JAUNTS : A Garden of Island Delights : No need to get on a boat to see Channel Islands flora. A wide selection of hardy specimens awaits visitors to the park at Ventura Harbor.

If you can’t take a boat to the Channel Islands to see what grows amid the sand and salt there, the next best thing is a trip to national park headquarters at Ventura Harbor.

There, parks botanist Sarah Chaney has spent the last 1 1/2 years creating a garden with plants, bushes and trees that thrive on the wind-swept islands.

This is no garden of sissy plants. These are hardy souls that can survive harsh conditions.

Located at the front entrance to the building, the garden is set up for visitors to follow a walkway that runs through it. A guidebook isn’t due out until fall, but Chaney has grouped the plants according to the way they might be found in their natural setting. Most are labeled.

In the coastal bluffs section, the giant coreopsis is a standout--but not for its beauty. When it blooms in the spring, sometimes the display of daisy-like yellow flowers on Anacapa Island is so striking that on a clear day, the island has a yellow tinge. But the plant is in its dormant stage now, and it looks like a brown, stringy mop--striking in itself.

It’s quite natural, as Chaney explains it. Alongside the coreopsis, the island morning glory is still producing white blossoms. Scattered about is the island live-forever, a succulent with tall shoots bearing tiny flowers. The variety, found only on Santa Barbara Island, is on the endangered species list.

In the dune section, visitors will find scads of the dune primrose with its yellow petals, along with the sand verbena and a purplish lupine.

Still another spot is reserved for the vegetation that grows in woodland and grassy areas. Chaney has planted native bunch grass here. In another areas, sage is thriving.

All of the 100 or so species in the garden can be found on the Channel Islands, and most also grow along the coast. But some are native only to the islands, such as the ironwood tree with its fern-like leaves.

“It’s only found naturally on the islands, especially Catalina Island,” Chaney said. “It’s a survivor from the last Ice Age. It survives in fog pockets on the islands.”

The Santa Cruz Island gooseberry is another one. It grows only in a handful of places on the island.

In all, the garden has more than 1,000 individual plants spread over a half-acre or so. Chaney took the project on in addition to her regular chores. She grew many of the plants from seeds--including a foot-tall oak tree that she started from an acorn.

“We’ve been working on a shoestring,” she said. “No budget. No people.” Help came from a volunteer, Frank Waldron. Even so, the garden is loaded with rocks that had to be moved to fit in with the landscaping design.

The spot in front of the building had become something of a weedy eyesore before Chaney took over. It had been landscaped with native plants after the building was built, but the long drought and lack of irrigation took its toll.

“Some of the plants lived, and some didn’t,” she said. A few, like the Santa Rosa Island torrey pine and the sprawling lemonade berry bush, are holdovers from the original garden.

When Chaney isn’t working in the garden or the little plant nursery at the visitor center, she is involved with an inventory of plants on the islands.

During the 1800s, hunters and ranchers came to the islands, which became heavily grazed by sheep, cattle, hogs, donkeys, even rabbits. Even the tenacious ice plant found its way to the islands from the mainland. Native plants and animals were damaged and sometimes wiped out.

The National Park Service is working to rid the islands of the non-native plants and animals and restore the natural vegetation--whatever it might have been a century or more ago.

“Early accounts are from passing seafarers, or letters, journals from ranchers, anecdotal history,” Chaney said. “It’s hard to find hard evidence.”

Details

* WHAT: Native plant garden.

* WHERE: Channel Islands National Park Visitor Center, at the end of Spinnaker Drive, at Ventura Harbor. Garden is outside, at the entrance to the building.

* WHEN: Visitor center is open seven days from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

* PHONE: Call 658-5730. (Rangers are looking for volunteers to work in the garden.)

* FYI: Here are some other things to do:

* On Tuesdays and Thursdays during the summer, park rangers offer the underwater video program at Anacapa Island. At the landing on the island, television monitors show divers as they descend with cameras in hand into the giant underwater kelp forests surrounding the islands. Visitors glimpse sea urchins, sea cucumbers and brightly colored fish. For information on day trips to the island, call Island Packers, 642-1393.

* At the miniature tide pool constructed in the visitor center, rangers talk about the tide pool inhabitants every Saturday and Sunday at 11 a.m.

* Also Saturdays and Sundays, rangers give talks at 2 and 3 p.m. on island-related topics. This weekend’s subjects are recreational opportunities in Channel Islands National Park and how the plants and animals of the islands are monitored.