How I Started a California Native Landscape

But first,

In November, I hope voters across the nation will take the opportunity to do some serious weeding out of every tough-rooted, invasive, resource-sucking politician on either side of the political aisle who looked the other way as our financial system was rigged for collapse.

(That is the end of my rant for today, as I’m sure our readers can find similar rhetoric just about anywhere on the web. And now for the non sequitor, yet matching metaphor, transition:)

In the meantime, literally pulling out weeds can be a stress reliever, and October is an ideal month for planting a California native garden. I speak from experience: last year I did some landscaping myself, then I had to call in help when the garden was overwhelmed with weeds.

I began with a dead lawn that hadn’t been maintained in years. I let that die during spring and summer, and read up on ways to clear out weeds. One method I didn’t try, and I’m curious if others have used successfully, is heat sterilizing the soil by laying clear plastic over wet dirt during the hottest weeks of the summer. High temperatures of 100+ degrees underneath the plastic are supposed to kill weed seeds in the soil down as far as 12 inches. I looked around for large rolls of plastic, tried to figure out how this would look and if it would remain in place in a front yard for 2-3 weeks, and eventually decided against it.

Instead, I hired a crew to clear out and rototill the soil, which set me up for problems later. I planted small native shrubs in October, and gave them regular water to help them get established. I stopped watering as winter rains soaked the soil. Unfortunately, the rain helped dormant weed seeds sprout, and by spring my carefully planted shrubs were overwhelmed by a 2-3 ft. high jungle of weeds flourishing in rototilled, well-watered soil. It took weeks of additional weeding, and installation of heavy-duty weed cloth topped with mulch, to clear the mess.

The native plants are now filling in and flourishing. I have an attractive, meadow-like garden that doesn’t require regular mowing and uses very little water. Weeds continue to sprout, though, wherever they find an opening (usually near the base of the shrubs, which can’t be covered with weedcloth, or on the edges of the parkway next to the sidewalk).

I’ll share how I picked plants for the garden and other lessons I’ve learned in future posts. For readers who have been waiting to start a California native garden, the Theodore Payne Foundation native plant nursery in Shadow Hills is holding its annual fall sale this weekend, October 10-11, for members and nonmembers.

The foundation’s website is a great resource. Here are a few others: my back 40 (feet) covers Pacific Horticulture, the Sustainable Gardening blog covers a wider geographic area and more general sustainability issues, Garden Wise Guy discusses the pros and cons of fake lawns in this post from his Santa Barbara blog, and Garden Rant discusses replacing lawns with native plants in the San Francisco area.

Thank you to Kida Yasuo, who took this post’s photo of the California native wildflower Clarkia Unguiculata. These started sprouting in my garden this spring, and many are still standing and blooming.