Beauty in Your Native Plant Garden Throughout the Year - is it possible?

i wrote this in response to a question on the Gardening with Natives listserve.

the question from Howard W. was: Can a native plant garden look attractive year round? My instructor in a horticulture course claims that a predominantly native-plant garden is not attractive year round. Are there any photos on a website that features the same native garden in fall, winter, spring, & summer?

one reason why a native plant garden can easily look pretty beat up is that it IS a native plant garden and every natural predator of these plants lives here too. yes, we can all guarantee perfectly plastic plants by going to costco and getting a bunch of agapanthus, calla lillies, or scotch broom [barf]. their predators live on the other side of the world, so you get to enjoy every last drop and don't get the pleasure of sharing them. every plant gets munched by something or other, and almost every plant has a time-out or rest for a period or two or more per year.

thankfully, there are plants which flower at different times throughout the year and these can be combined to cover most, if not all the year. but even more important is the foliage and to a lesser extent, bark - which also go thru peaks and lows throughout the year. judicious watering throughout the year is important to keep your garden looking gorgeous, but also for keeping your yard firesafe. a hydrated plant of any type is less flammable than a dehydrated one of any type. some plants will get their lifespan severely curtailed if you water them in the summer - primarily a few ceanothus and manzanita species and fremontodendrons. are there any other species which really need to avoid summer water? this is an important list for us to develop, I think.

one thing which judith lowry was able to pull off amazingly well in 'gardening w/ a wild heart', is the way she transmitted her appreciation for the beauty of healthy plants in whatever season they happen to be in - even their dormant seasons. I read somewhere recently a quote by john greenlee where he said something like 'golden brown is a color too!' and this is really true. I love walking thru a healthy native plant habitat - wild or cultivated at all times of the year. they are always full of surprises. but we need to recognize that it's not always the 'ordinarily-considered-beautiful-chrysanthemum/rose-kind-of-beauty'.

here's some examples of what I mean: many bigleaf maples have samaras which turn and stay scarlet for a long time at the beginning of summer. looking up thru one of these trees at the height of summer is as easily as beautiful as any camelia I've ever seen, but you can't call it a 'flower'. another example is when a healthy madrone goes thru a late summer or fall leaf drop. their leaves turn amazing colors - sometimes even looking a lot like the whole tree is festooned w/ brightly colored fruit for awhile. bay laurels and toyon go thru a similar leaf drop during the summer/fall and if you catch the sun coming thru them at the right time, it's almost a religious experience for us die-hard native plant folks. even the beautiful russet color of buckeye leaves against their white trunks in late summer is beautiful. other plants which have gorgeous colors in late summer/fall and into winter are: california blackberries, all the dogwoods [they are the most reliable bushes for wonderful and long-lasting color - although some need regular water to keep them looking so great]. I even love the beautiful golden, green and yellow of bracken ferns in the fall and early winter. and we cannot skip the beauty of fruit and nuts either [our native fauna sure don't!]. other plants w/ wonderful seeds/fruits which extend their beauty times are: buckeyes, western hopbush, spicebush, snowdrop bush, dogwoods, ninebark, toyon, madrone, summer holly, holly-leaved cherry, COFFEEBERRIES [of course!]. http://www.flickr.com/photos/eastbaywilds/sets/72157600248927457/ and one of my favorites for surprisingly beautiful foliage color is our evergreen huckleberry - actually all huckleberries and many other members of the Ericaceae family. photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eastbaywilds/sets/72157621631702045/

then in mid-to-late fall the silktassles pop out their early tassles which slowly unfurl over several months - and the whole thing is a beautiful, long show. ptelea crenulata - western hopbush - has a great bright yellow leaf and after they drop, you get really lovely seed capsules and intricate branching patterns throughout most of the winter. the coastal flowering currants might be deciduous, but they sure do put on a nice show for most of the year. they often have great fall leaf color, and those leaves stay on practically until the flowers begin to pop out - given the right conditions. there are manzanitas which flower at different times throughout the year - particularly in the winter. some are early flowering - december/jan. others are later - feb/mar - and some even flower during the summer. and we cannot forget the really spectacular annual peel of manzanitas and madrones. that has to count at least as much as their flowers. manzanita throughout the year: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eastbaywilds/sets/72157594279833245/ buckeyes, including some really cool photos of ones which are fully-laden w/ amazing fruit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eastbaywilds/sets/72157594290624465/

I know of a ceanothus incanus in the santa cruz mountains which flowered 9 or 10 months out of the year a couple of years ago. it's a very large and very old shrub which was affected by sudden oak death the previous year - but not killed. the following year, it bloomed all year - and it was soooo fragrant and beautiful. the leaves are so handsome on that shrub. since then, it's gone back to a mostly normal schedule of heavy flowering for a couple of months in the spring and then sporadic flowering throughout the summer/fall. I'm really surprised that it's not used more often in landscapes. I finally got a few of them to establish in pots at my nursery and they are doing well, but it took awhile.

people often complain about how badly ribes speciosa and some of the other gooseberries look in late summer/fall, but I have some planted where they get a tiny bit of fog drip and north/east sunny exposures which look amazing right now - red/orange/yellow and even some green leaves at the same time. ditto for golden currants. for late season color, you can't forget the goldenrods either. I recently found another species of late-blooming goldenrod which is very attractive - meadow or canada goldenrod which is native to moist meadows in point reyes. photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eastbaywilds/sets/72157622631004802/

no list of native plants for beauty throughout the year would be complete w/out the sunflowers. the california sunflower [a wetland perennial which can grow to astounding proportions - given certain conditions - but easily kept to a reasonable size by witholding water - begins to flower in late summer and just keeps on flowering if you give it a little irrigation. beginning in late summer, it grows very quickly and produces beautiful lavendar purple stems and then gets covered w/ bright yellow blooms which last and last w/ a little extra water. this year, I was surprised by a few plants I started from cuttings I took in the delta of bidens laevis - or beggar's ticks. this is a beautiful flower for the sunny side of a pond or even near an irrigated lawn. the plants I started have just begun flowering now. another really gorgeous local flower found in wetlands is Pluchea odorata or Marsh Fleabane. it does very well w/ minimal water, and it tends to seed around a lot - providing some surprise along w/ gorgeous late-season color. it's a close relative of new york ironweed, snakeroots, and joe pye weed - all of which are currently the rage in native gardens back east. ours is a shorter, more garden-sized version of it - no less spectacular and much easier to grow too. here's some pics including one I planted a couple months ago at the height of the summer heat in the hottest part of livermore in heavy clay w/ once weekly irrigation. you cannot get more harsh conditions for a plant [never mind a human!]. marsh fleabane photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eastbaywilds/sets/72157622270858709/

there are grasses which look fantastic at different times of the year too. at this time of year, one of my favorites is alkali sacaton. what an amazingly beautiful, and underused native that one is. and if you do judiciously irrigate, you should have polypody ferns looking fabulous these days too.

of course you shouldn't forget our many different asters [sadly, only one species is grown over and over in native landscapes - but I hope to change this]. I consider asters, erigerons, lessingias, macharantheraes and even a few others to be 'asters' and they all flower at interesting times w/ beautiful and abundant blooms. I have a bunch of different kinds I've been growing from cuttings I've collected around the state and these flower at different times throughout the year - and some put on absolutely beautiful displays - usually when very little else is flowering. I've given up trying to figure out what kinds I've got and prefer to describe them as color, time/length of bloom and height. I've even got one I started from seed I collected in the sierra which thrives in full sun in san ramon - tight rosette of leaves producing six inch, stunning purple flowers at the hottest/driest time of year. it also seems to flower sporadically all year long. here's some pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eastbaywilds/sets/72157622506433377/

like any garden - native or not - the trick to looking good all year is proper planning and proper care. when people think 'native', they immediately think 'wild', which also means unkempt and this is their excuse for not lifting a finger to care for their native garden except when it becomes an unbearably messy looking tangle and dry as a tinder box. it really doesn't have to be that way, and we need to get that message out there. too many folks let this happen and it turns off an awful lot of people from native landscapes.

oh my god - I just caught myself tsking a lot of people out there who are probably feeling shamed right now! I'm becoming my personal pet-peeve - a tsker!! in truth, I don't care how you keep your native plant garden! I think we all deserve gold stars for doing it however we choose to! and if others are smart enough to get it, then they will too. I really don't want to oversell anything. besides, plenty of people really love almost-plastic plants from home despot / costco and who am I to tell them how stupid that is? [ahem….]

here's some photos of madrones throughout the year: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eastbaywilds/sets/72157594227989300/

some of you might remember the beautiful hybrid buckwheat I found last year in one of my gardens. well, I collected the seed and now have many and most seem to be showing the same great characteristics - beautiful blue/gray leaves, late and long-flowering on short stalks, w/ large and fluffy purpleish pink flowers. I have many very nice plants which are still flowering up a storm - even in 4" pots in full sun. here's some pics of the mother plant: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eastbaywilds/sets/72157606040638315/

the tilden botanical garden has a page w/ links to 'what's flowering now' for each month of the year. I think glenn keator put that together. so that's a good place to start to find out what's flowering throughout the year. http://www.nativeplants.org/seasonal.html

on another note, I found a really odd fern at Point Reyes the other day. it looks a little like a cross between a deerfern and a giant chain fern - although as doreen and roger raiche pointed out to me - it's probably a sport of Blechnum spicant - Deerfern. but what an interesting oddity. if anyone has any insights, please share them w/ me!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eastbaywilds/4025812442/