If you read Tom Jesch’s article in last month’s Garden Newsletter, you might be left with the impression that a late season native landscape is dead, dried-up and ready to spontaneously combust and burn down your house! How could a person in their right mind surround themselves with such “flammable and dangerous” plants? That greenness and beauty in a water-wise landscape are only achievable by using exotics, thus avoiding the “compromise” of natives.

Funny, the last time I took a summer trip to Julian I was not left with an impression of dried up and dead. Instead, I noticed the contrasting colors and forms of evergreen plants like wild lilac, Manzanita, toyon, oaks, and coffeeberry. I was greeted with the rich blooms of Hummingbird fuchsia, Goldenbush, and Goldenrod. Snowberries were covered in porcelain-white spheres. Sages were exuding fragrance and some were still in flower. No, Julian was not a disappointment, a “compromise”. And in my line of work, I get to turn people’s yards into a piece of Julian, or Idyllwild, or Torrey pines, or even Yosemite. Or sometimes even Japanese gardens. You see, when you know what plants to use, and how to use them, the only limit is your imagination.

Unfortunately, much of California is a dried out, burned-up hulk of its original self. Too frequent fires have replaced Elfin forest with weedy non-native pasture. Oak woodland was erased for agriculture. Rivers were dammed, wetlands filled-you know the drill. There are few places left along the coast, which is why we retreat to the mountains. We have no living memory of the paradise absent for hundreds of years.

This is where we come in. At California’s Own Native Landscape Design, Inc., our motto is “restoring California, one plant at a time”. We have been satisfied customers of Grangettos for 15 years, with their irrigation parts ending up in most of the 500 or so landscapes we have installed in San Diego County. Going back to the time in 1985 when I installed my first native landscape (I was also starting out as an aerospace engineer back then) I have been confronted with the same attitudes and misunderstanding that we saw in last month’s article. I learned that the dead brown look in summer was the result of the type conversion to exotic weeds and fire adapted, dormant natives. Most of the green (like wild cherries, Manzanita, etc) was gone, the result of fire cycles having diminished from once every 75-150 years to just every few years, at the whim of arsonists. Ironically, these new, flashy fuels have lead to increased fire frequency. It is a vicious cycle.

I am not against using and delighting in the many Mediterranean exotics that are available to us. I often work with these materials. The only difference is that I create theme gardens within a landscape, where I group similar plants together so they may enjoy the same moisture, fertility, and natural symbiosis that occurs. Most Mediterranean plants come from areas that get more moisture than us at different times of the year (we are among the very driest regions, and get little summer moisture). This way I can give them their own irrigation and meet their needs separately. Easy to do and it looks right! But wholesale replacement of natives by exotics has lead to many problems – 99% of our weeds and our worst diseases (like sudden oak death, whiteflies, daylily rust) are all introduced. Habitat and regional identity have been destroyed. We are forgetting what California once looked like.

In an effort to confront some of the misconceptions about natives, I thought I would respond specifically to some of the statements in last month’s article:

• "Natives are flammable and dangerous around your home." – Out of the dozens of customers whose houses were landscaped in lightly irrigated natives and were directly in the line of major fire events, we have yet to lose a single house. In many cases, the neighbors burned to the ground, often surrounded by red apple and palms. It appears that much less water is required to hydrate natives, and their extreme drought tolerance enables them to hold on to that moisture, even in the face of flames. Groundcover rosemary was incinerated next to volunteer buckwheats with green leaves, both receiving twice monthly overhead moisture.

• "[Natives] only look nice during our short, cool, wet spring season – and then everything looks grey, dead and dried-up during the rest of the year." – This is the classic rap on natives, and it is an example of the greatest mistake made by those unfamiliar with our flora. The key to designing a year round, attractive native landscape is to create a strong, evergreen backbone of colorful foliar natives (like hundreds of varieties of Manzanita) while placing the herbaceous perennials along the edges. Out-front perennials that bloom at different times of the year yield year round flowers that are easily seen and maintained. Novices will often create landscapes with no backbone, full of seasonally dormant plants that look like a riot of color in spring and tumbleweeds in fall.

• "...mature native plants tend to die in the summertime when exposed to the slightest bit of human intervention or cultivation." – You don’t need to “cultivate” natives. Local natives are extremely tolerant of heat and drought, but not of moisture, disturbance, or fertility. We don’t typically amend soils in native landscapes, for instance. We do lightly sprinkle during the summer, about 2-3 times per month (like a summer thunderstorm or fog drip), but only enough to wet the foliage and mulch, not saturate the warm soil which encourages pathogens. This keeps them dusted off and the light hydration really helps in fires. And native landscapes will usually develop natural weed resistance at about 60-80% canopy coverage. Truly low water and low maintenance landscapes.

• "…there are some limitations with native plant species." – Sure, like limited water use and limited maintenance. California is the most botanically diverse state in the union-there is literally an appropriate native for any circumstance (even next to a lawn!). And did you know that California natives have been hugely popular in England for over 150 years?

Landscaping with California natives is not about compromising your landscape. You in fact gain the beauty, regional identity, birds and butterflies, fragrance, and cultural history associated with these magnificent plants. That doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with exotics, many of which are drought tolerant and beautiful. We just need to stop turning Southern California into South Florida!

– Greg Rubin