Familiar Grounds : Native Plants Are the Natural Choice for Landscaping That Grows on You
When European immigrants moved out West, they brought with them their ideals of what a garden should look like--rose-covered arbors, overgrown walkways, English cottage flower beds.
With that ideal in mind, folks here often choose plants that are, in reality, inappropriate for Southern California conditions. Plants that grow profusely in England or even the eastern United States with little care often need near-constant watering and pampering here.
Instead of looking outside the country for exciting plants for the garden, local residents need look no further than the surrounding hills.
Native plants offer ample variety of color and texture to create an exciting garden and please the tastes of almost any gardener. Gardening with natives has the added advantage of needing little water and only a minimal amount of care to look good.
So, with all the benefits, why aren’t there more native gardens in suburban Orange County?
It’s simple, says Al Blake Eliel: Most people are unfamiliar with the local flora.
“It’s rare to find a neighborhood nursery that carries any native plants,” said the Laguna Beach resident, who has been gardening with natives for more than 15 years. “People don’t know anything about native plants. I didn’t know much about them until I moved here.”
Eliel’s street, a quiet one in the hills above Laguna Beach, is lined on one side with houses that look like those in a hundred neighborhoods throughout the county. Across the street is a slope that was planted with eucalyptus trees, probably by the developer.
“When I moved here and looked beyond the eucalyptus, there were still remnants of natural habitat. I decided that’s what I wanted to do: bring nature into my yard and have my garden blend into the surroundings.”
At the time, his front yard consisted of a lawn and an olive tree that had seen better days. After removing the existing plants, Eliel amended the soil with oak leaf mold bought in bulk at a nursery. The small front yard is divided by a walkway to the front door. Eliel planted coast live oaks and sycamores to one side of the walkway, away from the house. The center of the yard consists of mounds planted with small shrubs and perennials accented by boulders.
On the other side of the walkway is a manzanita about five feet tall and wide.
“These trees grow painfully slow--this one is about 8 years old,” Eliel said. “I think that’s part of the reason people don’t use them. But that’s so shortsighted, because they are so magnificent.”
Eliel’s manzanita is handsome, with white bark and gray-green leaves. Tiny, white, bell-shaped flowers that grow in clusters cover the tree a couple of times a year.
The rest of Eliel’s property is on a slope, and he has used natives extensively to guard against erosion.
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Eliel bought his plants at one of the few places native plants are available locally, Tree of Life Nursery in San Juan Capistrano. The nursery caters mostly to the commercial trade for restoration projects. But as public demand for native plants has started to grow, the nursery has opened its doors to the public.
“We’re basically a wholesale nursery, “ said Mike Evans, co-owner of Tree of Life. “We started opening up to the public on Fridays a few years ago as a service to people who would come to us as the only source they knew for natives.
“The retail nurseries have not taken gardening with natives seriously. But this has been such a success for us that we’re going to open up to the public on Saturdays as well.” Other sources for native plants include plant sales at the Fullerton Arboretum and annual sales by the California Native Plant Society in Orange County. Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont is another good source for native plants. Touring the garden is also a good opportunity to see native plants at maturity.
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As with any type of gardening, creating a native garden takes time and planning. If you have the luxury of starting a landscape from scratch, Evans recommends beginning with native trees.
California oaks are evergreen and can grow quite large, so they should not be planted too close to a house or patio. Sycamores also grow very tall and will add a splash of fall color to the garden.
“Slightly smaller are the elderberries, which have white flowers in spring followed by blueberries that attract birds,” Evans said.
Next, plant large shrubs such as toyon (also known as Christmas berry), scrub oak and lemonade berry.
Planed next should be smaller shrubs, including sages, buckwheats, coastal sunflower and monkey flowers. California fuchsia is another good choice; the California variety has smaller flowers than those found in most retail nurseries. Annuals could include lupines, in shades of blue and white, along with columbine and poppies.
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Sarah Jayne’s condo in Irvine has a small--30 by 50 feet--but diverse back-yard garden. Realizing that creating a native garden would be difficult in the clay soil, Jayne hired landscape architect Michael Lindsey to design her garden.
A circular flagstone walkway leads through three planting zones. The first is a shady spot with mallows, coral bells, Douglas iris, meadow rue and gooseberry. These are plants that need regular watering during the heat of the summer.
Next is a sunny area filled with ceanothus (also referred to as California lilac), toyon and other drought-tolerant natives.
“I don’t water this section at all in summer, and it’s doing very well,” Jayne said.
A mound in the center of the flagstone circle is the in-between zone that needs little water in the summer. There are a variety of sages, dudleyas and a sycamore.
“I learned that the sycamore needs a good watering once a week after the first two I planted died,” Jayne said. “They are a riparian tree found along riverbeds, used to having their roots very near water.”
The sycamore is a little more than a year old. Once its root system extends deeper, Jayne said, she’ll be able to cut back on watering.
“I planted a native garden because I’m interested in natives, but I did give up a few things to have it,” Jayne said. “One was a vegetable garden; our yard just wasn’t big enough for both.”
Instead, Jayne uses the small yard in front of her condo to satisfy her desire for herbs and a few dwarf fruit trees.
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Dan Songster’s back yard in Lake Forest is a mix of natives, antique roses, fruit trees and turf. The garden is multilevel, covering a slope that makes up the bulk of Songster’s small yard.
When designing the garden, Songster had to find a way to satisfy his and his wife’s varying tastes in plants.
“I’m interested in native plants,” said Songster, a board member of the California Native Plant Society’s Orange County chapter. “My wife likes roses. I’m also a history buff, so we decided to plant a lot of antique roses.”
The garden includes sages, grasses, dudleyas and ceanothus.
“One of the things to be aware of when planting natives with hybrids and cultivars is that the watering needs of the plants (should) match,” Songster said.
Whether a garden is being planted exclusively with natives or with a mix of natives and exotics, it is important to consider not only the water needs but also the soil.
“One of the initial problems we had with Sarah (Jayne’s) garden is that her yard had clay soil,” Lindsey said. “Clay soil retains water and causes root rot in natives. In some areas of the garden, I had to dig down about six feet to remove all the clay soil,” he said.
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In addition to being low maintenance, gardening with native plants also attracts native fauna. This is usually welcome.
“I’ve learned the hard way which natives the deer like to eat,” Eliel said. “I try not to plant them anymore because by the time the deer get through with them, there is nothing left. On the other hand, since we put in the native garden, we’ve gotten acorn woodpeckers in the yard, which we never had around here before.”
“If you understand natives, that they have their summers down and winter and spring up, then you’ll appreciate the look,” Lindsey said.
Evans and Lindsey agree that there seems to be a gradual increase in gardening with natives. “It’s been brought about probably by the drought, or people . . . hiking in the local hills and seeing how nice things look,” Lindsey said.
“It goes way beyond aesthetics and deep into philosophy,” Eliel said. “It’s trying to live in harmony with the natural world.”
