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Community Corner

Why You Should Plant a Native Garden

Hint: It's not because you save water.

We’re in for a long hot summer, which should come as no surprise, as we are always in for a long hot summer.  But I’ve decided to embrace the light and the heat and take a walk on the wild side.  I’m slowly divesting my yard of lawn, hydrangeas, and most other water-greedy plants -- one natural death at a time.  

Let the English cottage-style hedges and flowers grow where they belong. My garden is gradually filling in with Baby Blue Eyes, Blazing Stars, and Monkeyflowers.

I think California native plants have a very bad publicist, and that’s why I've given them the cold shoulder for so many years.  Their booster literature is either sanctimonious or scolding.  Arguments for natives rarely mention their beauty; mostly it’s all about our personal responsibility and environmental  ethics.  

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Water-wise,  ecological duty,  and yada, yada, yada. As if a California native garden were an austerity measure rather than a pleasure;  something only undertaken by those versed in self-denial –  ultra marathon runners, for example, and drinkers of wheat grass.

Oh those yarrows, not much to look at but they have a great personality.

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Another excuse for my slow rate of adoption may be that many Cal native gardens aren’t particularly well designed.  This is a personal opinion of course, but given the rangy, unstructured look of most of the plants, the garden requires not only disciplined layout and design,  but enough hardscape to give the eye direction, and resting places -- fences, river rock, walkways --  a frame and context to their wild ways. Otherwise,  the whole thing may look, at best, disorganized, and at worst, like a vacant lot, especially when the stalks and seed pods turn brown. 

A friend of mine decided to rethink her native planting scheme when some guy knocked on the door, seeking signatures for one petition or another, and said, “Oh, hello! I wasn’t sure anyone lived here.”

The Holy Grail for California native plant enthusiasts is the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wildflowers and Native Plants.  Payne moved from England to California at the turn of the last century, and became a  vocal, almost evangelical advocate for preserving and landscaping in California native fauna. Imagine that, a Brit who found more beauty in the golden poppy than the rose.

According to the Payne Foundation, our state has a greater diversity in native fauna than all the other states combined. Surely there’s a handful within the 6,000 species and sub species to catch anyone’s interest.

But the colors are what finally won me over. You know, brilliant colors suit the lush verdant greens of the tropical rainforest, but they look a little garish, even harsh, over here.  Like someone hiking up the hillsides in false eyelashes and stilettos. We’re better suited to the soft pastels -- both logically and aesthetically.

So by the end of summer, I expect to cart out a few more bodies, victims of past hopes and environmental denial.  Which will make room for some original inhabitants.  Plants with beauty and brains. And great personalities.

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