The standing joke about Southern California is that it has no seasons. Gardeners know better. We have seasons, just not in the same order as the rest of the country.
Here, winter is the sweetest season. Take last Sunday. The skyline was wind-swept, air rain-washed, the night chilly, day balmy. For the next three months, the California climate is not just the kindest to us, but also to the plants that evolved here. So, if you've been flirting with the idea of putting in a Western redbud, or California fuchsia, now is the time to do it.
If you're not, hopefully some eco-scold hasn't put you off the idea. Gardeners turn to natives for any number of reasons: yes, on occasion to feel damnably smug, but also to avoid laying in sprinklers, or to rip the rickety expensive things out. Others want to entice butterflies and birds. Nothing lures swallowtails and hummingbirds like California lilac or manzanita. For yet others, it is the romance of the chaparral, the scents of sage and artemisia.
My own vice is music. Imported plants are no good to tree crickets, which is why night-song so often vanishes in the path of suburbs.
My father loved their twilight chorusing and would sit listening to it for hours on end. It took some doing to track down a cricket-ologist in Palo Alto to explain that our local crickets like to live in oaks. After my father died last year, there was no question what would be planted in his name. Last weekend, I was the one in line at the Theodore Payne Foundation with an Engelmann oak sapling in my wagon.
Whatever sets a gardener on the path to using natives, once you get started, these plants take almost no care. They strip the work out of gardening. The hardest part is getting started. Finding the plants in their home state may be the most difficult. Though there are a couple of honorable exceptions, such as Roger's Gardens in Orange County and the Marina del Rey Garden Center, few mainstream outlets stock natives. Rather, they are geared to the usual lawn, hedge, flowering tree combos sold in much the same formation from Florida to Alaska.
So the native gardener must improvise. Window-shopping is best done hill-walking. That's my kind of mall. For more concentrated collections replete with plant tags, grab a pen, notebook and head for Descanso Gardens, Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden or Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.
On my first trip to Descanso, I came away taken by the cinnamon-colored bark and graceful turns of manzanita boughs. I had to have one even before my eye reached the subtle grey-green foliage and thick sprays of tiny, bell-shaped pink flowers. But all I knew was that I wanted "a manzanita."
The choice was far from made. It emerged that there were more species and cultivars of manzanitas than flavors of Baskin-Robbins ice creams. At the Theodore Payne Foundation, the variety 'John Dourley' looked perfect for a low hedge. But the cultivar 'Howard McMinn' at Rancho Santa Ana was an aspiring tree. I needed a book. So, I've since learned, does every serious gardener in Los Angeles.
Next year, a long-awaited volume by the horticulture directors of Rancho Santa Ana and Santa Barbara botanic gardens and the founder of Native Sons nursery will finally be published. In the meantime, the best resources are the websites of the three leading native plant nurseries: Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley, Matilija Nursery in Moorpark and Las Pilitas in Escondido. All are good. The one put together by the two scientists who founded Las Pilitas is so good, it gets more than a million and half hits every year.
"People choose plants on our website and buy elsewhere," says author and nursery owner Burt Wilson. "We don't mind."
Once you get an idea of what plants you want, decide where you want to put them, and prepare the bed. Buying a plant first then daring yourself to dig a bed is like buying a dress convinced you'll diet your way into it. Early rain this year means the soil is already damp and pliable. My own tool of choice in removing lawn or conditioning soil where concrete has been removed is a pick. Use the sharp nose to trace the line border, the blunt end to break up the sod. Then a slender-nosed "lady shovel" is the best choice to loosen compacted soil beneath and pick out roots and rubble.
Keep in mind that what you uncover will not be native conditions but building-site hardpan. Builders will have stripped the top soil then steam-rollered what remained to level the lot. The soil should probably be amended.
