Backyard Gardeners Going Native
This time of year, when many Southern Californians come to realize their near-perfect climate is actually challenging for backyard gardeners, they often turn to the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley, which is dedicated to the propagation of native species.
At the foundation Wednesday, Sharon Emanuelli lifted pots of young plants from a red wagon and into the back of her car.
“I’m doing some planting on my Nichols Canyon hillside, and I wanted natives and native-friendly things,” said Emanuelli, who lives on five-eighths of an acre in the Hollywood Hills.
She found a wagon full of colorful species, including dark pink monkey flower, blue and violet lupine and a bigberry manzanita, a treelike shrub that bears little white or pink flowers. Later, she plans to spray wildflower seed mixed with water onto her hillside. “It’s much better than ivy,” she said.
Unable to find the native plants she wanted at commercial nurseries, Emanuelli bumped up the dirt road from Tuxford Street to the Payne Foundation. “I like what they do here. I like it a lot,” she said.
Using native plants will slash her water bills, she said. “And it’s nice to have butterflies and birds” attracted by the indigenous flora.
The organization receives about 100 visitors a week, said Louise Gonzalez, one of two nursery managers. People visit the 21-acre site to buy water-sparing plants or seed and to find the best plants to feed their desert tortoises. Some want the experts to identify mystery plants that have taken up residence in their yards.
And some just want to see the bright California poppies now blooming in Sun Valley, as drought has made them scarce in Antelope Valley and elsewhere.
Time, Great Outdoors Motivate Customers
Wanting to be good to the Earth is only one motive for seeking out low-maintenance plants, Gonzalez said. “People are very busy and don’t have time to take care of a garden,” she said.
Nursery manager James Brumder said visitors often arrive at the foundation after an inspiring backpacking trip or other wilderness experience: “They go on a hike and come here and say, ‘I saw this plant. It was so beautiful. What was it?’”
Founded in 1960, the foundation furthers the work of Theodore Payne, a horticulturalist born in England in 1872 who was bewitched by California flora when he settled in the state as a young man.
Payne, who lived in Los Angeles most of his life, believed native plants needed to be saved from encroaching civilization and that they belonged in local gardens. He preached his grow-native gospel throughout the state, created model gardens and made more than 400 native species accessible to home gardeners before his death in 1963.
“To me, he was like Johnny Appleseed,” said Frances Liau of Pasadena, a member of the Payne Foundation board.
The foundation received an endowment of $100,000 last year, and the board hopes to increase its endowment to $1 million next year, Liau said. “The long-term hope is to upgrade the facility,” Liau said of the foundation’s visitor center.
The foundation maintains a wildflower hotline that people can call to find out where wildflowers are blooming in Southern California. Its annual Poppy Day, scheduled for April 13, will include a workshop on gardening in small spaces and a tour of the solar house and garden of board member Ellen Mackey. Until the endowment grows, plant sales keep the foundation afloat.
Most of the plants are propagated and tended in open-air structures that climb the hill behind the office. Visitors can buy such rarities as a California lilac, previously found only on a small stretch of coast beneath Hearst Castle in San Simeon.
Re-Creating Natural Conditions Tricky
Payne Foundation staff and volunteers are masters of the green arts--attuned to the subtle needs of their native charges.
Laima Harmon, the foundation’s seed-room supervisor, said that coaxing native plant seeds into germinating may require much different treatment than that of commercially cultivated species. “Basically, you’re trying to copy the things that happen in nature,” Harmon said.
Take the yellow bush poppy. Because it sprouts in nature after wildfires that eliminate competing plants, the seed must be burned. “It’s not clear whether the seed is responding to heat, to smoke or to chemicals in the ash,” Harmon said. “It may be a combination.”
Some seeds--such as those of California lilacs, which are not really lilacs at all--need several months of wet and cold. “Basically, you’re mimicking our winter,” Harmon said.
And some seeds require desperate measures. “Lupines are notorious for having seed that stays dormant for decades,” she said. Sometimes the only way to get the seed to sprout is to cut it with a knife, a process called scarification.
