Gardening with a Wild Heart. Judith Larner Lowry
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world as in the plant world, personal tastes differ. I have often been confused by a customer's request for “something pretty” in the way of wildflowers, since “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Many times I have fielded requests for a wildflower mix that includes nothing yellow, or nothing pink, or nothing red.
I have never been asked for a mix that excludes blue flowers. People almost universally like blue flowers. To most bees and day-flying butterflies, however, blue is not attractive. Which perhaps accounts for its relative rarity in the world of flowers, and, therefore, its appeal for novelty-seeking humans.
The other relatively rare flower color, red, attracts birds rather than insects. Because most insect pollinators do not see pure red as a color, such flowers are to a certain extent an unoccupied ecological niche, available to the birds that do “see red.” “Bird red” is a particularly valuable color for long-range attraction. It stands out starkly from all colors in the background and is clearly visible even early in the morning and late in the afternoon—times when many birds prefer to fly.
Bird nectar seekers not being as common as bird berry eaters, there are correspondingly fewer red flowers and more red berries, including, here in California, toyon, hairy honeysuckle, red elderberry, wild rose, and chokecherry.
Discussing this kind of plant/bird interaction may produce either startled attention or stifled yawns. I try to establish whether or not the client wants to see plants in this full way, and whether considerations of providing food for a wide variety of creatures can influence preferences.
I also assess the degree of seasonality, including dormancy or semidormancy, the client can tolerate. Some native plants may demonstrate change through the seasons more dramatically than the kinds of nonnatives chosen for freeway, shopping mall, and bank parking lot. The gardener's pruning hand helps keep dormant plants tidy, but attention through the year is required. To the best of my ability, I attempt to make all this clear to the clients.
A tricky juggle is being performed here. I weigh the preconceptions of my clients concerning a desirable landscape, the vision that has formed in my investigations, and an assessment of the difference between the two. A moment may later arrive, which I try to imagine now. It comes after we have done the planting, watering, and final mulching. It is a time before the inevitable problems of watering, weeding, and the unexpected. Sitting in my car in a crowded neighborhood that I believe was once solid oak woodland, I salute the small oaks we have planted, the bunchgrasses, brodiaeas, calochortus, and toyon. I regard the huge old valley oak down the block that validated my assumptions about this piece of land. It is a moment of cloudy triumph, acknowledging the unknown ahead, while resting for the moment in the hope of having done something for that which is thought valuable.
In anticipation of that moment, I go through the private, final phase of the initial consultation, before discussing my ideas with the client. I ask,“Help me know what it is that the land wants.” Whom am I asking? I'm not sure, and I know there will be no one answer, but rather a series of them. Still, I ask
Part-opening illustration: Blue oak. Drawing by Ane Carla Rovetta.
CHAPTER THREE
These things it must be, to be Californian. One gets a hint of it in the flower-decked glades in our mountain forests, in our canyons, many-colored with spring flowers, on our seashore slopes, carpets with purple and gold; but when it comes to making a garden, we all, like sheep, have gone within the lines, the old, old lines of other lands, and in so doing have gone astray. Alfred Robinson, 1913
Ways to Garden with Native Plants
The growing and nurturing of California native plants in California gardens takes place in several distinct contexts. Let us distinguish among them as a way to begin exploring their role in the back-yard restoration garden.
TRADITIONAL GARDENS
USING NATIVE PLANTS INCIDENTALLY
In this type of garden, native plants are mixed with exotic plants following the principles traditionally espoused by landscape architects. Focal points, axes, specimen plants, perennial borders, bedding plants, foundation plantings, ground covers, and screens are ways in which native plants are used in this kind of garden.
Xeriscaping, in which drought-tolerant native plants are mixed with drought-tolerant plants from places with Mediterranean climates similar to California's, is one example of this kind of gardening. The aesthetic is traditional, the goal low water use. Some native plants lend themselves admirably to this kind of gardening and will therefore be more readily available in “the trade”—that is, at non-specialty nurseries. Examples are many species and cultivars of manzanitas and ceanothus and perennials like penstemons, yarrows, monkeyflowers, heucheras, the coast strawberry, and dwarf coyote bush.
THE COLLECTOR'S GARDEN
Collectors may focus on one genus, such as salvias or penstemons, growing as many different species within that genus as possible. Or they may want to see how many different species from different parts of California they can grow. Design considerations are secondary to the interest inherent in each plant.
The gardener may be motivated to include plants that she has enjoyed on forays into the wild. Challenged by the difficulties inherent in bringing montane species to the lowlands, or desert species to the coast, she is triumphant when they succeed. Miniature back-yard botanic gardens satisfy the love of variety and provide horticultural challenges.
THE RESTORATIONIST
Restoration indicates the process whereby an attempt is made to return land that has been disturbed in a negative way by human activity to an earlier condition. Choosing a moment in time or a stage in natural succession is required. Natural models are selected and analyzed to provide information for the restorationist. Historical materials may be reviewed. Seeds and cuttings from nearby plants are gathered in order to preserve the integrity of local gene pools. Techniques have been developed to allow for large-scale plantings where plant survival must be relatively non-labor-intensive.
The field involves state and federal agencies, private citizens working in volunteer groups, academic research, nonprofit organizations like the Nature Conservancy, and professional environmental consulting firms. Some endeavors, such as the huge project restoring the Kissimee River in Florida, are intended to redress problems that already exist. Other projects are intended to mitigate for destruction consequent upon future development.
THE BACK-YARD RESTORATION GARDENER
In the back-yard restoration garden, the home owner looks for inspiration to the landscape he or she inhabits. He wants to make California look more like California and to fit his house snugly into that picture. Like the artist Gottardo Piazzoni, when asked if he has a religion, he might reply, “I think it is California.”
If he lives in an oak grove, he does not set out to create a redwood grove. He learns about the grasses, wildflowers, and shrubs that grow with oaks. If he lives in Riverside County or in San Diego, he may plant the endangered Engelman oak, Quercus engelmanii. If he lives in the foothills overlooking hot valleys, like the San Joaquin, he may plant a grove of blue oaks, Quercus douglasii. In mountainous areas away from the coast, he may plant black oaks, Quercus kelloggii, with their showy fall colors and sweet acorns. In the Santa Clara Valley, he may plant the largest oak of all, the valley oak,Quercus lobata, or the canyon oak, Quercus chrysolepis, or the coast live oak, Quercus agrifolia.
He finds lists of the hundreds of insects, birds, and mammals that are associated with oak trees and looks to their appearance as markers of his success with the project. He learns about the factors that are impeding the reproduction of oaks and seeks to eliminate those factors from his grove, striving for a mixed stand of babies, teenagers, young adults, the middleaged, and the venerable.
He lives with his oaks, creating ways to be among them on oak benches. He carefully harvests firewood from them. He considers different