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ОглавлениеCHAPTER THREE Design Thoughts, Principles, and Guidelines
These things it must be, to be Californian. One gets a hint of it in the flower-decked glades in our mountain forests, in our canyons, many-colored with spring flowers, on our seashore slopes, carpets with purple and gold; but when it comes to making a garden, we all, like sheep, have gone within the lines, the old, old lines of other lands, and in so doing have gone astray. Alfred Robinson, 1913
Ways to Garden with Native Plants
The growing and nurturing of California native plants in California gardens takes place in several distinct contexts. Let us distinguish among them as a way to begin exploring their role in the back-yard restoration garden.
TRADITIONAL GARDENS
USING NATIVE PLANTS INCIDENTALLY
In this type of garden, native plants are mixed with exotic plants following the principles traditionally espoused by landscape architects. Focal points, axes, specimen plants, perennial borders, bedding plants, foundation plantings, ground covers, and screens are ways in which native plants are used in this kind of garden.
Xeriscaping, in which drought-tolerant native plants are mixed with drought-tolerant plants from places with Mediterranean climates similar to California's, is one example of this kind of gardening. The aesthetic is traditional, the goal low water use. Some native plants lend themselves admirably to this kind of gardening and will therefore be more readily available in “the trade”—that is, at non-specialty nurseries. Examples are many species and cultivars of manzanitas and ceanothus and perennials like penstemons, yarrows, monkeyflowers, heucheras, the coast strawberry, and dwarf coyote bush.
THE COLLECTOR'S GARDEN
Collectors may focus on one genus, such as salvias or penstemons, growing as many different species within that genus as possible. Or they may want to see how many different species from different parts of California they can grow. Design considerations are secondary to the interest inherent in each plant.
The gardener may be motivated to include plants that she has enjoyed on forays into the wild. Challenged by the difficulties inherent in bringing montane species to the lowlands, or desert species to the coast, she is triumphant when they succeed. Miniature back-yard botanic gardens satisfy the love of variety and provide horticultural challenges.
THE RESTORATIONIST
Restoration indicates the process whereby an attempt is made to return land that has been disturbed in a negative way by human activity to an earlier condition. Choosing a moment in time or a stage in natural succession is required. Natural models are selected and analyzed to provide information for the restorationist. Historical materials may be reviewed. Seeds and cuttings from nearby plants are gathered in order to preserve the integrity of local gene pools. Techniques have been developed to allow for large-scale plantings where plant survival must be relatively non-labor-intensive.
The field involves state and federal agencies, private citizens working in volunteer groups, academic research, nonprofit organizations like the Nature Conservancy, and professional environmental consulting firms. Some endeavors, such as the huge project restoring the Kissimee River in Florida, are intended to redress problems that already exist. Other projects are intended to mitigate for destruction consequent upon future development.
THE BACK-YARD RESTORATION GARDENER
In the back-yard restoration garden, the home owner looks for inspiration to the landscape he or she inhabits. He wants to make California look more like California and to fit his house snugly into that picture. Like the artist Gottardo Piazzoni, when asked if he has a religion, he might reply, “I think it is California.”
If he lives in an oak grove, he does not set out to create a redwood grove. He learns about the grasses, wildflowers, and shrubs that grow with oaks. If he lives in Riverside County or in San Diego, he may plant the endangered Engelman oak, Quercus engelmanii. If he lives in the foothills overlooking hot valleys, like the San Joaquin, he may plant a grove of blue oaks, Quercus douglasii. In mountainous areas away from the coast, he may plant black oaks, Quercus kelloggii, with their showy fall colors and sweet acorns. In the Santa Clara Valley, he may plant the largest oak of all, the valley oak,Quercus lobata, or the canyon oak, Quercus chrysolepis, or the coast live oak, Quercus agrifolia.
He finds lists of the hundreds of insects, birds, and mammals that are associated with oak trees and looks to their appearance as markers of his success with the project. He learns about the factors that are impeding the reproduction of oaks and seeks to eliminate those factors from his grove, striving for a mixed stand of babies, teenagers, young adults, the middleaged, and the venerable.
He lives with his oaks, creating ways to be among them on oak benches. He carefully harvests firewood from them. He considers different understory plants, from Ceanothus nipomensis on the Nipomo Mesa in SanLuis Obispo County to hazels on the north coast. He experiments with acorns, both growing trees from them and eating them. Perhaps he joins the California Oak Foundation and attends the symposia that focus on the ecology and preservation of native oaks. Oaks of California is a frequently consulted reference work.
The oaks enrich his life. They are a presence, leaned against, noticed, attended to, climbed, viewed from many angles. Nourishment is exchanged. ssThe family photo album may include snapshots of germinating acorns, young saplings, and thriving adults.
Or a southern California gardener might attempt to restore a “walnut woodland.” Southern California black walnut, Juglans californica var. californica, is classified as “very threatened” by the Nature Conservancy Heritage Program. These tall and graceful deciduous trees are fast-growing from seed, and a grove of them is a lovely place to be. They are often found near old California Indian village sites. The nuts, though small, are tasty and nutritious.
Design Principles
Let us explore some of the “principles” or notions behind this vision of the naturally designed garden.
USE NATURAL MODELS
Plant associations and combinations from nearby pristine areas are recreated in the back yard. The gardener seeks to gain as great an understanding as possible of the land both within and beyond the fence, an understanding that is continually applied to the planning and planting of the garden.
How does this notion apply to the urban gardener with a small fenced yard in the middle of a densely populated city? She searches out relatively pristine sections, perhaps a nearby nature preserve, the unused parts of a cemetery, or an old estate to use as models and as textbooks. In many cases, the native presence has been thoroughly erased from the fertile and buildable valley lands; in that case, she looks beyond the city streets to the encircling hills, Mount Shasta, the Santa Cruz Mountains, San Jacinto Mountain, or Mount Diablo.
REMOVE OR CONTROL NON-NATIVE PLANTS
This endeavor (thoroughly addressed in chapter 8) accounts for at least 50 percent of most garden projects we undertake. The particular weeds removed depend on the plant communities involved, and the methods employed depend on the weeds. Persistence is almost always required.
DESIGN WITH A LIMITED NUMBER OF SPECIES
Once we climbed to an alpine meadow. Masses of lupine and paintbrush lay before us, but little else. After a slight initial botanical disappointment (it had been a killing climb), I began to notice the multiplicity of effects possible with just these two species. There were random and equal scatterings of both species, there were pools of lupines set off by a few scarlet paintbrushes, there were glowing masses of deep scarlet paintbrush dotted with sky blue lupines. Paintbrush was set off by a gray-white granite boulder. Lupine fields drew you on toward the lake. Mixed in different proportions, growing in different situations, these two species produced a satisfying variety of results.
I began to realize that effective design statements can be made by a limited plant palette. Groves, forests, prairies, chaparral, all imply repetition of appropriate species, where arrangement and disposition create interest, where the particular situation of each plant gives that specimen its unique aspect, balanced with the sense of harmony that results from repetition.
Limiting the number of species can deepen appreciation of the plants already in place, their seasonal changes, their aspects from different viewpoints, their fragrances and textures. Robert Michael Pyle, butterfly expert and nature writer, talks in his book Wintergreen: Rambles in a Ravaged Land about his decision to move to the Willapa Hills in Washington State, a place where the number of butterfly species is mysteriously few. Colleagues and friends, puzzled by his choice, wondered why a butterfly lover would choose a place not known for its variety of butterfly species. Pyle replied that he is thus forced to know one species deeply, rather than being distracted by variety. The time and focus it takes to understand the flutterings and movements, the larval necessities, or the inexplicable arrivals and departures of any single species absorb a significant chunk of a lifetime. Depth of understanding is the goal and the reward of the back-yard restoration gardener.
Choosing a keynote plant, to be repeated throughout the garden, can give a garden “bones,” a structure that the eye can follow throughout. Ceanothus nipomensis, in San Luis Obispo County; black sage, Salvia mellifera, along the south coast; bigberry manzanita, Arctostaphylos glauca, in the Sierra foothills; toyon, Heteromeles arbutifolia, in Santa Clara County; and western rhododendron, Rhododendron macrophyllum, in a woodland garden in Mendocino, are evergreen plants that can hold the garden together through seasonal changes.
ARRANGE PLANTS WITH A LIGHT HAND
Natural models of spatial distribution and vegetation architecture can give us a sense of how we want to arrange plants in our garden. For example, the plant association known as “Douglas fir-mixed evergreen old growth forest” is two-tiered, the tall Douglas firs overtopping the lower-growing tan oaks and bays. The gardener working with that plant community can recreate and work with that spatial arrangement.
In some stands of coastal scrub, the coyote bushes are spaced far enough apart so that each expresses its own mounding shape. In other stands, plants are exuberantly crowded. In my coastal garden, I have used both schemes, providing an opportunity to draw tentative conclusions about the consequences of plant placement. To avoid some weed problems, “plant cramming,” leaving no openings for weedy species to fill, can be effective. Spaced according to their ultimate mature widths, plants can display the full beauty of their form, but more time will be spent weeding until they reach adult size.
The “mosaic” is a way of describing patches that visually knit together. Chaparral and scrub communities on faraway hillsides, with their close weavings of shrubs, can inspire the designer in the use of these species.
For an Ojai garden, take the sacred plant of the Chumash, white sage,Salvia apiana, as your keynote and form a grouping of its associates, ascertained from a local flora or from John Sawyer and Todd Keeler-Wolf's A Manual of California Vegetation, to make a cluster of plants that can be repeated, with variations, throughout the garden. This cluster might include California buckwheat, chamise, chaparral yucca, chaparral whitethorn, deer weed, and, of course, white sage, whose flowers are a powerful lure for bees and whose pungent leaves make a prized incense.
California fescue is a large grass that expresses its nature on many an oak-studded hillside, coastal bluff, or partly shaded road cut. On one striking bank, each plant is spaced so that a perfect staggered design is formed, and the eye takes pleasure in the arrangement in the wild, where it contrasts with less-ordered plant arrangements. The eye seeks repetition, while variation maintains interest. Give the eye a strong message through repetition, as nature does.
Interesting garden designs come from the play between symmetry and asymmetry. Take, for example, a neat threesome of wax myrtles at one end of the fence, one wax myrtle at the other end of the fence, and one wax myrtle somewhere off-center in between. Large garden spaces give opportunity for mass plantings—fifty California fescues rather than eight. The eye strongly registers the growth pattern of this grass, the fountainlike leaf blades, the upright flowering stalks, the silvery skirt of old leaves at the base. Plants that are subtle in shape and color can be given impact by numbers.
The ways plant communities intergrade, the ancient oaks giving way to the silvery shrub lupines, giving way to the tufted bunchgrasses, can be reproduced in the garden in such a fashion as to enhance different kinds of movement through the garden. Openings planted with low-growing forbs, grasses, and wildflowers are places for garden furniture and activities that require free movement. Close plantings of shrubs along pathways that require the garden walker to squeeze through or brush past create a moment of actual physical contact with the plants, feeling and smelling the soft leaf of the hazel or the stiff twigs of coffeeberry. It is pleasurable to be forced to brush past fragrant plants like ceanothus in bloom. Such moments enhance the dimension of immersion in local sensuality.
LET THE PLANTS DICTATE HOW THE DESIGN GROWS
In many landscaping situations, success is based on the notion of a complete plan, precisely and absolutely implemented. The designer's vision is enacted upon the land, and the plants are considered static design elements, whose ultimate heights, widths, textures, and colors can be previsioned and planned around. The operating assumption is that the designer knows his plant “materials” so well that they can be spaced precisely to the distance required. The designer will have failed if the plants do not perform as planned. Such implicit expectations lead to the use and reuse of the same tired but reliable non-native plant species.
Many gardeners expect plants to be predictable. Garden books that use charts perpetuate the notion that height, width, and growth rate are fixed quantities. A close examination of such charts often uncovers unhelpful information, such as height ranges defined as “two to six feet tall.” The chart format implies predictability. Horticulturists sometimes laugh among themselves about the unpredictability of plants, but there seems to be an unspoken pact to keep this aspect of horticultural reality from the gardening public at large.
I have seen oaks shoot up two feet a year in some situations, while in others they eke out a bare eight inches of new growth yearly. Many coastal shrubs, like Pacific wax myrtles and coffeeberries, initially grow slowly in our sandy soil, then take off after two to four years. Other gardeners see quicker growth, possibly because they have more clay in their soil. A chart that reflected such complications would be an unwieldy vehicle for making planting choices.
Some plants are more predictable than others; it is a horticultural goal to breed plants that provide uniform results. Natives have a reputation for being unpredictable. Some are and some are not, but this reputation is a major factor preventing more frequent use of natives. It provides part of the impetus to the search for garden selections of native plants that will behave reliably in different situations.
I have a friend, a sculptor, who said she both admired and felt sorry for landscape designers. “It's like making sculpture, only with unpredictable elements that change through time.” Although appreciative of her compassion, I feel, however, that the gardener's dynamic relationship with soil, insects, sun, and rain is to be rejoiced in, rather than regretted.
Seedlings may appear of their own accord. We look for signs of reproduction as an indication that processes have been set back in motion that may previously have been interrupted. Combinations of plants not hitherto thought of may then occur. To take advantage of this aspect of natural gardening, plant in sections, using a plant grouping that, if it thrives, can be repeated, with variations, throughout the garden. The back-yard gardener has the advantage of being able to take time, gathering information as it comes in, without meeting imposed schedules. Information from the first planting can be used in succeeding plantings, as may seedlings that have been generated by the first planting. When plants move around, we formulate questions. Why did you prefer it here to there? Pet theories are enjoyed and lightly held.
LUPINUS PROPINQUUS IN THE GARDEN One species that distinguishes the particular series of coastal scrub plants in my area is Lupinus propinquus, purple bush lupine. Leaves of a fine blue gray and showy, often fragrant flowers make this plant attractive, although short-lived, in the garden. I have seen stunningly beautiful stands Lupinus propinquus, with flowers varying from pale purple to pink to white to deep blue to dark purple. Sometimes the fragrance knocks you out; sometimes it is absent. It appears in disturbed areas, where it looks great for two to four years, then may succumb to root maggots. Often nearby seedlings will replace the defunct parent, hardly missing a beat.
I wanted to include this plant in my garden but wasn't sure how, as its unpredictability could create large gaps in the garden. I decided to make a bed where this lupine could freely grow, reseed, and decline, where it was not required as a long-term structural element. Treated as a long-lived (and very tall) annual, we can enjoy the surprising colors and youthful vigor of this species.
Quail eat the seeds, which are often laden with seed weevils, also bird food. Purple bush lupine is worth growing in the garden, once its temporal nature is accepted, as a kind of “quadrennial shrub. ”
At our open houses, I describe plantings that have not worked, and tell what was learned. I describe changes that took place without my consent but have formed the basis for future garden plans, as well as tentative conclusions about this place. Sometimes I am surprised at how many times I hear myself saying that something appeared somewhere, rather than that I intended it to be there. “People might think I have no garden ideas of my own,” I worry. But I sense that there is a place where the seam between my ideas and the ideas of the land gets blurry, a place where I choose to spend my gardening time.
With its tools, herbicides, and air-brushed photographs of perfect gardens, the mainstream thrust of gardening suggests the desirability of total control. I read that a famous garden is being restored to the design of a wellknown landscape architect of the early part of the century. The stated goal is strict adherence to this famous person's design. No random seedings will be allowed. This resolute stance implies that our ideas are better than nature's ideas. To maintain the sense that it is acceptable to be responsive to input from the land, it is helpful to be in conversation with others working in a similar way.
INCLUDE A RANGE OF PLANT-CARE STRATEGIES
One way that the restoration garden is distinguishable from the wild is by the amount of attention individual plants receive. Tricky-to-grow plants may do best closest to the back door, where the attention of the gardener rests on them regularly. A range of “attended-to-ness” can begin with those closest to the house, which are groomed, dead-headed, pruned, mulched, and weeded. Plants at the further reaches may be left more to their own devices. The hazel by the house is pruned to emphasize its horizontal branching structure; long vertical suckers sprouting from the base are removed and handed over to a basket maker. The hazels in the hedge are allowed to sucker and spread.
A continuum of regimens and maintenance strategies, from close attention to benign neglect, will allow the busy gardener to avoid the undesirable state of “overwhelmedness.” This state would deny the condition of pleasurable acceptance of natural occurrences desirable for the garden based on natural relationships. Where a more “gardened” look is desired, many native plants can thrive with garden conditions of watering and pruning. Remember that all newly transplanted plants need care till they are established. Many gardening failures with natives have resulted from the notion that native plants, because they grow in nature, can be planted out and ignored.
The area surrounding my house has developed into what I think of as a native plant cottage garden. Some effort is expended on achieving that well-known horticultural goal of “continuous bloom.” Plants here are more closely attended to than in the further reaches of the garden. A fence creates a private enclave here, the gray-water system spreads water throughout, and flowery species like Douglas iris, tansy-leaf phacelia, hummingbird sage, the white form of the California poppy, coast plantain, tufted poppy, Bolander's phacelia, columbine, coast wallflower, grindelia, and miner's lettuce run rampant. I have been surprised by their vigorous reseeding. This part of the garden demonstrates an intense floriferousness useful for impressing those who look only for bloom. Photographers tend to congregate here.
Surprising combinations appear, for which I am happy to take unjustified credit. In early spring, dark purple Douglas irises bloom, along with deep lemon yellow coastal poppies. After two months of splendid bloom, when the dark purple irises are forming fat green seed capsules, the pale lilac form of the Douglas iris begins its flowering time. Concurrently, deep yellow poppies form long narrow seed capsules just as the cream-colored form we call “Moonglow” makes its welcome appearance. I had no idea that these iris forms were on a different blooming schedule, and maybe next year they won't be.
I make one of those gardening decisions that call for a consistency of which I may not be capable. Early in the spring, I decree, intense colors will break the gloom of the rains; deep yellows, of meadow foam, goldfields, creek monkeyflowers, and coastal poppies, will stunningly contrast with the dark blues of desert bluebells and blue bedder penstemon, rich reds from paintbrush, columbine, and hummingbird sage. When summer comes, pastels, pale, fairy-book colors, will soften the sun's glare.
A pink penstemon intertwines with the pale lilac of Bolander's phacelia by a large ceramic water jar. Orange and yellow columbines are set off by the dark gray fence. Where a tree fell last year, bare soil is filling in with seedlings of yellow-eyed grass, always an opportunist in my garden. Red fescue, luxuriant and green for months, begins slowly to fade. After it goes to seed, we'll cut it to four inches above the ground. Or maybe not. Here and there it is flattened in the shape of a lying-down dog.
In September, the reddish orange form of the California poppy we call “Mahogany Red” contrasts with the dormant fescues, mirrors the fall colors of vine maple and creek dogwood. Seed was sown in four-inch pots in February; plants were put in the ground in August and bloomed to the end of October.
No plant community has been particularly thought of here, and forbs from moist creek and semi-arid grassland and oak savannah demonstrate their adaptability by thriving together. Blue bedder penstemon from dry hillsides is stunning with bleeding heart from the redwoods; I never would have thought that they would “go” together, and they certainly are from different ecosystems, but this particular year, with consistent and extended amounts of rain, the fluidity of plant requirements is amply demonstrated.
As late as August, I shall continue planting annuals and perennials from four-inch pots. There is a chaotic, flowery, surprising aspect to this part of the garden, a jumble from which patterns can be discerned, information gained, interesting surprises enjoyed.
An arching trellis separates this part of the garden from the wilder part. This trellis is planted with a French rose and a native clematis. Once I saw ten quail perched on the top of the arch, and another morning, an antlered buck paused under it, as though to savor its philosophical implications.
INCORPORATE NATIVE PLANTS
THAT ALREADY EXIST ON THE SITE
Coyote bush was almost the only native species to be found on our Scotch broom—infested field. I have learned the garden utility of coyote bush, its versatility, quirkiness, and unpredictability. One elegant specimen, pruned and mulched, is such a perfect rounded mound that many visitors don't recognize it. Other coyote bushes, responding to factors both known and unknown, are uneven in shape, idiosyncratic, as various as oaks. I enjoy working with coyote bush. As I prune, weed, and mulch around it, I ponder its ways.
RESPECT PLANTS AS A CONNECTION
TO THE EARLIER INHABITANTS OF THE LAND
Once the French broom had been removed from our garden, a plant called soaproot, Chlorogalum pomeridianum, showed itself. Mounds of large, straplike leaves with wavy edges and spidery white, moth-pollinated flowers that open toward the end of the day in airy sprays, this species is found in many parts of California, in many types of soil. Here they are so large and old that possibly they were present when the Coast Miwok paused here for lunch.
For the Miwok, soaproot served several purposes. The bulbs were roasted for food, boiled for glue to make baskets watertight and for other uses, and thrown into dammed-up creeks to stupefy fish. Neat brown brushes for whisking acorn meal out of grinding rocks are still made from the fibers surrounding the bulb, the brush handles glued together with glue from the bulb itself.
This plant tested our desire to let the garden have a say in designing itself. It appeared in a planting of local eriogonums, and its long straplike leaves did not “go” with the rounded felty leaves of the buckwheats. We decided to play with the design by repeating this unplanned plant combination in the border. It turned out to “work” in an entirely unanticipated fashion. By using the design technique of repetition, we were able to satisfy our gardening aesthetics as well as to preserve this reminder of an earlier human-plant relationship.
At the annual gathering of the California Indian Basketweavers Association, some kids were making traditional soaproot brushes from soaproot bulbs. One of the adults, in order not to waste the bulbs from which the fibers were gathered, offered to demonstrate how the bulbs are used as shampoo. We gathered around to watch as he brought up a lather in a bowl of water, then rubbed it through his hair. Besides the unusual experience of watching somebody wash their hair at a conference, this act contained a sense of an old relationship being maintained, and the respect that avoidance of waste implies.
MAKE A KINDER, GENTLER FENCE
In my town, the vistas were once unimpeded, and everyone could see the ocean from their house. Now redwood plank fences dot this marine terrace like mini-stockades. The dullness of the view and the thought of the redwood forests such fences devour make walking down a country lane flanked by solid wooden walls a grim experience.
See-through fencing, including various kinds of wire stock fencing, helps to maintain the visual connection to the larger garden beyond the fence. It is cheaper than wooden fences and easier on the environment. Fences with spaces between the boards use less wood and are both more visually appealing than solid fences and more resistant to wind damage. Wind encountering a solid barrier is forced up and then over it. Wind filtering through an airy fence or multi-layered hedge is diffused.
Our property is a medley of fences, some part of the original property, solid redwood fences and old-fashioned pickets, and some recreated with components of original fencing mixed with wire and other materials. One stormy year, a Monterey cypress came crashing down on a section of old fence. A local tree surgeon with a small mill took the tree away and brought it back in beautiful planks, for yet another kind of fence.
One section of fence was designed by a carpenter who also does beadwork. The combination of wire fencing strongly reinforced top and bottom by recycled redwood boards, sections of old fence moved from old boundary lines, and eucalyptus poles is strung like a beautiful necklace along the property line. It is varied and pleasing, a part of the play between randomness and order.
Somewhere between “Good fences make good neighbors” and “Something there is that doesn't love a wall” exists a kind of fence that reflects a desire to be part of the larger picture, with flexible and friendly boundaries. I want to see my neighbors, but not too much and not all the time. I want privacy but a friendly wind blowing through, a barrier that is permeable to quail, seeds of California oatgrass from the field across the street, and my sense of connection to my neighborhood.
STUDY THE NATURAL LANDSCAPE
When garden problems reach a dead end, ideas can come through personal exploration and reading. A red elderberry in a coastal garden became huge, thriving beyond what we had expected. Nothing seemed to do well near it. Reading that elderberry and sword fern hold the nests of Swainson's thrushes and Wilson's warblers near coastal creeks, we decided to use sword fern as the nearby underplanting, hoping to draw these lovely singers. On a hike, I saw that creek dogwood, a deciduous shrub comely at all times of the year, but particularly in the fall when its leaves turn shades of purple and orange, was thriving near elderberry. We planted that too.
PLAYING FAVORITES: DESIGN FOR THE WHOLE PICTURE
In an otherwise excellent book about butterfly gardening, one author advises against planting berry-bearing shrubs or trees. Such plantings will attract birds, he says, which might prey upon the caterpillars that turn into butterflies. Since his focus is on butterflies, he wants to enhance the environment for butterflies only, advising readers, “Avoid cultivating plants which have fruits or seeds that birds eat and which do not attract butterflies.”
Once I watched an enraptured mammalogist rush toward a badger hole, crushing a lone specimen of a rare Dichelostemma at which I was gazing. I know butterfly fanciers who welcome the devastating advance of certain invasive non-native plants because a favored butterfly may be able to use this plant. Favoring a particular species over others seems to be a human propensity.
I have a new neighbor next door. At the edge of her property is an extremely tall Monterey pine. Not long after she bought the place, we noticed a blue milk bottle crate high up in the tree. We gazed at it in wonderment, speculating as to how and why it was there. Turned out my neighbor had placed it there, hoping to attract owls.
Some of us “old-timers” laughed at this hopeful act. Owl requirements are more complicated than a box in a tree, and there didn't seem to be any owls in this coastal scrub habitat. But I was slightly worried. If it worked, which wasn't likely, how would it affect my beloved back-yard quail?Moving to a new neighborhood and introducing a predator right away seemed a thoughtless idea. For a number of reasons, I garden for quail: historical (they used to be here in flocks of thousands), aesthetic (is there a prettier bird than the California quail?), and emotional (such sweet, homeloving creatures). Counting back-yard quail is a way I have of reassuring myself, like counting rosary beads, that things are still somewhat okay.
It is hard for humans to avoid playing favorites. The vole specialist must have some innate fondness for the vole, the lily fancier for the lily. On the positive side, our natural tendency to divide and specialize, from which much knowledge has been gained, is a form of love. It may be that tribal divisions into clans, each of which had its own totem, was an example of this human proclivity for alliance.
Specialists studying family dynamics advise noninterference in most sibling quarrels. By planting in such a way as to replicate natural plant associations you can, like a good parent, avoid playing favorites. Provide habitat for basic needs, and let the kids fight it out.
WHAT BIRDS REALLY WANT
Much has been written about gardening to attract birds or butterflies. In seeking to draw birds to the garden, note that, in general, birds (unlike butterflies and some insects) require a certain habitat structure rather than a particular plant. Habitat structure supplies shelter, roosting, nesting, and food-finding opportunities. Some birds want open plains, some prefer deep woods, some want access to both. Some require proximity to a number of different plant communities, one for each life function. Some stay close to home all their lives; others travel great distances. What birds visit your garden depends on many factors, only some of which are under your control.
The Point Reyes Bird Observatory studies birds of the coastal scrub. I learn from them what birds I might expect with my plantings of coastal scrub plants. Since that particular plant association is being removed or overcome by non-native species in my neighborhood, my decision to use this plant community as a backbone for my garden includes the hope that wrentits, bushtits, and white-crowned sparrows, all denizens of the coastal scrub, will find what they need in my garden.
Birds need to eat all the time. Although 80 million or so is spent annually on bird feeders and birdseed in the United States, some experts recommend instead the careful planting of the right native plants to feed birds throughout the year. For instance, nesting birds, even ones that are usually seed-eaters, require the extra protein provided by insects. Spring flowers draw those insects. Long-flowering native plants, like the California buckeye with its two to three months of bloom, come at just the right time for the spring-nesting local and migratory birds. As usual, timing is critical.
Bird feeders and birdseed are big business, providing pleasure for many, and yet there are questions about their role in the health of our bird populations. Ray Peterson recommends being an inconsistent feeder, so that bird populations do not become totally dependent on being artificially fed. Others recommend consistency, so that birds can count on the food you provide. This controversy provides another opportunity to recognize uncertainty and honor complexity.
The composition of seed mixes sold as bird feed is one problem described by non-feeders. Birdseed that includes millet attracts the notorious cowbird, a dangerous pest in the West. The cowbird lays its eggs in the nests of other species, which find themselves raising aggressive nestlings that outcompete their own offspring. Some birdseed mixes include weedy species that can compound the California gardener's weeding tasks, although sterile seed is also often sold. The back-yard restoration garden, if large enough, might ideally include enough food-producing plants to make birdseed unnecessary. And foster the butterflies. As Barbara Deutsch, a Bay Area butterfly savant, says, “Without caterpillars, birds can neither form eggshells nor feed their young.”
LEARN TO LOVE WHERE YOU LIVE
A visitor described my garden setting as “having no natural features.”It is flat, there are no rocks, no ocean view, no valley view. Although less dramatic than steep or sloping land, and not my inborn concept of the most beautiful gardening situation, I have become increasingly appreciative of something very “comfortable” about gardens on flat land, where so many of our houses are built.
It's always a good idea to check out the preferences of the original inhabitants of a place. Many tribes chose village sites on flat land. With no erosion concerns, we can plant with impunity whenever we feel like it. And the soil is good. With no rocks, the digging is easy. Kids can learn to walk here; elders perambulate without the difficulties added by dramatic slopes.
I value the easy flow from prairie to perennial border to woodland, from volleyball court to woodpile to our plot of oak-shaded Indian lettuce. I have come to think of it as an encampment, where many activities, from badminton to campfires to food growing, can be encompassed.
DESIGN TIP While washing the dishes, I see quail fighting from my kitchen window. For some weeks, they seemed to be tranquilly double-dating; now the males are taking each other on. I can look this behavior up in A. Starker Leopold's book The California Quail, or I can try to figure it out myself while I wash the dishes. Or I can take afield trip with an ornithologist and hear what an expert has to say.
The kitchen window can be an important design component in the back-yard restoration garden. When possible, I recommend that clients carefully plan the view from this vantage point. It provides a regular observation post, where the mind, not otherwise occupied, can play the game of drawing conclusions about nature, as it carries on in the garden.
The back-yard restoration garden should be a comfortable place, providing many opportunities to be on the ground. Decks and patios, ways of staying off the ground, are minimized. We are interested in all ways to interact with our garden that bring us out into it. Hiding places, hammocks, shady places for hot days, places to soak up the sun on mild winter days, places for games, places for seed cleaning, even a small, body-sized section of perfect lawn, might all be accommodated by the back-yard restoration garden.
And places for sitting around the fire. A client wanted a fire pit to be the center of her garden, so we designed a circular garden with the pit at the center. Native grasses were planted around the pit, then a ring of coastal scrub plants, then at the perimeters a mix of willows, hazels, elderberries, and oaks, for privacy and enclosure. If you came upon such a place in the wild, you might think you'd died and gone to heaven, restored to an earlier California paradise.
LEARNING TO LOVE BROWN
Bart O'Brien of Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden says that the most important reason native plants are not accepted by the general public is the summer dormancy that many (although not all) require. The glowing green of spring, with its bright blossoms, is considered to be the desired state for a garden at all times.
There comes a time in the landscape of California, even along the coast, when nothing much is growing. Summer dormancy, in those plants that employ this drought-evading tactic, holds sway in the native garden. Wildflowers have gone to seed, grasses are semi-dormant, and some perennials have died down to their roots.
Slanting shadows of late summer and autumn afternoons, golden grasses, ripening acorns. A meditative, not lively, time. Newly arrived from the East Coast, I used to be impatient for the quickening of the rains. By November, I might have had enough sunny days in the sometimes worrisome “waiting for rain” times. Depending on the year, this time might last into January. I often found myself apologizing to visitors for the unspectacular state of my garden.
A century ago, Clarence King called summer dormancy “a fascinating repose…wealthy in yellows and russets and browns.” I measure my true life as a Californian from the time that I stopped apologizing for a garden exquisite in its light and shadow, its still endurance. Reveling in shades of gold, blonde, palomino, gray, and muted greens, it seldom occurs to me to do so now.
A deepening into the season was required, a renewed acceptance of the solemn stillness of golden days, when grasses, perennials, and wildflowers have gone to seed, and shrub and tree seeds are still not ripe. I slide at this time into a kind of suspension, held in that same sensation of stored quiescent power I used to get in a wintry woods back east and I now get from handling seeds. One may fall so entirely into this state of somnolent stillness that the onset of rain brings a sense of disruption rather than of relief. For just a moment, though, before the rains sweep it all away. Pounding or light, cold or warm, the sweet rains of California. How could anybody say there are no seasons here?
Listening to rain—the winter hobby of Californians.
