This is a quick and dirty list of what you’re seeing in my front yard right now. You can see what blooms in my garden over the months by looking at
my bloom archive here.
For structure I like agaves because the rest of the garden can be pretty blowsy and wild and they give enough visual heft to make it look organized. I can bring you a pup of this agave, which is really forgiving of winter wet.
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| Agave parryi (we think, this was a gift and it’s unknown) |
Heathers! They just need good drainage. This one turns bright red in winter, gold in summer, and it has pretty lavender flowers.
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| Heather (Calluna vulgaris ‘Fraser’s Old Gold’) |
This is a bulb I buy from Brent and Becky’s bulbs online. It blooms for about a month, then goes dormant. It’s native and really lovely. If you wanted a longer bloom time you could plant something like Agapanthus.
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| Camassia quamash ‘Blue Danube’ |
I love brown grasses but not everyone does! I think they provide nice color contrast and look yummy in tilting light.
This is a pretty little grass to scatter about and doesn’t seed around. Festuca amesthystina ‘Superba’.
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| The bright gold ground cover is Sedum Angelina and you should not grow it. |
Mahonia nervosa is a low-growing oregon grape that turns bright red in winter, with hot pink stems. It’s tough as nails and has pretty yellow flowers in very early spring.
Pacific coast irises are native and beautiful and you should plant a ton. The bloom time is pretty short but they are sooooo pretty. The rest of the season they just look like a clump of grass.
This penstemon is my favorite but any penstemon whose color you love is great. They attract bees and hummingbirds and they have a very long bloom time.
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| Penstemon x ‘Enor’ |
California fuschia forms a low mat and requires no water. Hummingbirds love it. They come in hot red and orange shades that some people don’t like, which is totally okay.
Things I grow that you absolutely must NOT plant because you garden in a wild area with a water source nearby. These are weeds and will take over wild areas:
- Mexican feather grass (Stipa tenuissima)
- Bamboo
- Any euphorbia
- Sedum ‘Angelina.‘ This is the bright gold sedum I use as a ground cover. She’s a thug who will eat your entire garden, the river, and the entire forest around you.
- Salvia ‘Caradonna’. You should definitely plant a salvia of some sort, just not this one. It reseeds like crazy so you should either pick a native cultivar or a sterile one.
Other plants not in my yard that you should consider:
Flowering currant or ribes sanguineum. It’s a pretty boring shrub for most of the year but it thrives on neglect and it’s flowers are so pretty in the early spring. It can handle sun or shade ant it’s native, so you can brag at dinner parties. King Edward VII is the hottest pink cultivar.
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| Ribes sanguineum ‘Variegata’ |
Ceanothus/California Lilac. These are large, native, evergreen shrubs/trees and want zero summer water. They grow fast and erupt in the most beautiful flowers in spring.
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| Ceanothus x ‘Dark Star’ |
Manzanita/Arctostaphylos. These are native evergreen shrubs that thrive on hot dry summers. There are tall ones, short ones, shrubby ones, you name it.
Asclepias/milkweed. These are the only thing Monarch butterflies eat in their larval stage. They are native but they spread like crazy, so plant them in an area where they can go a little nuts.
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| Asclepias speciosa |
Liatris spicata/gay feather. They can take hot hot sun and pollinators love them.
