was set off by a gray-white granite boulder. Lupine fields drew you on toward the lake. Mixed in different proportions, growing in different situations, these two species produced a satisfying variety of results.
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