Landscaping with native plants goes back thousands of years in San Diego County. The Luiseno of North County practiced fire management to burn back understory and to encourage growth of desirable plants. The Kumeyaay planted cactus to serve as a barrier around some of their villages.
Both groups intimately understood the balance among soils, plants and the overall environment. That knowledge, finely tuned to specific environmental zones, was handed down generation after generation.
Today most of us rely upon books, journals and our favorite nursery for dependable guidance. In recent years, George Miller’s “Landscaping With Native Plants” and “California Native Plants for the Garden” by Carol Bernstein, David Fross, and Bart O’Brien, have been two mainstays for native plant aficionados.
Two new books are out that you may want to slip next to those: “California Native Gardening: A Month-by-Month Guide” by Helen Popper, and “Growing California Native Plants” by Marjorie G. Schmidt and Katherine L. Greenberg. If you grow a garden, appreciate native plants or just want to learn more about them, you need these books.
Popper is an associate professor of economics at Santa Clara University. Her “Month-by-Month Guide” is the first such guide to gardening with native plants. The casual reader may be surprised to find that the first of 13 well-written chapters begins with October, not January.
In recognizing that California’s true seasons start in October, Popper hearkens back to local writer Judy Van Der Veer’s poetic 1940 book, “November Grass.” In San Diego County, as October unfolds, we eagerly await the November rains and the change of seasons from summer. In many ways, our “spring” kicks in somewhere in the weeks that straddle mid-October/late November. The rebirth of our native plants begins then; they know that the cycle is not based on a year divided into 12 months.
Popper takes us through the months with tips and ideas on what to plant, when to fertilize (virtually never, except for natives in pots), when and how to harvest seeds for next year’s crop, and when to prune native plants. The beauty of her approach is that one can flip through the book at leisure and then focus on the month at hand.
Popper sees the relationship between native plants, wildlife, and humans as mutual. She tells us to let some plants go to seed, not only to provide next year’s crop but also to provide sustenance for birds, especially quail. A tip for June is to take cuttings from plants such as red elderberry, toyon, and big-leaf maple for planting in fall.
The tips and guidance are easy to understand, practical and focused on the season, as well as on what type of garden you may be tending. Whether you fancy a native herb garden or a formal garden, Popper has ideas and resources for you. She even explains how a serene Japanese garden can be devoted to native plants such as dogwood, pines and manzanita. As Popper notes in her introduction, gardening with native plants means to grow what belongs here, and to bring to life, or maybe even back to life, a landscape older than human occupation of the area.
When it came out in its first edition, “Growing California Native Plants” served as a guide to native plant gardeners, and in the intervening 30 years, it became a classic. Recently reprinted with more than 200 new color photos, this book is truly a sturdy scion from the original. Authors Schmidt and Greenberg clearly know their plants and how to share that knowledge with us. The late Schmidt was a dedicated gardener for decades and wrote for Fremontia, the journal of the California Native Plant Society. Greenberg is a designer/gardener who has been president of the Friends of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden and Pacific Horticulture Society. She and her editors have taken a wonderful book and made it timely and expansive.
In contrast to Popper’s month-by-month guide, “Growing California Native Plants” is a compendium of native plants with vivid descriptions, planting tips and vivid photos. The book begins with a description of California habitats, then moves into how to plant a native garden. One useful suggestion is to use organic mulch, such as leaf litter, to retain moisture and to present a more finished look in the garden.
The rest of the book is a thorough, well-presented guide to our native plants. When applicable, the authors provide a notation on cultivars to help you choose plants that best fit your environment. An excellent plant selection guide covers 18 criteria, including plants that are deer-resistant (manzanitas), good for containers (yerba buena), useful as hedges (lemonade berry), and hummingbird attractors (yarrow). When the photos and descriptions of plants are combined, they offer a field guide to the world within, and well beyond, our gardens.
Both books offer valuable ideas on fire-safe landscaping, a topic of particular interest to those of us surrounded by overgrown canyons and dry brush. The concept is to grow a garden that protects you, not endangers you. Tips include reducing fuel by cleaning out dead plants and limbs, and maybe even removing some highly flammable non-natives such as pepper trees, acacia and upright rosemary.
The books include extensive print bibliographies for those who want to read more, with the Popper book also providing Internet sources. Schmidt and Greenberg’s book lists retail sources of native plants and seeds, although it is skewed toward resources well beyond San Diego County. San Diego Botanic Garden (formerly Quail Botanical Gardens) in Encinitas is noted in both books as a place to go.
Both books should be considered essential to home gardeners seeking to “go native,” and would be comfortably at home on a coffee table or soiled potting bench. In fact, a second copy of “Growing California Native Plants” could nestle in your rucksack or day pack for those hikes into the native habitats that thrive nearby.
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