Gardening : Plant Now for Wildflowers in the Spring
If you caught the brilliant display of California poppies made possible by last spring’s “March miracle” rains, you may have promised yourself to include some wildflowers in the garden. Now is the time to make good on your promise by sowing seeds for spring bloom.
Don’t worry if you don’t have a spread the size of the Poppy Preserve. The average garden makes a good home for native wildflowers from habitats ranging from the low desert to redwood forest along with poppies and other familiar local natives.
Wildflowers aren’t seen too often in gardens, probably because today’s gardeners have forgotten that seeds are the ultimates in convenience and economy. In a few packets of seeds you get hundreds of plants encapsulated in tiny pellets that need little more than to be scattered where they are to bloom.
Ed Peterson, longtime seedsman for the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wild Flowers and Native Plants in Sun Valley, has this advice for budding wildflowerists. “I would certainly recommend thoroughly mixing seeds with a few quarts of fine soil before sowing them. That will help you distribute the seeds more evenly. The main thing is to not plant seeds too deeply. They only need to be just barely covered with soil.”
In recent years bedding plant wholesalers have grown some native species, so you may be able to find lupines, poppies and others at the nursery along with pansies and snapdragons during the cool season. Peterson, however, is somewhat skeptical. “I think people would get superior plants from seeds started in the ground because the root system would develop better.”
With luck you will get your seeds in the ground just before a cool, soaking fall rain. “There’s nothing like rain for sprouting seeds,” says Peterson. “It’s not the water itself or the amount of rain as much as the duration of it. Water soaks into the seeds over a period of hours and makes them germinate.”
Wildflowers are easy to integrate with other garden plants. Let their colors be your guide and don’t hesitate to mix natives with exotic plants. Purplish-blue arroyo lupines (Lupinus succulentus), which bloom from January through March, are perfect cohorts for the native redbud tree (Cercis occidentalis), but they also look great with the purple orchid tree (Bauhinia variegata) from India and China.
The native flora add a few names to the all-too-short list of blue flowers. Baby blue-eyes (Nemophila menziesii) are six-inch annuals with flowers like white-centered saucers of china blue. If you plant seed now they will bloom from early February to April. Baby blue-eyes are fine companions for small, early bulbs including freesias, sparaxis and jonquils.
Globe gilias (Gilia capitata) are annuals to 30 inches tall that produce spherical clusters of small flowers varying in color from pale powder blue to sky blue and deep agapanthus blue. Sown thinly in a rose bed, globe gilias are an outstanding contrast with red, pink and orange roses from April through early June.
Desert bluebells (Phacelia campanularia), often seen in the sandy washes of Joshua Tree National Monument, make surprisingly easy garden plants. Their newly opened flowers are an intense gentian-blue accented by white stamens. In gardens they prefer dryish, well-drained soil, so you might plant them with rockroses on a sunny bank.
Orange is a color that requires careful placement in the spring garden, and California poppies can be stunning seeded around yellow-flowered shrubs and trees such as knife acacia, euryops and golden trumpet tree. Naturally, poppies are perfect in dry gardens with the showiest large native shrubs, yellow-flowered fremontias and blue-flowered mountain lilacs or ceanothus.
Southern Californians think of wildflowers as denizens of burned chaparral hillsides or windswept grasslands, but there is a spectacular little flower from the redwood forest called red ribbons (Clarkia concinna) that does well in our shade gardens. Its flowers are elaborate creations with recurved, antler-shaped, rose-purple petals backed by twisted red sepals like tiny ribbons. Blooming in April and May, they bring color to shady spots after the camellias and azaleas have faded.
A taller, coarser Clarkia that will grow in part shade is called mountain garland (Clarkia unguiculata), native from Northern California down to our own Santa Monica Mountains and on to San Diego. Mountain garland produces three-foot spires of lavender-pink to deep red-purple flowers in April and May that make a pretty pair in the garden with blue-violet rocket larkspur (Consolida ambigua). It is also useful for sowing in weedy places where it competes well with mustard, wild oats and other aggressive introduced weeds, a rare characteristic among native flowers.
The annual wildflowers finish up in late spring with a grand flourish led by the aptly named farewell-to-spring. These include several species of Clarkia, relatives of red ribbons and mountain garland, but with simple, pink, poppy-shaped flowers. Clarkia deflexa peaks in May, making it a good companion for lavender-blue buddleias and chaste trees, and is followed by June-blooming Clarkia amoena, the godetia of our grandmothers’ gardens, which is native to the north coast of California.
Seed of all the flowers mentioned is grown commercially for garden use, not collected from wild plants.
A wildflower seed catalogue is available for $2 from the Payne Foundation, 10459 Tuxford St., Sun Valley 91352. (818) 768-1802.
