Native Plant Guides

What to plant?  In days gone by, I daydreamed with the Sunset Western Garden Book in hand. Many editions later, it no longer meets my needs.

In addition to setting the standard for California gardens in the last century, Sunset defined "midcentury modern." I thought it was just "new." 

Guides in book form are available for California natives, but the Web may be your easiest source. Here are some of my favorite web guides.

Tree of Life Nursery has created a 48-page PDF Plant Catalog with invaluable information like water and sun requirements, height and width (we'll take that with a grain of salt), frost hardiness, native habitat, bloom color and time, and more.  This is a great reality check for any plant list you acquire elsewhere.  I printed it out and brought it with me to nurseries to rein in my impulse purchases. TOLN's  "Plant Information" section contains lots of helpful short articles too.

The cover of TOLN's huge PDF Plant Catalog. The garden has grown since this painting was made.   

Las Pilitas Nursery has a wealth of information.  Search their website for a particular plant entry, and for articles on native gardens,  including garden design, and some of the best information available on gardening with zero supplemental water.

A little rock garden at Las Pilitas.  Photo courtesy of the nursery.

San Marcos Growers is the best web source I know for cultivar history. Who named it? Is it a selection from a certain region?  Or a hybrid? They also have helpful growing tips (usually advising too much water.) 

How about consulting your local nursery?  Well.  If it specializes in native plants, have at it. Botanical Garden nursery staff will admit what they don't know.  At a general purpose nursery, you may get an earful but your odds of getting useful information are very slim. (Roger's Gardens is an exception to this rule.)

If you hang out at California Native Plant Society events you can ask people with a wealth of experience like Ron Vanderhoff, who is also General Manager at Roger's Gardens. (Photo from Roger's Gardens website.)

Water districts and local governments have websites listing drought-tolerant or "California friendly" plants.  While some of these guides are useful, they seldom have detailed information on more than a half dozen natives. And that's a shame. Be Water Wise is one of the best of this class.

My neighbor's garden is not native, but it is low water. I am not a purist.

Want to know which plant species are native to your particular locality?  Calscape.cnps.org will tell you, to within ten miles or less, including elevation.  Calscape is the brainchild of Dennis Mudd, whose north San Diego County hillside garden has evolved to feature local natives that receive no supplemental water.  Dennis wants folks to succeed at native gardening, and in his experience plants native locally stand a better chance of thriving than imports from across the state.  Makes sense! But... is it big or small? Evergreen or ephemeral? Sand or clay loving? Streamside, or chaparral, or oak forest? A garden stalwart, or a homely little sprout only a botanist could love? More information is required.

Sit back and enjoy Dennis's unwatered native garden.  Acreage helps.

I'm not a geographical purist, but I do like to know where and how a plant grows wild.  So I check out Calflora.  I like plants that have very wide ranges– I figure they have a better chance of surviving wherever they end up. Calflora also shows photos of plants in the wild contributed by users (quality varies.)  If you click on one photo, you'll usually pull up a bunch more.  I love to browse all the different species of a beloved genus like Dudleya. And learn to respect botanists for telling them apart. If the Latin name you search shows no occurrences on the map, you have found an obsolete name.  Check the top right for the current name and click on that.

Calflora illustrates that California anemone (Carpenteria californica) grows naturally only on one slope in the Sierra foothills.  The other two blue dots?  Planted, or mistaken identity. 

 Search tip: For most of these websites, I do a Google search of the plant name and the website name.  One of the first couple Google results will take me to the right page in one hop.  

The charming little flowers of succulent Dudleya pulverulenta.  The Baja species brittoni has yellow flowers; otherwise I can't tell them apart. (I searched on Google images...because sadly Calflora doesn't include Baja.)

If you are a geek like me, you can't have too much data. So which native plant websites ( or print references) do you like?  Do tell, in the comments section below.  (You can post as 'Anonymous' if you don't want to hassle about login, or you can email me.) 

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