Greg Rubin wants to “tweak” popular notions with “California Fusion,” the award-winning display garden he created with the San Diego Botanic Garden for the county fair’s Flower Garden Show.
“The message is we’ve only scratched the surface of possibilities with native plants,” the landscape designer says of his Asian-inspired design planted solely with cottonwoods, manzanita and other handsome California flora.
Rubin makes the same point — and more — in his groundbreaking new book, “The California Native Landscape: The Homeowner’s Design Guide to Restoring Its Beauty and Balance” (Timber Press, $34.95) co-authored with North Park garden writer and Editor Lucy Warren. Many titles on this topic are largely plant compendiums, but this one also delves deeply into native plant ecology, culture and garden design. “With this context, gardeners will succeed with these amazing and unique plants,” Warren says.
Throughout the book, the two authors confront many myths that deter gardeners from using natives. “Dead, dry and dormant in summer — that’s the rap,” Rubin says. “They look out at the brown hillsides not realizing they are looking at weeds and exotics introduced hundreds of years ago by ranchers and farmers. For a true native landscape, think Big Sur or Julian, where there is year-round color and interest. That’s possible in the home garden with a heavy backbone of evergreen trees, shrubs and perennials.”
“People also think natives are hard to grow,” adds Master Gardener Warren. “To succeed, you must throw out traditional horticulture principles about watering and fertilizing or you’ll kill natives with kindness.”
Unlike other ornamental plants, natives exist in communities linked by an underground web of fungus known as mycorrhizae that help the plants thrive on limited soil nutrients and moisture. “We need to harness this power, not work against it,” Warren says. “Traditional horticulture disturbs this web and leads to failure. … Even other Mediterranean-climate plants need more water than natives, so I wouldn’t mix the two in a garden.”
The authors devote a chapter to a third myth — “that a native landscape around your house will spontaneously combust and burn it down,” Warren says with a wry smile. “This has led to practices like ‘controlled-burns’ and clear-cutting to bare dirt that are so destructive to homes and the environment.” She points to research that lightly hydrated native plants will suppress and slow wildfires. “Plus many fire-adapted natives, if burned, will grow back in a couple of years, so your landscape isn’t lost.”
A boon for home gardeners, the majority of the book is a design primer with advice on everything from “plants for every purpose” and garden accents to practical matters like mulches, irrigation and maintenance. “Design is an area vastly neglected when it comes to natives,” Warren says. “People don’t realize the breadth and potential available.”
Rubin’s company, California’s Own Landscape Design, based in Escondido, has created scores of native plant gardens around the county, many in the popular informal or naturalistic style. But any style is possible — ranging from formal to modern, southwest and even Asian, says Rubin, who includes a diagram for each in the book.
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