Fall Native Color

Gardens with California native plants get a bad rap for looking great in spring, then turning brown and dry for the rest of the year.  That’s not true in nature and certainly doesn’t need to be true in a well-designed native landscape.  An easy way to prolong your spring flower show through the summer and into fall is to include native sunflowers  in your garden. 
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The Sunflower Family (aka Asteraceae aka Compositae) is a huge and varied group of plants worldwide and in California. (Nerd alert: 17% of the 1410 pages of plant describing California’s plants in the Jepson Manual are Asteraceae).  The species we’ll be looking at are pioneer (early successional) species in coastal sage scrub communities in SoCal and Baja. 

In nature, their small seeds, often carried by the wind, land in patches of bare ground where they can germinate readily and grow rapidly.  This group of species are close to fool-proof choices for a low-maintenance garden and are also great if you need plants that will fill in your landscape (relatively) quickly while other shrubs are taking their time becoming established.     
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Bush Sunflower (aka California daisy aka Encelia californica) and San Diego sunflower (aka San Diego viguiera aka Bahiopsis laciniata) are two native shrubs popular for their bright yellow flowers that give your garden a splash of color through the summer and into fall.  

​Bush Sunflower is like a bolder, brasher older sibling to San Diego Sunflower, whose more muted charms are worth the extra effort to get to know. It is a bit bigger and rangier, with showier flowers and larger leaves. 

A drawback for me is the coarse texture of the leaves, with lots of bristly hairs on the underside.  They dry and drop under drought conditions, but with judicious summer water, you'll keep most of them.  I don’t tend to put this front and center in a garden, but I like to use masses of California Daisy as background behind smaller, subtler native plants.  

San Diego viguiera tends to is a bit more compact in both its overall form and in its flowers.  A real plus for me are the darker, smaller leaves with their wrinkled, arrow-like (sagitate) shape.  These thick, shiny leaves are better at holding on to precious water, so this stays evergreen year-round with a bit of summer water. I like to use these as informal hedges, but single plants can also serve as the focal point for a small front yard.    
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The seed heads in the center of the flowers (the disc flower seeds, actually) are making their biggest contribution to our local birds right now as they provide food source during the dry months before the winter rains begin.  After the birds have had their fill, you’ll want to dead head them, especially the long stalks on the California daisy.  

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Bush Sunflower

San Diego Sunflower