It’s close enough to spring in my part of California to assess gardening plans. With some exceptions for dye or food, I have tried to commit more of that energy to researching and plotting for plants native to this area.
As a person who doesn’t have a lot of energy or time budgeted for gardening, any plant that can handle the heat and low water availability here is preferable. That said, there are plants that thrive in this area but aren’t native to it. When I plant them, am I missing out on a chance to better support local pollinators?
Aside from the challenge of double-checking that a plant is likely to thrive in the microclimates of this area, it regularly surprises me that an aesthetic paradigm shift seems to be the most sticky part of the process.
I have started drawing some of our actual native plants. It wasn’t until their second summer that I felt plants like the St. Catherine’s Lace (Eriogonum gigantium) or Firecracker Penstemon really came into their own.
These shrubs spend the winter looking like nothing much, but once they bloom they continue doing so for an absurdly long stretch of time.
I’ve been using Calscape (https://calscape.org/) for a lot of my research. Nurseries can be a lot of help, but I have learned to triple-check my choices if they offer both native and non-native plants for sale. So far Chico’s Floral Native Nursery has been a particularly good source of plants (and especially plants that don’t turn out to be invasive).
There are so many more bees and butterflies in the garden now! I cannot emphasize enough how gorgeous these plants are once they get established. I suspect my digital black-and-white illustrations are not the optimal way to help others with this paradigm shift to the aesthetics of plants native to this area. (It is, however, a start.)
Colleen Wampole 