California Fuchsia (Epilobium canum) Coyote Mint (Monardella villosa)
Farewell-to-Spring (Clarkia amoena)
Tidy Tips (Layia platyglossa)
Golden monkeyflower
(Mimulus guttatus)
Native Plant Gardening:
A ‘Growing’ Trend
By Jason Tilley
As the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, so famously noted, “In the
spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”
Unfortunately, the years bring a decline in hormone levels
(all the commercials say so!), forcing middle-aged folks to
pursue other springtime diversions. For many of us, that
means gardening. Not only does spring bring more pleasant
weather, the days get longer, and you arrive home from work
while it’s still light outside and warm enough to go dig some
weeds. Though you may know this magical pull of the soil,
you might not be familiar with special virtues of native plant
gardening.
It’s ironic that landscaping with California natives is
something one needs to discuss. I mean, these plants were
already here when our ancestors arrived, right? But we see
few of them in Bay Area gardens. It’s not that there aren’t
natives well-suited for landscaping; the reasons are more
historic and economic.
California is a place that’s been colonized - more than once.
First came the Spanish, then the forty-niners, then a series
of twentieth century influxes, such as the flood of African-
Americans from the south who came to work in the wartime
ship-building industry. Each group brought their own plants
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and style of landscaping with them (those shipworkers
carried with them the wonderful purple tree collard, now
the official vegetable of the city of Richmond). Whenever
there’s a drought, water officials urge residents to remove their
thirsty lawns, but why do we have lawns at all? It’s because
lawns were a sensible type of landscaping in parts of the
country where it rains in the summer. George Washington,
for instance, had a big lawn on his Mount Vernon estate.
People were used to having lawns, and expected to see them
when they moved out west, even if they’re deeply impractical
for arid California. They also wanted roses, rhododendrons,
petunias, etc. - all the other plants they were used to - and
an industry sprung up to provide those things. Today, the
nursery business in California is dominated by large wholesale
growers selling the same stuff to big-box stores all over the
state. Because this business model is based on economies of
scale, what they’re selling usually isn’t specific to where you
live. And with rare exceptions, it isn’t native.
That’s a pity, because there are some good reasons to
landscape with natives. Most obviously, these plants evolved
to deal with frequent drought and a lack of summer rainfall,
so they don’t need as much water. Many of them co-evolved
with local fauna (such as our native milkweeds, which are
host for monarch butterfly larvae), so planting natives helps