Theodore Payne Foundation
If it has been a while since you last visited the Theodore Payne Foundation Nursery in Sun Valley, I highly recommend you go back and take another look. For years, although the people working there m...
Category Archives: California Native Garden
Tough Plants
Just as we are getting ready to install our spring gardens, three publications come along to give guidance in plant selection. One book, by Sharon Amos, is called “Tough Plants,” and bear...
Glorious California Poppies
Like other important events in life, you’ll never forget the first time you see a vast expanse of California poppies. For me, this occurred more than 10 years ago while driving past a large cor...
Island Bush Poppy a Native Treat
Between the end of winter and the beginning of spring is an excellent time to appreciate the fleeting floral beauty of many ornamental trees and shrubs. The mission of plants, like that of most livin...
Baja Fairy Duster and other Delights
Maybe it’s the effect of all that late winter rain, but I cannot recall an approach to spring that was bedecked with so many plants in full bloom. A wonderful place to view the white hanging ur...
California Wildflowers
Veteran plant watchers have proclaimed this year’s showing of California wildflowers the most spectacular they have ever seen. The message is to get out there now and take a look, because you m...
California Native Beauties
Landscaping with natives means growing naturally shapely plants that never need pruning. Landscaping with natives means growing not only exotic, colorful and fragrant flowers, but woods and barks tha...
Island Bush Poppy
For more than a decade, I had been looking for that highly prized poppy. No one had it. No one could propagate it. Yes, you could see it growing wildon the Channel Islands, and there was a glorious s...
Indian Penicillin and Native Oaks
When you think of Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge, camellias, lilacs and roses come to mind. Home to the largest camellia collection in the world, the most extensive lilac planting in Southe...
Don’t Forget to Stop and Smell the Sagebrush
Chris Van Schaack has carved a bare-bones life out of the Santa Susana chaparral. He lives in a 50-year-old refurbished Quonset hut, an army surplus item from World War II, surrounded only by native ...
