Theodore Payne garden tour: A sneak peek

The annual garden tour of the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wildflowers and Native Plants has grown to become one of Southern California’s premier garden events, this year showcasing more than 30 low-water gardens April 9 and 10. One of the featured landscapes is the La Cañada Flintridge garden of Nicholas Warner and Lisa Novick, who also happens to be the force behind Theodore Payne’s classroom program. Pictured here: classic California poppies abloom in the backyard.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Lisa Novick walks by the vegetable patch in her garden. Behind her is an elderberry tree.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Stones outline the vegetable garden, which also has some sunflowers planted.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Blooms on the elderberry tree will turn to fruit that birds love to eat.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

A Western redbud tree in spring bloom.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Globe gilia blooms in the backyard.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Novick with her dog, Lucy.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Lizards sit on top of obsidian in the backyard.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Native dudleya grows in a pot.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Among the other container plantings: Yucca whipplei.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Who needs plants? Rocks in a pot by a sitting area.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Novick and Warner said they planted American bulrush in a metal tub containing mosquito fish and set under a dripping faucet, so mosquito eggs cannot live. (They need still water.)  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

A sitting area on the patio.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Above the patio, a Rodgers red wild grapevine -- a California native -- grows with a Perlette grapevine. Both will leaf out and provide shade in the summer.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Creeping red fescue grass grows underneath the elderberry tree for a wilder, more naturalistic alternative to conventional turf.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Purisima mallow blooms in Novick and Warner’s backyard.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

Purisima mallow.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

A young manzanita eventually will bloom with white flowers.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

A bee collects pollen from a Ray Hartman ceanothus -- a type of California lilac -- blooming in the backyard.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

A matilija poppy blooms in Warner and Novick’s backyard. For more on this garden and the Theodore Payne tour in general, read sustainable gardening columnist Emily Green’s recent installment of “The Dry Garden.”

For an easy way to follow future headlines, join our Facebook page dedicated to gardening in the West.  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)