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DESIGN WITH NATIVES
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A Wildflower Walk

4/22/2022

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In recognition of Earth Day, I'm inviting you to take a short self-guided wildflower walk around my University Heights neighborhood.  

This is a lightly-edited version of my "Nature in the Neighborhood" column for the May issue of the University Heights newsletter.  Wildflowers are ephemeral wonders, and the flowers have already changed a bit since I wrote the article, so this is a good reason to share this a bit early. 
With so much to lament about the state of the Earth, here's a little bit of joy.   
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Wildflowers – native plants that grow from seeds or bulbs and flower, seed, and die (or die back) in one year are getting harder to find.  A century ago, wildflower fields could still be found near Pasadena; by the 1940s, the Inland Empire was the place, and since the 1970s it takes a trip to the desert.  So, seeing wildflowers in our own neighborhood is a treat.  Let’s take a tour to see these remnants of California’s past.

​Please look don’t’ pick, so others can enjoy and they can reproduce.  



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 Start your tour with a native garden at 4510 Campus Blvd, just north of Monroe.  
There's a lot going on here, but look for a native bulb, Wild Hyacinth (Dichelostemma capitatum), with clusters of light purple flowers at the tip of long, narrow stems looming above the other plants. 


Next head over to another great native garden, at 4480 Cleveland Ave.  Two more native bulbs are growing in the yard.  Wild Onion (Allium haemochiton) has balls of tiny white flowers and erect linear leaves (they do taste like onion). Blue-Eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium bellum) has purple flowers with a yellow center. It’s not actually a grass, but a member of the Iris family.  

Two native bulbs are growing in the yard.  Wild Onion (Allium haemochiton) has balls of tiny white flowers and erect linear leaves (they do taste like onion). Blue-Eyed Grass has purple flowers with a yellow center. It’s not actually a grass, but a member of the Iris family.  Finally, look for the deep blue flowers of Grand Phacelia (Phacelia grandiflora), the showiest of this diverse genus of small shrubs and wildflowers.   


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Wild Onion and Goldfields
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Tidy Tips and Blue-eyed Grass
Heading over to the corner of Meade and Cleveland (passing lots of native monkey flowers on the way), you’ll find a semi-wild patch of natives on the northwest corner.  Look for the Wild Hyacinths springing up here.
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Continuing on the way to The Point you’ll pass a bed with California Poppies (Eschscholtzia californica), the ubiquitous (but delightful) exception to the rule about wildflowers being scarce.  As you walk in the Open Space Park, you’ll see lots of yellow and orange flowers – these are all invasive weeds, and why wildflowers are in decline. Rancher’s Fireweed (Amsinckia menziesii) is the exception – it is indeed weedy, but it’s a native.  It’s related to the Phacelias: both have flowers that emerge as a “fiddlehead” unrolls. Look for it around the Olive in the center. 
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Rancher's Fireweed
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Nutall's Snapdragon
End your tour by stepping into the wild just beyond the fence on the trail.  Take the path left and continue about 20 feet.  To your left, look for the delicate purple flowers of Nuttall’s Snapdragon (Antirhinnum nuttallianum).  The crust of mosses and lichens indicate ground that hasn’t been disturbed for a while – let’s keep it that way.  To your right, you may see more Wild Hyacinth (Dichelostemma capitatum). 

Native wildflowers are a wonderful addition to any drought-tolerant garden.  Inevitably, most commercial wildflower mixes are going to contain a mix of quick-germinating common species from different habitat types. You'll probably get something to come up, but these are generally lowest-common denominator species.  Tree of Life Nursery in Orange County (https://californianativeplants.com/blog/wildflowers-seed-mixes/) offers wildflower mixes for species habitats or uses, and this is a big improvement. 

I include wildflowers in some of my landscape designs, particularly for areas without a bark mulch. In addition to being able to specify a particular wildflower seed, I've created my own custom seed mixes featuring plants with similar flower colors that geminate at different times in the spring and summer.  This lets me create specific effects in a garden that can complement the pattern of the native shrubs. 

It may not match the thrill of finding a delicate wildflower peeking out from an open spot during a hike in the local hills, but bringing wildflowers into your personal landscape may be the next best thing.  
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Monarchs Rule!

3/19/2022

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​Monarch Butterflies are amazing and in trouble.  People who are trying to help them can actually do more harm than good if they’re not careful.  Let's take a closer look at the weird, wonderful world of Monarch Butterflies. 
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​The Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus) is a truly wonderful creature, famously migrating thousands of miles to the mountains of Michoacan, Mexico where they spend the winter and breed. Their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren (sometimes even to the 5th generation) work their way back north to their ancestral summer homes, following the sun as a compass, using an internal (Circadian) clock in their antennae(!) to adjust for the daily movement of the sun across the sky.  All this with a brain the size of a pinhead!

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 They take it relatively easy on the return trip, timing their journeys so they can lay eggs on emerging milkweed that the caterpillars then feed on as the spring rolls northward.  This in itself is amazing, because Monarchs have evolved to feed on otherwise toxic plants (the “milk” in milkweed is a cardiac glycoside), which makes the juicy caterpillars thoroughly disgusting to any bird that dares to take a bite.
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Monarchs west of the Rockies prefer to spend the winter on the California coast, where they can make direct flights, rather than the multi-generation roundtrip to Mexico. But they’re no less amazing and in just as much danger.



Overall, Monarch populations are down about 80% from where they were in the 1980s, mostly due to changes in farming, but also from habitat loss and (coming up fast) climate change.  Farmers used to leave hedgerows on the edge of their fields (a remnant of the response to the 1930s Dust Bowl) that provided habitat for weeds, including milkweed.  These have largely been eliminated to maximize production and profit. ​
​Farmers also started using a new type of pesticide called neonicitinoids, which are actually less harmful to the environment than the carbamates and organophosphates that they replaced (note: all of these are insecticides, not herbicides, and none are the much-maligned Roundup).  These “neonics” are mostly sprayed on the seeds before planting, but they’re powerful enough that when an insect feeds on a leaf, or a bee eats pollen, their nervous system gets as screwed up as if they just ate a pack of cigarettes – they stop eating or die.  
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​You’ve probably never a neonic pesticide in your garden, but you likely have used one if you ever needed to get rid of fleas on your dog (luckily, bees and butterflies aren’t landing on Fido).  ​
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​Western Monarchs have declined as much as their brethren. The first  count by the Xerces Society volunteers  (https://xerces.org/monarchs)  in 1997 found 1¼ million butterflies; this was likely already significantly down from previous decades.  In 2020, fewer than 2,000 western Monarchs were spotted; they’ve bounced back to nearly 250,000 this winter, but the trend is bleak. 

​The huge masses of Monarchs that cover trees are found mostly between Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara, but ten thousand used to hang out at UCSD, with thousands more at sites from Carlsbad to La Jolla, and even hundreds in Balboa Park.  This winter, none of these places counted in the double digits, except for Torrey Pines (91), and strangely, a tomato field at Camp Pendleton, with a thousand.  

​The #1 thing you can do to help the Monarch butterfly is to eat (and wear) organic, thus reducing the acreage of agriculture fields using neonics and providing more safe places for the caterpillars to feed.  But most of us want to do something more direct, where we might actually see the butterflies we’ve saved flying around our yard.  


So head right over to your local garden supply store, buy some milkweed plants, and wait for the Monarchs to show up, right?  It’s a bit more complicated. 
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Most nurseries carry big, beautiful milkweeds that stay green year-round and have nice big bunches of flowers that stay on for a long time.  These are not native plants – our native milkweeds naturally die back during the summer, a response to naturally dry conditions.  These tropical milkweeds stay edible year-round, confusing the butterflies (pinhead-size brains, remember?) to breed instead of migrating to their roosting sites on the coast. 

​Worse yet, Monarchs can pick up a tiny parasite that they deposit on the leaves of the milkweed as they feed.  With natives, this isn’t a problem, because the plants die back and the life cycle of the parasite is interrupted. But with tropical milkweed, the parasites just continue to build up and can become toxic to the feeding caterpillars.  
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If you want to help Monarchs, you should only buy and plant natives --  the 14 native California milkweeds available in the trade are all drought-deciduous and shouldn’t mess up the Monarchs, but I only recommend milkweed species native to San Diego County -- Narrow Leaf (A. fascicularis), Woollypod (A. eriocarpa), California (A. californica), Desert (A. erosa), or Skeleton (A. subulata).  Of these, only the first two are truly native to coastal San Diego County. 

​In addition to feeding the caterpillars, you’ll want the adults to sip nectar in your garden – that’s the point isn’t it?  So you’ll want plants with flowers the adults like to visit, particularly those that bloom in the fall and winter.  This is where I come in. I always design landscapes to provide a year-round display for aesthetic reasons, but when creating habitat for specifically for Monarchs I’m careful to include plants that flower in the critical fall and winter months.  In every landscape, I follow ecological principles to create landscapes that are appropriate to the site conditions and follow design principles to create a space that you will enjoy.   

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Save Lake Powell!

2/15/2022

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​The American Southwest (that’s us!) is in the midst of the worst drought in 1200 years, according to climate scientists (see link at bottom). 

We’re already 120 years into a mega-drought and there’s no end in sight.  Lack of rainfall accounts only for about 60% of the effect; the rest is due to hotter temperatures that suck more water out of plants (transpiration) and soil (evaporation).   
 
Our current conditions are roughly on par with what the indigenous Puebloan (aka Anasazi) people would have been experiencing around 900 AD. 

​They had settled the area about 300 years prior and developed a sophisticated culture (compared to Dark Ages Europe) with a rich ceremonial/ religious tradition and extensive trading networks.  They built the world's largest apartment building  -- a record that held until 1882.  

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If you’ve been to Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado, you've enjoyed the serene beauty of those cliff dwellings perched below the rim of the canyon.  

You may also have learned that they moved from their living mesa-top pit houses to the cliff dwellings in the canyons as they exhausted their resources and were forced to cultivate where their dwellings (and garbage dumps) had been.  

When I visited Mesa Verde this summer, I was also struck by the striking vistas I saw on the mesa tops: acres of skeletons of burnt pinyon pines and junipers from a fire that had torn through the area a few years ago.   
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More striking than Mesa Verde is Chaco Canyon, the apparent ceremonial center of the Puebloan culture and hub of a trading network that extended from today’s Los Angeles to Mexico City.  Jared Diamond, in Collapse, discussed the viscous cycle of deforestation, drops in groundwater levels, flash floods, deepening arroyos, and crop failures that brought about their gradual, but inexorable decline. 
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​More striking than Mesa Verde is Chaco Canyon, the apparent ceremonial center of the Puebloan culture and the hub of a trading network that extended from today’s Los Angeles to Mexico City.
Jared Diamond, in Collapse, discusses the vicious cycle of deforestation, dropping groundwater levels, flash floods, deepening arroyos, and crop failures that brought about their gradual, but inexorable decline.

​Collapse is the story of thriving civilizations that fail to adapt to their conditions and die.  Diamond elucidates many patterns of collapse, but the basic story is that people build up a society during environmentally benign times, then fail to adapt as conditions worsen.  They act as if the carrying capacity hasn’t changed and refuse to give up practices that are no longer practical.   
“Lake” Powell and “Lake” Mead, built to provide hydropower and distribute water to a booming Southwest, now face record drops in water levels, so much that there's discussion about abandoning one to keep the other functioning.  

The Metropolitan Water District is offering a billion dollars in rebates for southern Californians to reduce their water use. Since lawns consumes up to half your water bill, the largest incentives are for converting water-gulping landscapes to something more sustainable.  In San Diego this means $3 per square foot for going from grass to natives.  


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​As I ask homeowners whether they’ve considered ditching their lawns for something that will save them money, create beauty, support wildlife, and reduce our dependence on imported water, I’m dismayed at how often the answer is simply “I like my lawn.”  

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It apparently took about 400 years for people to completely abandon Chaco Canyon.  It must have been like the proverbial lobster in the slowly heating pot.  Of course, they weren’t dealing with global warming that’s turned the burner up to High.  In the meantime, I'd love to help you to respond to our changing climate, and create something beautiful at the same time.  

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/climate/western-drought-megadrought.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWka3DPDm8eiO8RAo2J50qKeqd4e9Yp2XGXXthcP78zAfl_weZTJUtwRAm05JuYnZBPawMElbWOZEJklZTcQeJ_tjbwcmiyLOo4lOfg70qPYWj1WPDdg2kmcQo0vZo1cQ610SBZw6bHFbEk2dR1zu5hUs4hPUoIZCWOvfHsCBpsap7RPlyHtF5AC6wOUirTnNWc97sAbA1VbFvFR3h76mw4g8hObJJVZO2sak59J7etxOkZGWdqL4y2BpcuR4aylr1isrHFqxPk29M4Gm003PqgpMwP32oXmzc-&smid=em-share


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How Friendly?

11/16/2021

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​In talking with people about native plant landscaping, I often encounter folks who assume one or another drought-tolerant species must be a native plant. They’re surprised when I tell them that the plant comes from Australia or South Africa (for example). It’s a common mistake to equate drought-tolerant or “California friendly” plants with California natives*, but they’re not the same and can have very different impacts beyond the garden. 
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Kangaroo Paw is a drought-tolerant native -- of Australia.
I usually won’t include drought-tolerant non-natives in your design unless they’re already established in your landscape. I’ll say something like “I haven’t studied that species, so I don’t know how it fits in with the other natives I’d use in the design.” I select plants based on having compatible light, water, drainage, and flowering periods, as well as how they work together aesthetically, and I lack the same level of expertise with other species. But I could have devoted some attention to get to know these plants’ niches in the landscape, yet I haven’t. That’s because I fear that many so-called “California friendly” plants might turn out to be quite unfriendly to our natural environment in the long run.
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To understand my thinking, you need to know that I’ve spent a couple decades doing botanical surveys in natural areas around southern California and I’m familiar with the devastating effects invasive species have on native plants and wildlife. Many species that are now choking out natural habitats were deliberately introduced for some reason – giant reed was planted for erosion control, eucalyptus were introduced for railroad ties – without considering their long-term effects. 
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Giant reed and tamarisk replace native willow forest.  
These invasive species typically aren’t a problem for a few decades then the population just seems to take off, with higher densities where they’re already established and rapid spread into new areas. Suddenly, the species is everywhere and can only be controlled with massive, expensive effort (which doesn’t materialize on underfunded public lands). How does this happen? 

​​When non-native plants are introduced into a new environment the insects and microbes that feed on them are not. This gives the novel species a competitive advantage over their native neighbors, which only grows with each new generation. Seedlings that spend less energy on defenses against their herbivores and parasites (who are no longer in the picture) can devote more energy to growth and seed production. Over several generations they lose more and more of these metabolically expensive defense mechanisms and use the energy to grow and spread faster. Then they escape the garden and we realize that we have a problem.  
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Pampas grass, popular in the garden, also thrives in meadows and near streams.  
In southern California, the worst habitat degradation so far has been in riparian (stream side) areas, where water-loving ornamentals, such as Pampas grass and Mexican fan palm have displaced native trees, shrubs, and vines.  Intact coastal sage scrub and chaparral have fared better so far (except when non-native grasses invade after fire), but a look at any local canyon and will show invasive species eating away at the habitat from the edges.
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I fear that with widespread planting of drought-tolerant ornamentals we will repeat the same devastating process in upland habitats that has already occurred along our streams and rivers. So, I avoid “California friendly” plants because I don’t want future nature lovers to curse me with the same vehemence that I’ve used on the benighted people responsible for the invasive species that currently plague us.  
 
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Mexican Sage -- in the garden today, in the canyons tomorrow? 
​*Note: Be Water Wise’s Top Ten California Friendly plants are all native; The Garden’s list contains both native and non-natives. 
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It's Imbloc!

2/2/2021

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PictureCandelaria in Mexico.
Happy Imbolc! 

February 2nd is a cross-quarter day, halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox.  It’s no co-incidence that today is not only Groundhog’s Day, but Candlemas, celebrating the presentation of the (Yuletide) Baby Jesus at the Temple.   

Cross-quarter days are a big deal among the pagans, being more in sync with the agricultural cycle (May Day and Halloween).  After Imbolc, the days start to lengthen noticeably and with increasing acceleration.  It’s an optimistic time, of planting and preparing for the growing season. 

California isn’t really on this cycle, but this year it’s a fitting holiday, with the onset of the first real rains and cool, cloudy days.  Over the last six weeks (since Yule, co-incidentally) we’ve been holed up, due to both the Governor’s stay-at-home order and the threat to democracy.  These threats are in abeyance for now, with the prospect of control over one of them, at least, in the next few months.  

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Tiny Jepsonia parryi flowers quickly after rain.  A harbinger of the winter native planting season.  
​Now it’s time to look beyond the weight we’ve labored under for ten months (or five years).  It’s time to do something positive for yourself, and maybe for the earth.  Could it be time to start a garden that will nourish your soul and nurture the earth?  If it is, send me an email or give me a call and let’s make a native plant garden!
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