Discovering Nature (Dori's Garden)

Welcome to Dori's garden in Huntington Beach.  Dori's advice to gardeners is:  "Go native.  You have a wide palette to choose from, and you get to discover all the birds and insects that rely on natives."

The backyard, with swale on the left, riparian (dampish) plants front, and hardly-watered chaparral center.

In a sea of 1960's tract homes, Dori's yard stands out, in a good way.  I remember seeing it for the first time two years ago.  The front was only a little over a year old at that time, but it was my favorite CNPS Tour garden (of the ones I saw.)

From the parking strip right up to the neighbor's monumental junipers, Dori's natives have curb appeal.

Dori got help from Dan Songster, curator of Golden West College California Native Garden, in choosing plants, designing swales to catch rain from the roof (and add texture to the garden), and wrangling a wall of mature junipers.

Gravelly swale (depression to catch rainwater) and artful pruning of tree-sized junipers evoke a streambed at the forest's edge.

She made a plan at leisure, then  installed the garden very quickly.  Home delivery from Tree of Life Nursery makes sense when you order 100 pots!  (And when most of them are one-gallon-size, that may not be as expensive as you think.)  She got 11 cubic yards (!) of mulch delivered as well (basic coarse "forest floor" stuff from Aguinagua in Irvine) and with the help of 9 or 10 of her friends from the GW College garden over a weekend, instant native garden!  

Dori (center) with gardening friends Jan (left, who helped plant her garden) and Merry (right) at Golden West College's native garden.

Dori relied heavily on annual wildflowers at first.  This is a great approach for a new garden; the bare spots between longer-lived plants will be a riot of color in the spring.  Those wildflowers quickly migrated and self-selected: not a great approach for the gardener into order and control. Oh, and did I mention the Bermuda Grass?  She did not kill all of it initially.  Mistake. She is getting really tired of weeding it out of her garden.  The dichondra?  Blends right in.  There are advantages to not making your garden too orderly.

Elegant randomness: Tall Elegant Clarkia (Clarkia unguiculata) has migrated across the front yard.

The garden accomplishes unity in diversity.  Dori is a collector.  I'm guessing she might have a hundred different plants in her yard. Yet a few large drifts, letting shrubs grow to size, and lots of harmonious combinations produce a unified effect instead of the collector's usual hodgepodge.

When you hang around other hobby gardeners all the time, how can you say no to a free cutting of this, and a pot of rare special that?  But Dori goes beyond serendipitous collecting. Witness this rare north coast Miners Lettuce from native seed guru Judith Lowry Larner.

Dori hand waters her garden.  Large sections of it receive no supplemental water other than a quick "dusting off" with the hose every other week, despite the drought.  Deep mulch and some fog drip helps.

We are all envious of Dori's Wooly Blue Curls, a plant that is notoriously sensitive to summer water.

Dori is not much of a trimmer.  I suspect that if she had not just prepared for the OCCNPS garden tour, I would have done some bushwhacking to see her back yard.  

St. Catherine's Lace (Eriogonum giganteum), the largest buckwheat, needs a lot of space, not trimming. This glorious mound (of two plants) is just starting to bloom. Yes, those are all buds.

Every corner has something to see.  Dori's vegetable bed is hiding by the backyard fence.  She loves to walk through the chocolate mint to release its scent.  

This whimsical henge was given to Dori by artist neighbor Don Brashear.  The ceramic "stones" are only about 8 inches tall.

Dori is a "late blooming" gardener, despite having farmers for grandparents and a dad who worked as a gardener and nurseryman (or maybe because of that!)  She had a boring SoCal lawn for over twenty years.  One day as she sat in her backyard, a hummingbird staged a Blue Angels show for her, dive-bombing four times from great heights.  On that day she woke up to the natural wonders in her own backyard.  Wanting to explore this new world, she discovered the GWC Garden in 2009.  She gradually transitioned her backyard to natives before her front-yard blitz.  And she takes hikes with OCCNPS.

Just another well-tended corner of the garden 

Dori invites to you check out her front garden on Oak Tree Circle in Huntington Beach, or you can talk to her many Tuesday or Thursday mornings as she helps out at the Golden West Garden a few blocks away.

Dori has Dudleyas, of course.  They grow particularly well along her water-conserving gravel swales.  In this case, the edging material is "urbanite", recycled concrete. Dudleya edulis is center.

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