A season ripe with promise
YOU know that you are a California gardener when the chief attraction of summer is that it is a prelude to autumn. Unlike the East, where leaf fall is followed by frost, here in the West, the third season of the year is a time to plant. It is the all-too-brief interval when the soil is still warm, the atmosphere is becoming moist, and the intense downpours of winter are still a month or two away. Autumn is the time to get many of our best seeds, seedlings, bulbs and saplings into the ground. It is the defining moment in their health and ultimate survival.
So it came as no surprise to learn that by the autumn equinox, the co-founder of Native Sons nursery in Arroyo Grande had already made a planting list, in perfect botanical Latin no less. What was surprising about the list that David Fross made was that it was so wistful, so curious, so frank, so alternately stubborn and accepting.
Here was one of the state’s presiding experts on native gardening privately fooling around. What his list betrayed is that he has, or has had, all the same problems that we do -- encroaching shade, plants that should grow but croak, small plants that get too big. Such a moment demanded a trip to the open hills of Central California to drink up Fross’ country wisdom.
One hundred and eighty-five miles later, it emerged that the man whose mind was swimming with possibilities of the season -- native ferns and Turkish forget-me-nots for a woodland garden, buckwheat and monkey flowers to partner with California lilac, Indian mallow and verbena for a gravel garden -- was, of all things, a born and bred Angeleno. Standing before a flatbed trailer of 1-gallon specimens ready to go in the ground was a city boy long rapt with the challenge of how to tame difficult, dry and wild plants for urban gardens.
Fross, now 60, grew up on Main Street, in downtown Los Angeles, where his father managed a roofing company. In 1970, after graduating with a degree in history and geography from Cal State Long Beach, he was drawn to the Bay Area and the surrounding countryside of the Dharma Bums.
While pursuing a graduate degree in horticulture at San Jose State, he was already picking apart the chaparral and experimenting with the gnarled grace of manzanita by growing it in containers on his apartment balcony. He funded the obsession by working at a UPS parcel-sorting station in Sunnyvale in the Santa Clara Valley.
Punching three-digit shipping codes into the sorting machine alongside him was friend Bob Keeffe. By 1976, Fross and Keeffe had a landscaping company, Native Sons, named after the hit song that was performed at a Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina concert that the two friends had attended.
“We thought, ‘We’re both natives,’ ” says Fross, “and we’re going to focus on natives.”
Fross’ interest only intensified as he and his wife, Rainie, moved south so he could continue horticulture studies at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. When Keeffe heard that Fross had decided to turn from landscaping to running a nursery, he followed him to the coastal ranges of Central California. “His comment to me was, ‘If you’re going to try this, I’m coming down,’ ” Fross says.
In 1978, Fross and his wife chose 3 1/2 acres in Arroyo Grande in San Luis Obispo County. “We bought it on sight,” says Fross. “We didn’t even go in the house. The property was right.”
Fross and Keeffe managed to raise enough money to build a greenhouse, while Rainie kept the creditors at bay working as a dental hygienist. At the time, the native-gardening movement could count its adherents with an abacus, and the new nursery lost money so fast that Fross and Keeffe almost immediately had to expand their stock to include plants from other parts of the world with the same climate, chiefly the Mediterranean basin, but also parts of Chile, South Africa and Australia.
Purists cried foul when they saw Native Sons plant tags on the likes of lavender and rosemary, both native to the Mediterranean. The majority of shoppers were merely confused. “I’ve had people come in the nursery and come up to me with rosemary and say, ‘I didn’t realize these were native,’ ” says Fross. “And I’d say, “Well, they’re not.’ ”
Yet by sticking to plants that evolved either here, or in places with climates almost identical to here, Fross and Keeffe managed to make the Native Sons tag a kind of assurance that whatever plant came with it was right for California.
As the business slowly grew, vogues for gardening with natives came and went, usually the result of a drought and sudden ad campaigns sponsored by panicked water boards. But banking on drought was a poor excuse for a business plan. “It’s a good thing that my wife was a very good dental hygienist,” Fross says. He realized that the problem his customers had wasn’t so much a resistance to switching from water-hungry exotics to natives, but ignorance as to how to grow them. So began a new chapter in Fross’ career: public figure. As Fross’ son Tim and Keeffe kept the business ticking, Fross started lecturing at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and making appearances at arboreta up and down the state. Among his messages: Follow nature’s cue. When a plant benefits from a start in fall, try to give it to them.
But when in the fall? “That varies,” he says. “Everyone has the moment when they recognize fall starts. For me, it’s the moment the Townsend’s warblers appear.” (Sure enough, around the back of his house, the yellow-striped birds dart in and out of a fountain.) For those of us in Los Angeles, we could easily add a week or two. Today is good.
What we plant, he says, depends on two things: the place and the age of the garden. Rain forest redwoods will burn up in the desert and cactus will rot in northern streambeds. Our topic this day, however, is season, not situation. A tour with Fross through his now 27-year-old garden almost instantly illustrates how much fall planting lists change year to year as any single garden matures. As he climbs a gentle grade from the nursery toward his house and steps into the sheltering cool of what is now an oak woodland, he says, “When I started, this was a suntrap.”
Those first years, he planted sun-worshippers: manzanita, Ceanothus and buckwheat. They thrived, but so, unexpectedly, did oaks. Trunks of trees chopped down by the previous owner sprouted from the ground. Scrub jays planted yet more acorns. So much happened that he didn’t intend, he nicknamed it “the willful garden.”
Fragrant tufts of yerba buena planted by the door migrated down the path as old stands died and new ones established themselves. One option would have been to pot the runaway herb and fell the trees. Instead, Fross slowly changed his planting list.
“I transitioned to things like wild strawberry, giant chain ferns, lilies, just a host of things that would deal with root competition and leaf drop and deepening shade,” he says.
This year, he is adding more native ferns, woodland bunch grass and coffeeberry bushes. Pointing to the coffeeberry, he says, “That is one of my Top 10 plants.” Its low, round form and deep, lustrous evergreen leaves make it a perfect transition plant from grays to green.
As he stops to gush over something called Omphalodes cappadocica, it’s hard to keep up with the nurseryman’s now habitual botanical Latin. Oompahwhatsimacallit’s common name turns out to be forget-me-nots, a Turkish native that he has been tucking in shaded corners since the 1980s. It was a case of audience approval. “When people go in the garden in the spring,” he says, “the primary question they come out with is: ‘What is that?’ It’s a star.”
As he leads the tour around the house and out of the woodland and into a meadow section, he is becoming jumpy. He’s due shortly in Los Angeles for yet another lecture, the 40th public appearance this year. Yet his pace slows down as we approach a swing set, carpeted by rumpled, rich green sedge.
“Local teenagers come and meet here,” he says. “They lay around and talk. I love the way it looks when it’s pressed down into a mat.” He discovered the resilient, teen- and kid-proof sedge, Carex praegracilis, in the local dunes in 1983, planted it at home and five years later introduced it to the trade.
The child for whom he planted the sedge no longer needs the swings. She has just graduated from college. However, thanks to Fross, the sedge is now in nurseries up and down the state as a mounding, soft and perennially green alternative to lawn.
Beyond the lustrous green patch left rumbled by lounging teenagers, a meadow stretches with yet more grasses, their tips flouncing in a gathering afternoon sea breeze. There are deer grass, blue sedges and wild rye, all from lists past. This space too is now slowly becoming enveloped in shade. Though the grasses don’t seem to mind, six years ago, Fross needed more sun, so he rented a long ridge strip -- about a quarter acre -- to begin a new sun garden.
This time he mulched with gravel as a clean-looking background to offset foliage. The rock bedding, he found, trapped water and held warmth in a way that caused lavender and sage to thrive and volunteer as it never had in wood mulch. This year, his list for it includes a signature mix of natives and Mediterranean climate imports, including buckwheats, agaves and Indian mallow out of California, along with cooking sage, a French rosemary cultivar ‘Roman Beauty’ (“It makes a handsome tight little bun.”). For the butterflies, there is Brazilian verbena; for felted gray foliage, the South African geranium ‘Harveyi.’
As he began the gravel garden, his perennial list-making led him to a longer sort of writing exercise. John Evarts of Cachuma Press put Fross together with his friends, Bart O’Brien and Carol Bornstein. Their task: Write a book highlighting the best native plants for California home gardens.
Evarts might as well have asked three French chefs to agree on how to season a sauce. O’Brien is director of horticulture at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont, while Bornstein has the same job at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. Agreeing on how, never mind when, to prune a white sage proved far from straightforward.
Three years into the writing process, while they were snowbound during an editing session in O’Brien’s Bear Mountain cabin, the three of them were about to kill each other, Fross recalls. “It was a miserable experience,” he says, “but we’re still good friends.”
And the book was written. After “California Native Plants for the Garden” was published last year, it was quickly named one of the six best books of the year by the American Horticultural Society.
Three months after it was published, Fross and a fourth co-author, Santa Barbara taxonomist Dieter Wilken, followed it with another seminal California gardening book -- this time a study of the genus and subgenus encompassing the state’s glorious native lilac, Ceanothus. The work on this prompted Fross to rent more land from a neighbor to begin a study in blue (the plant’s primary flower color), the textures and hues of the evergreen foliage and the endless forms that the plant can take from ground cover to tree.
If Fross were any other kind of specialist, say a rosarian, he would have let the dozens upon dozens of Ceanothus specimens stand alone like museum pieces. Not Fross. Ever the gardener, he wanted to know what best to partner with them just as his customers will need to do in their gardens.
As soon as he gets back from Los Angeles, he’s off the road to fill in the nooks and crannies. This year marks his fifth attempt at getting the southwestern buckwheat Eriogonum fasciculatum to cooperate in his temperate coastal setting. “The last four died.”
He has the next 60 days to try again, he reckons, and also to experiment offsetting these rows of lilacs with needle grass, bent grass and spilling fringes of Sonoma sage. There’s no time to waste. Passing warblers flying south for the winter have alerted him that fall is here, and it’s planting season in California.
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Sow now, reap the rewards later
Autumn isn’t the only planting season, just the best. Some plants, such as riparian species and warm season grasses, are effectively planted in the spring, when they would naturally begin to feed and grow along streambeds fed by melting snow. Exotics such as citrus, roses and bare-root fruit trees are best planted as days begin to lengthen after winter solstice. However, as a rule, the cooling, shortening days of autumn allow most germinating seeds and establishing seedlings, wildflowers, bulbs, vegetables, shrubs and specimen trees the best possible shot. Come winter rains, they will be prepared to drink up and put on a glorious spurt for spring. Here are suggestions from David Fross of Native Sons nursery in Arroyo Grande; John Wickham, president of the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley; Renee Shepherd of Renee’s Garden Seeds in Santa Cruz; Lynne Tjomsland and Michael DeHart, managers of the gardens at the Getty Center and Getty Villa in Malibu and Brentwood; and Bob Sussman of Matilija Nursery in Moorpark.
Vegetable gardens: Plant now for lettuce ready to eat by Thanksgiving, including butter lettuce, romaine and “designer” leaves such as mizuna. Artichokes should go in now to have gourmet thistles for the early spring table.
While they sometimes must bend to the whims of artists at the two Getty museums, Tjomsland and DeHart at home are planting carrots, peas and beets. It is also the time to put in arugula, borage, chervil, thyme, cilantro, dill, fennel and watercress along with onions, scallions, garlic and leeks.
Sow seeds indoors or directly in the garden, but sow plenty or net for birds if you plant directly outside. Keep soil moist but not waterlogged until the seeds become established.
Annuals and bulbs for the flower garden: Do as the flowers do -- drop in the seeds before the fall rains. Seed heavily and repeatedly, and let the dogs run through it so enough gets buried out of sight of gleaning birds and mice. Plant native sunflowers, penstemons, clarkia, California poppies, fivespot, columbine and lupines.
To mark the space, buy 1-gallon perennials as placeholders to give it some structure, including penstemons and monkeyflowers.
Wickham loves partnering Chinese houses and fivespot with blue-eyed grass, a plucky native iris that will flower from spring through the last days of July.
There is more to bulbs than daffodils and tulips (just say no). However, if you plant native irises, Sussman recommends starting out with the Douglas iris but warns that it is the beginning of an addiction. For a glimpse of the blue, white, yellow, maroon and tiger-striped possibilities, go to www.matilijanursery.com/iris_411.htm.
In order to get the striking and comical ornamental puff-ball flowers, Allium cristophii from Turkey, to bloom at the Getty museums (USDA planting zones are 5-8, we are 9-10), the horticultural team buys them and refrigerates them to fool the plants into thinking they are elsewhere.
Evergreen shrubs for mixed beds: These create structure in flower gardens, holding the space while annuals such as poppies come and go. Fross loves creeping manzanitas and Ceanothus for borders and meadows along with shrub and tree forms of the same plants for deeper stations. Any good native nursery will have selections of both types.
He also recommends a classic chaparral plant, chamise or Adenostema fasciculatum, for its bright green leaves and spring white blooms and value at stabilizing slopes. You know it’s a California garden when there is buckwheat, or Eriogonums. Their foliage creates silver mounds and carpets, while spring shows of cream, saffron and pink flowers slowly turn gold over the summer season. For cream flowers and a spilling habit, try Eriogonum latifolium; for a pink mound, Eriogonum grande var. rubescens.
Rosemary and lavender: The two Mediterranean standards mix well with natives. Lavender flowers in spring and fall; rosemary is flowering now. The problem can be size. Fross recommends a new rosemary cultivar ‘Roman Beauty’ for a tight, round habit.
For the full-sun, butterfly garden: Two sun-lovers -- the southwestern native Indian Mallow (Abutilon palmeri) and Brazilian verbena (Verbena bonariensis) -- will keep winged foragers happy.
Trees, hedge plants and understory plants for woodland: Now is the time to plant native oaks and conifers, such as the gray pine, Pinus sabiana, because they will be emerging from summer dormancy and preparing for a winter growth spurt. Give them plenty of room. In drought, slow water once a month until the rain really beds them in. Then resume monthly slow watering in spring for the first year. After that, they should be able to exist on what rain reaches them.
Two shade-tolerant shrubs that are perfect partners with oaks are toyon and coffeeberry. Coffeeberry, Rhamnus californica, will produce discreet spring flowers, then slowly ripen berries that mockingbirds love.
The best understory plants for oaks have to be native ferns, irises and coral bells. For coral bells in inland gardens, try Heuchera elegans from the San Gabriel Mountains, or H. maxima for coastal situations. Fross praises the hybrid Heuchera ‘Canyon’ series out of the Santa Barbara Botanic garden.
For ferns, new cloning techniques have made Polypodium californicum, our native species, widely available. Remember, fern dies in summer and reappears in September. Soaking it while dormant will only risk giving the oak root rot.
For hedges, Wickham likes a tapestry mix, in which white and blue flowers and red berries will come in blushing succession: Ceanothus, coffeeberries and the deciduous snow drop bush, Styrax revidivus.
-- Emily Green
