 Candelaria 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.  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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Now is the winter of our discontent. With a quarter million dead from Coronavirus, we wait for a vaccine. With a con man in the White House, we wait for him to vacate the premises. There’s hope of vaccinations and competent governance on the horizon, but it looks like we’ll have to hang tough for a few more months. With few social and entertainment options available during the duration, we need to look elsewhere for meaningful and productive pursuits. Fortunately, it is the perfect season to start a native plant garden: these short, cooler days with occasional rain make a forgiving environment for native plants to sink their roots and get established. This time of social isolation could be a good season for you as well, by turning your attention from the nonsense going on in the public sphere to focus on improving your home environment. And if you’re isolating at home, gardening can be a healthy activity to get through these dark months.  I can meet with you (at a distance of six feet) to discuss the kind of space you want to create in your yard: secluded or inviting, naturalistic or formal, dramatic or soothing. I take your goals and translate them into a plant design that is appropriate for your soil and light conditions and compatible with established plants you want to keep. After we develop a plan you love, I’ll obtain and place the plants for you. I can get them planted for you too, but I love it when people do the planting themselves (I’ll show you the tricks). It not only gets you outside in the sunshine, but your feeling of connection is enhanced when you handle and nurtured the plants yourself. And watching your plants grow and develop can provide a bit of positivity in otherwise bleak times.  I’m confident that this miserable winter will eventually be made glorious summer by the sons of Pfizer and of Scranton. Wouldn’t it be great when we get beyond all this if you not only survived, but took advantage of the time to create something that will continue to provide benefits for years to come? Give me a call and let’s start to create something together.  When I visit a prospective client, I won’t be able to answer the question “What would you do with this yard?” until I get to know them a bit. First we’ll talk about how they use (or would like to use) the space, how they want to fit in the neighborhood, what elements they like in their existing landscape, and how the design might reflect their personality or values. This conversation usually triggers some unifying concept in my mind that I can use to inform the design. Often restrictions placed by the client (e.g., I’m allergic to bee stings) or by the site itself will help me to narrow my selection from the vast array of native plant species available. Once I have a concept I will apply some basic concepts to create the design:
A native landscape will always be a dynamic and somewhat unpredictable entity. I apply these design concepts to create a garden that’s more than an assemblage of pretty plants and is closer to a holistic community that fits together visually and ecologically.
Killing your lawn and planting a native landscape not only add beauty to your life and eliminates a repetitive, useless task, it helps in the fight against climate change. On one level, this is obvious – you can see that there is more plant material (aka biomass) in the trees, shrubs, and perennial ground covers of a native garden than there is in the annual grasses that make up a lawn. As native plants grow, they take CO2 from the air and store it into leaves, stems, and roots, not in grass blades that are then (repetitively, uselessly) mowed.  Killing your lawn and planting a native landscape not only add beauty to your life and eliminates a repetitive, useless task, it helps in the fight against climate change. On one level, this is obvious – you can see that there is more plant material (aka biomass) in the trees, shrubs, and perennial groundcovers of a native garden than there is in the annual grasses that make up a lawn. As native plants grow, they take CO2 from the air and store it into leaves, stems, and roots, not in grass blades that are then (repetitively, uselessly) mowed.
As you enjoy your native garden, remember that you’re helping nature not only by feeding the birds and butterflies you can see, but by influencing processes you can’t see, below the ground and in the air. 
 While this shows us what plants were there back in the day, it leaves a false impression of what pre-contact landscapes were like. Columbus, Drake and the rest did more than take make maps, trade trinkets, and take captives. They also introduced their European microbes to a system where they had no natural enemies, introducing diseases that devastated the indigenous populations. As Kat Anderson’s Before the Wildneress explains, when John Smith or Junipero Serra arrived, they found a landscape that had been left to grow wild for over a century after the native population collapsed. They saw an empty wilderness for the taking, not an abandoned garden.
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