Designing a Native Garden, Part III: Visit Local Gardens

If you've been following along with the "Designing a Native Garden" series, by now you have amassed enough plant photos to create your own picture book, created miles of lists, and otherwise gleaned all the information you could find on growing native plants.  You've also measured and sketched out your planting site.  So what's next?  At some point in the process of planning your native garden, you will want to visit other native gardens to get ideas and see plants in person.  (I suppose you could even do this as the first step in the process.)

Books are indispensable resources, but nothing quite compares to seeing plants in person.  For one thing, no matter how excellent the photos and text descriptions in books and online, nothing can prepare you for how wonderful a native garden can smell!!

Step 3. Visit Local Native Plant Gardens.

Visit public gardens during each season to gain an understanding of the seasonal rhythms of a native garden.  Spring is the perfect time to start visiting gardens, as many garden tours and events take place during these highly floriferous months.  Go on garden tours to see how other homeowners have designed their own private gardens.  Make an effort to see a wide variety of plants in person, and in different seasons.  (Remember, late summer is the dormant season for many California natives.)


Perhaps one of the most important steps, and one that is least done, is to visit natural areas adjacent to your home/property and identify the native plants that grow there.  Recreating natural habitat is typically the whole point of these projects, after all!  Look for spaces that are similar to your own to get an idea of what will work best in your own yard.  For example, on the gravel bars and flood plains of the river nearest my house (the Tuolumne River), silver bush lupine, pictured below, grows in patches.  (But silver bush lupine is not a riparian plant, which is important to note; it also grows in rocky upland with access to virtually no water whatsoever for six months of the year, so it should do well in my yard.)  Additionally, Calscape lists silver bush lupine as a shrub native to my zip code.  So it is a must-grow plant for my garden!

Silver Bush Lupine, which grows wild in my area, in a garden setting.

The best California Native Botanical Gardens are:

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden (Claremont)

Regional Parks Botanic Garden (Berkeley)

University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley

Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

Visit the California Native Plant Society's website for a list of more public gardens with native plant collections.


Native plant garden tours take place usually only one day or one weekend each year (in spring).  On these special days, generous homeowners open their private gardens to visitors, allowing guests to wander through, viewing gardens and asking questions.  Garden tours are an excellent way to see how native plants function in real-life yards and gardens.

I highly recommend saving the date for one of the following tours.  (Dates listed are for 2019)

Gardens Gone Native  (Sacramento, Free)  April 27, 2019

Going Native Garden Tour (San Francisco, Free)  May 4-5, 2019

Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour (East San Francisco Bay Area, Free)  May 5, 2019

Theodore Payne Native Plant Garden Tour  (Los Angeles area, $25-$30)  April 6-7, 2019

While visiting gardens, take lots of notes and photos!  Compile a list of favorite plants that you want for your garden.  Maybe even keep two lists, one for the lightly irrigated north side of the house, and another for the dry south side.  You might fall in love with both desert willow and Pacific iris, and you can have both - but in different micro climates in your yard!  Make decisions based on what occurs naturally in your area, what other natives thrive in similar conditions to those found in your area, what will fit in your space, and what you like the looks of.

Be sure to include specific cultivars in your lists, especially when dealing with large and highly varied groups of plants, like the manzanitas and ceanothus.  (Because some can be 8 feet tall or more, while others stay below 18 inches; and this matters, a lot!!)

Most of all, take time to enjoy the beauty of a native plant garden - and get excited about your own future garden!

If you're not able to get out this spring, take a virtual tour of native gardens, courtesy of the California Native Plant Society.  Click here and here.

If you missed them, here are links to Parts I and II in the series:
Part I: Planning
Part II: Analyze Your Site

Stay tuned for Part IV: Where to Buy Native Plants

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