July 9th Field Trip Directions and Notes

At 1:00 PM, we will start the field trip at Garden/Garden 1718 and 1724 Pearl Street in Santa Monica, across the street from the Main Campus on the backside.  (Bring quarters to feed the meter!) 

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The gardens are easy to find.  Do plan on shielding yourself from the sun and have plenty of fluids on hand to stay hydrated. 

Approximately at 3:30, we will leave Garden/Garden driving east bound on Pearl to 23rd Street, turning right and staying on it as makes a curve near the Santa Monica Airport and changes its name to Walgrove Avenue.  Continue southbound and parking on the street near Venice High School and join us in the garden.  Parking on campus is not advised - the grounds people will NOT notify you when they are going home and locking the gates. I can get you out, but it involves driving over their lawn and down a curb, both probably illegal.  We will be on campus till about 5:00.  We will be doing a project in water abatement at the garden - this will be a practical application of some of the things you are learning in the course and certain to be valuable towards cementing your understanding. 

david

CA Natives In Containers

Some of tonight's high points: 

Seen as hard to grow

Cultivated only in the last 100 or so years – many not even for 50

Most plants in our gardens have been under our cultivation for over 500 years

Why Grow Natives At All?

Save water – even in containers, CA natives are more thrifty with water than most ornamentals

Lower maintenance – some attention, but mostly in containers they are fussless

Lower pesticide use – CA native plants haven't yet grown dependent on human care takers and so have good resistance to pests that you don't find in many cultivated plants
Invite wildlife into your garden – native plants are food for hummingbirds and other birds, butterflies, and many other insects – including many beneficial ones prefer CA natives

Supports a local ecology – even your one or two CA native containers can provide some of the destroyed native habitat for a few animal or insect species

Some thoughts on Growing Native species

We are a part of the Mediterranean Climates,

Mediterranean Climate notes: at or near 40º latitude; long very hot summers, short, cool and more or less wet winters, Mediterranean, South Africa, Australia, Chile and us.

While a large number of our plants in cultivation are also Mediterranean in origin, our plants have a much longer and more pronounced dry spell – most drought seasons in Mediterranean climates are much shorter than ours – i.e. Rome has an average of six months of drought while LA has closer to 9 months.

Our soils also are more alkaline than other systems as well as being mostly Nitrogen free.

These complicate our ability to grow CA natives in ANY cultivated form – let alone in containers.

Keys to Success With Natives in Containers

Try to purchase healthy plants and, especially when just starting out, act conservatively following set scripts as best as you can. Try to plant containers with plants selected from one plant community – i.e. all plants from Oak Woodland, or all Chaparral or some other ecosystem – do not mix desert plants with montane plants. Select plants with similar needs and from similar growing conditions. Some of the CA Native plant communities include:

northern or southern Oak woodland

valley grassland

chaparral

desert

coastal sage scrub

mixed evergreen and redwood forest

Do not try to bring plants from distant ecosystems into our climate – borrow only from nearby ecosystems that might actually work here.

Learn from your local CNPS chapter – there is the Los Angeles/Santa Monica Mountains Chapter and the San Gabriel Mountain Chapter – both have meetings, programs and plant sales as well as members that can provide a neophyte with a great deal of information.

In addition there is the Theodore Payne Foundation with classes and a nursery out in Sun Valley (and on the web) and Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden has their Grow Native Nursery on the grounds of the Veteran's Administration in West Los Angeles.

Plant your natives at the proper time of year. Experienced gardeners can get by planting natives almost any time of the year, but most beginners will want to start their gardens in the fall when the plants will be the most vigorous and likely to succeed.

Established Natives need minimal supplemental water in the ground, but plants in containers MUST be watered, not as much it's true, but they MUST be watered enough. Certainly just planted natives MUST be watered often enough to establish. Use your finger – try for a consistently lightly moist soil. Not too wet, not completely dried out.

Fill your container with a lose free draining soil – LGM Cactus mix is preferred by many nurseries because it does contain CA mycorrhizae and is a good fast draining mix. Use no fertilizers with CA Natives – do mulch if at all possible using some sort of CA plant duff to cover the soil if you can. Anything is better than nothing.

With no fertilizer and low water, growth will be slow minimizing pruning needs etc.

If you get into this and decide to go wild collecting: it is illegal on CA public lands to collect wild plants or seed. Collecting plants or seed on private land, while legal, can be fraught difficulties – never collect more than half the seed of a well established stand of natives – much less if it is not a large stand. You may safely collect more seeds from perennials because they will survive to put out seed another year. NEVER collect any more seed than you can use in the very immediate future!

Try to use ethical commercial sources of seed. Larner Seeds, plant societies, or TPF

david

Native Plant Resources

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden  1500 College Ave, Claremont 909-625-8767

84 acres of native plants. Spring and Fall plant sales feature RSABG hybrids and selections. Extensive educational programs.

Native Plant Garden Hotline at at RSA

Ph: (909)624-0838 or email: rsabg.hortinfo@cgu.edu.

Theodore Payne Foundation

10459 Tuxford St., Sun Valley 818-768 –1802 

Education, Seed, Nursery and bookstore. The only LA area nursery devoted to the retail customer, with over 500 species. Sale days feature many activities. Educational workshops. Knowledgeable staff. Open Tue-Sat 8:30-4:30, reduced hours in summer. Spring garden tour.

Tree of Life Nursery 33201 Ortega Highway, San Juan Capistrano (949) 728-0685

Oldest native nursery in Southern California. Website has much useful plant info. Limited Retail days and hours. Their catalog is used as a reference by designers and architects.

CNPS Local Chapters  is the website for the LA Chapter.  Many field trips. Fall plant sale. Meetings, which feature informative lectures and discussions, and field trips are open to non-members.

Nursery website with detailed information on hundreds of plants. Includes www.mynativeplants.com, a feature that allows searches by zipcode, watering preference, shade and drainage. Online ordering of many species. Nurseries in Escondido and Santa Margarita.

Books

Gardening With California Native Plants,Bornstein, Carol et al ©2005 Cachuma Press, Of all the books here, this is the one that illustrates a drought tolerant beautiful garden. Not only does it show the plants in their glory, but there are suggestions on how to use them with authority. The lists at the back of the book are worth the price of admission alone. "The Bible," says a local native plant expert.





 

Gardening with a Wild Heart:  Restoring California's Native Landscapes, Lowry,Judith Larner ©2007, Philosophy of native gardening, with much specific wildflower and plant info. Judith Larner Lowry is the founder and proprietor of Larner Seeds - one of California's best seed resources as well as a good source for books on propagation of these plants. Well written and inspiring.














Landscape Plants for California Gardens, Perry, Robert C. ©2010 Perry, an instructor at Cal Poly Pomona, has written several expensive tombs on water saving plants in our climate.  His books are rich with color photographs, hence the hefty price tag of $78.75.  If you want to work with this palette, you will eventually need this book.

The Landscaping Revolution: Garden With Mother Nature Not Against Her, Wasowski and Wasowski, ©2002, More philosophy of native gardening.  




















The Forgotten Pollinators, Buchmann, Stephen ©1997; with Gary Paul Nabham, a favorite writer for both Orchid and I, this book fills the gap where most environmental books fail:  the pollinators we all depend on for our plants to fruit and bear seeds.  Without them, there are only wind pollinated plants and life gets boring with just grains to eat!  Good and important reading.

Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens, Keator, Glenn ©2007, UC Press, Glenn is a well-established writer on California native plants and a respected authority. This is his latest offering containing some 300 photographs, easily understood and used; a practical book you’ll return to again and again.

david for Orchid