Category Archives: California Native Plants

California Native Plants

Native Plants for Christmas

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It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here.  The community trees are lit, homes and businesses are brightly decorated and Mother Nature is soaking up that much appreciated rainfall. Santa is looking at the list you secretly keep and if you’ve been good you can probably add one more request to that list.  There’s still time to get natives in the ground so add some of these plants to your Christmas list.

The . If your soil is workable, I’d plant most native plants now. Even a winter dormant plant can benefit from the spring growth if it is in the ground for that to happen. Don’t plant in soil that is still thick gooey mud from the rain. Let the soil drain a bit between storms. Most natives put down roots during the cool wet months which prepares them for the warm, dry summer.

Before planting, dig the hole twice as wide as the container but no deeper. If it isn’t damp to the bottom of the hole from the rains, fill the hole with water. Also you may want to mix in some compost with mycorrhizals to break up your clay soil or to amend sandy soil. Mycorrhizals are not fertilizer. They are living microbes that have evolved with plants. They improve nutrient and water uptake by enhancing the absorptive surface of the roots. they also improve the living soil. It is rare that a native plants needs a fertilizer.

Although most natives don’t like their roots cut or messed with, you do need to ensure that the roots aren’t circling round and round. When you remove the plant from the container, check the roots. If they are circling, gently pull them out of the swirl so they can start growing out, away from the plant. Leaving the roots circling could eventually choke the plant later when it’s mature. Water in well. The rains will take care of the rest.

Plants can adapt to conditions that are somewhat like their native area but will survive poorly at best in radically different soils from that which they come from. They can modify but not alter the basic nutrition available in a soil. If a plant grows in serpentine clay it will not be able to grow in sandy loam unless the plant was part of that community.

Good natives to plant if you have clay soil are shrubs like coffeeberry, toyon, western redbud, flowering currant,blue elderberry. Perennials that tolerate heavy soils are douglas iris, hummingbird sage, western sword fern, Chilean aster, foothill penstemon, yarrow and bicolor lupine. Groundcovers and grasses to plant include woodland strawberry, California fescue,  blue-eyed grass, purple needle grass and deer grass.

Those of you that live in sandy soils can ask for Nevin’s barberry, native sages, monkey flower, ceanothus and manzanitas.  Some good ceanothus varieties are Tilden Park, Frosty Dawn and Joyce Coulter. You can even find some with blooms at this time of year for our resident hummingbirds. Manzanita favorites include Howard McMinn and Vandenberg,

Ask Santa for a California native to plant between storms.
 

California Native Plants, holiday ideas, winter color

Holiday Decorations from Nature

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December is all about decorating for me. I usually have several craft projects going at once. Right now I’m working with all the small shells I brought back from Mexico.  My poor relatives. After so many years, their walls are covered with art projects but they always look forward to one of my wreaths to brighten up the front door or an inside wall.

I make several styles of wreath. The quickest and easiest is made by attaching dried hydrangea flowers to a grape vine wreath or a metal frame.  Even a coat hanger can be bent to make a frame.  If you have grapes or honeysuckle vines, you can make a frame yourself. Coil several 3-6 ft lengths of vine together then wrap with more vines until you get a wreath as thick as you want. Allow the wreath to dry. Then attach the flowers with thin floral wire.  You don’t even have to cover a natural wreath frame completely and if your blossoms aren’t completely dry when you harvest them you can finish them off inside.  I also tuck hydrangea flowers into my Christmas tree and use some to decorate an evergreen outside.

From the redwood canopy to the forest floor there is an abundance of foliage, berries and cones that make beautiful holiday decorations. Choose long lasting foliage from juniper, Southern Magnolia, redwoods and pines.  Deodar cedar and spruce drop their needles too quickly.  Be sure to prune to a well placed branch that is at least a third as big as the one you are pruning. Boxwood, citrus leaves, English laurel, red-trig dogwood branches and camellia leaves also hold up well in a wreath or swag.

Berries provide color in the winter garden, food for birds and other wildlife and are attractive in wreaths, swags and arrangements inside as well.  English holly is a classic but stems of cotoneaster, iris foetidissima and nandina berries will hold up well indoors for 10 days or more.  Toyon, a California native shrub, is covered with red berries at this time of year which look beautiful against the handsome green foliage.  If the robins don’t get them, the berries also hold up well inside.  For best berry production, clip branch tips lightly after berries finish but before buds form.  Berries for outdoor color includes Strawberry tree, crabapples, beautyberry, Hawthorn trees, pyracantha and skimmia.

Pointsettias also hold up well inside either as a cut flower or a living plant.  They need a very bright spot in the house and allow the soil to dry slightly but not completely between waterings .   Deprive them of either of these requirements and the lower leaves will yellow and drop.  Also be sure they aren’t sitting in water at the bottom of the container.  Pointsettias are brittle but if you break off a branch, sear the end of the stem with a flame and it will hold up quite well in a vase or arrangement.  It’s too cold here in the mountains for pointsettias to survive outside at night usually.

But aren’t pointsettias poisonous?  Ohio State University conducted extensive research and concluded that although pointsettia leaves and flowers might give you a stomach ache if you ate them, they wouldn’t kill or seriously hurt you.  With this in mind, you should still keep pointsettias out of the reach of small children.

Happy Holidays to all my faithful readers.

berries, birds, butterfly plants, California Native Plants, soil

What to Plant in Clay Soil in the Santa Cruz Mountains

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              "The soil is made of butterfly wings, dinosaur teeth, pumpkin seeds, lizard skins, and fallen leaves.
                  Put your hands in the soil and touch yesterday, and all that will be left of tomorrow shall return
                                         so that new life can celebrate this day."  -Betty Peck

Soil is a wonderful thing. It grows our food, anchors our trees and provides a foundation under our feet. But it sure can be hard to work with if it’s not the soft, crumbly loam that many plants prefer. It’s amazing that anything grows in some of the soils here in the Santa Cruz mountains. Some folks garden in an ancient sea bed of sand and there are others who have such heavy clay in their gardens that you wonder how anything survives.  Recently I helped plant in the dense clay of Garrahan Park in Boulder Creek and I dedicate this column to those of you with similar inhospitable soils.

The soil in Boulder Creek required a pick ax to break up enough to plant. Sound familiar?  Although rich in nutrients it needed compost in many areas to provide the environment  necessary so beneficial microbes, worms and other critters could do their work and aerate the soil. A thick layer of mulch will be spread over the soil by The Boy Scouts to preserve the structure and prevent it from packing down again.

There are many plants that are tolerant of clay soils and plant selection is half the equation. The park chose mostly California natives that won’t need fertilization or pruning, can be eventually weaned from irrigation and will provide food for the birds and visiting children. Juncus, a type of grass, red-flowering currant, redtwig dogwood, California rose and western redbud will be the stars of the park in the wet, clay soil. The drier side of the park was planted with deer grass, toyon, California rose, huckleberry, coffeeberry , ceanothus, native honeysuckle, vine maple, native iris and California fescue grass.

I’m sure the park will be the crown jewel of the area and hopefully you will come to visit and see the progress of the plants. Kinda like a local demonstration garden in the San Lorenzo Valley.

There are plants from similar environments in other parts of the world that would also do well if you garden in heavy soil. One of my favorite trees for these conditions is the strawberry tree. Also hackberry, ash, gingko and paperbark trees work well also. Shrubs to try include flowering quince, bottlebrush, Australian fuchsia, smoke tree, escallonia, pineapple guava, mahonia, osmanthus, Italian buckthorn, elderberry and vitex. Easy perennials for clay soils are yarrow, bergenia, carex grasses, fortnight lily, coreopsis, echinacea, nepeta, salvia, teucrium and verbena to name just a few.

If you’re not familiar with some of these plants it’s easy to see what they look like by Googling images. It’s what I do to see a plant full grown and not just a line drawing or a close-up of the flower.

So you see, there are plants that will be successful even in heavy, clay soil, you just have to pick the right ones.

berries, birds, California Native Plants, wildlife gardening

Attracting Birds to your Garden

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Fall brings with it not only foliage color but also colorful fruits and berries that invite birds into your garden. If you’re a backyard birder you probably already have lots of plants to lure our feathered friends,

If you have room for a new tree, consider Paul’s scarlet hawthorn.  With clusters of double rose flowers and small vivid red fruits resembling tiny apples in late summer and fall that hang from the branches well into winter, this tree offers interest in more than one season.  Robins are attracted to hawthorn berries.
 
Flowering crabapples sport showy edible fruit relished by many birds in the winter, including black-headed grosbeaks.  Fruit color ranges from reddish purple, brilliant red to golden orange.  Crabapples are good lawn trees and their spring blossoms are stunning.  To avoid disfiguring diseases, choose varieties that are resistant to cedar-apple rust, scab and powdery mildew.   Among these is ‘Prairiefire‘, with pink flowers and dark red fruit.  This tree grows 20 feet tall.
 
A native that puts on a fall show is  A background plant most of the year, the white berries on this 4-foot shrub stand out when the leaves drop.  Snowberry is a good choice for erosion control on banks.

Looking like clusters of pale purple pearls, the gorgeous fruits of beautyberry ( Callicarpa ) are born well into winter.  This deciduous shrub reaches to 6 feet and takes sun or light shade.
 
For both bird-attracting berries and brilliant winter stems, plant redtwig dogwood.  Native along creeks and other moist spots from northern California through the Northwest, it performs well with little additional summer water once established in gardens
 
Other shrubs with beautiful colored berries include barberry, cotoneaster, currant, elderberry, mahonia, nandina and pyracantha.  As an added bonus many of these berries make good holiday decorations, too. 

 

California Native Plants, drought tolerant plants, erosion control, groundcovers

Groundcover Tips for Fall

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The autumnal equinox happened this week. It’s the official start of fall when the sun crosses the celestial equator and moves southward. The earth’s axis of rotation is perpendicular to the line connecting the centers of the earth and the sun on this day. Many people believe that the earth experiences 12 hours each of day and night on the equinox. However, this is not exactly the case.

During the equinox, the length is nearly equal but not entirely because the day is slightly longer in places that are further away from the equator ( like where we live ). Also the sun takes longer to rise and set in these locations as it does not set straight down but in a horizontal direction.

Take advantage of fall planting weather by looking at what’s covering your ground. Be it the small lawn for the kids to play on, ground cover to keep the weeds at bay or erosion control to keep the hillside intact, this is an excellent time to plan for winter.

Let’s start with the lawn. If you still need a space for recreation, this is a good time to reseed those bare spots. Also to keep the lawn healthy, remove underlying thatch with a thatching rake. Then aerate the lawn by poking holes in the sod and fertilize with a complete lawn fertilizer like an organic all-purpose. Your lawn needs the phosphorus in the fall to encourage deep, strong roots for the winter.

If the kids are grown and no one is using that lawn, why not rip out the water guzzling grass and replace it with a walk-on groundcover? There are many to choose from like dymondia, lippia, potentilla duchesnea strawberry and several kinds of thyme.

One of my favorites is Elfin thyme. It doesn’t need mowing, edging or fertilizing or much irrigation. You can walk on it and it stays green all winter, shading into bronze tones when the weather cools. It even blooms in midsummer for several weeks. Bees will be attracted to it at this time. Thyme prefers sun and poor, sandy soil. Autumn is the best time to install from flats cut into 4" plugs planted about a foot apart. It will fill in within 3 years. Plant them closer together if you’re impatient. You’ll love your new lavender-blooming "lawn".

There are also Ca. native and prairie meadow grasses that you can walk on. They need little irrigation and even less mowing. Some can be planted from seed, others from plugs or sod. Good choices include Idaho, Calif. and red fescue, carex pansa, June grass and Hall’s bentgrass.

If you don’t need to walk on your groundcover, low-growing shrubs that are good groundcovers are baccharis, ceanothus maritimus, cistus salviifolius, grevillea lanigera, creeping mahonia, rosemany prostratus, rubus, manzanita, creeping snowberry and ribes viburnifolium to name just a few.

It’s time to enjoy fall weather and cover that ground before winter.

California Native Plants, drought tolerant plants

Why Plant in the Fall?

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Those lazy, crazy, foggy days of summer are behind us now. What a strange summer it was. Checking my un-scientific weather records I’ve kept since 1999, I find no other summer that was as cool at this one. This comes as no surprise to you tomato growers out there, I know.   At the other end of the spectrum, a few years, like the summer of 2006 and 2008 were real scorchers. We’re all looking forward to Indian summer which is the best planting season of the year.

There is plenty of time to plant California natives, Mediterranean plants or any other perennial, shrub, grass or tree.  By r, roots have a chance to grow all autumn and most of the winter as well without having to supply nourishment to the leafy portion of the plant. Roots of deciduous plants still grow even after plants drop their foliage as long as the ground temperature is above 50 degrees.  Cooler day and night temperatures slowly harden off the top of the plant to prepare for the cold days of winter.

Another reason that fall is the no-fail planting season is because plants put in the ground in fall need less water to establish. Plants themselves use less water since photosynthesis is slowed by shorter days even if it’s occasionally hot. Evaporation rates slow down also during fall so water in the soil lasts longer as well. Sometimes we get lucky with fall and winter rains perfectly spaced so the ground never completely dries out.

Even cool season annuals such as snapdragons, pansies and violas, Iceland poppies and primrose planted in early fall have time to develop better roots before flowering and because they start blooming earlier they bloom over a longer time.

So get out the shovel, prepare you soil and make a shopping list.

Plants that thrive in dry, shady spots benefit especially from fall planting as they need established root systems before next years dry season. Dry shade sometimes occurs in places beyond the reach of the hose but also under native oaks. To protect their health, it’s a requirement that plants underneath thrive with little or no summer irrigation.

Plants of proven success under these conditions include native currants and gooseberry. Claremont pink flowering currant ( Ribes sanguineum var. glutinosum) are beautiful in spring with pale pink flower clusters that darken as they age. The powdered, blue-black berries are edible although the seeds are bitter. To get a taste of the fruit, though, you’ll have to compete with the birds. Chapparal currant is another tough reliable shrub that blooms early and often, flowering from December through March. The pendulous flower clusters are 2-6 inches long and range in color from dusty pink to rose red.

Other winning shrubs for dry shade include mahonia, nandina, osmanthus, snowberry, coffeeberry, aucuba, barberry and upright manzanita.

Groundcovers that thrive under oaks or other dry shady spots include hellebore, evergreen currant, correa, manzanita and sarcoccoca.

Whatever conditions you have in your garden, don’t miss out adding some great plants during the fabulous fall planting season.