One of the advantages of living in this part of the country is that it's almost always gardening weather. A light rain is no deterrent, and a heavier rain is an excuse to stay indoors and catch up on reading.
This season, native-plant gardeners will be looking for excuses to spend time indoors so that they can read a useful and beautiful book just published, entitled California Native Plants for the Garden.
A standing-room-only audience heard Bart O'Brien, one of the authors, talk about the book in Palo Alto earlier this month. O'Brien, director of horticulture at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont, showed slides and offered advice on a few winter tasks.
Chief among the tasks is cutting back plants that have finished blooming. Either cut back spent stems after an established plant has finished flowering, or else leave seeds for wildlife forage and remember to come back and cut the stems before new buds begin to sprout. Some plants, however, benefit from more drastic pruning.
In spring and summer Matilija poppy has gorgeous white flowers with big yellow centers, over 6 inches across, atop 6-foot-plus stems. O'Brien recommended cutting back Matilija poppy to 4 to 6 inches in December, before the brittle new shoots emerge later in January. That will ensure a better-looking plant as well as better flowers next year.
Fall-blooming hummingbird sage, with profuse scarlet to orange blossoms, remains showy into fall and winter. As soon as it is done blooming in December or January, O'Brien recommended cutting it back to 1- to 2-inch stubs. Pruning prevents the plant from getting lanky and unsightly, and it also leads to better flowering the next fall.
Some plants can be pruned even more drastically. California has many plants that have adapted to periodic fires by growing a strong root system. These fire-adapted plants will resprout from the base after their tops are damaged, whether by fire or by pruning way back.
Toyon is one of the best-known plants in this category. According to O'Brien, toyon is “susceptible to all known plant diseases and insects,” but it is a durable shrub that can be cut to the ground, and “it always comes back.”
Other shrubs that tolerate hard pruning include coyote brush, sugarbush, and elderberry.
On the other hand, plants that will decline and die if the woody growth is pruned include most ceanothus and manzanita. Keep the pruning shears away from these plants, except to cut back only the current season's growth for the health of the plant or to lightly shape it.
In England, O'Brien noted, ceanothus is popular but a cold winter can kill the plants, so the plants are espaliered against a wall to keep them warmer. People are not upset when a ceanothus dies, he said, because then they have room to plant another variety. Since many ceanothus can grow 2 to 5 feet per season here, he suggested thinking of ceanothus as long-lived biennials, rather than as short-lived shrubs.
Carol Bornstein, David Fross, and Bart O'Brien. California Native Plants for the Garden. Los Olivos, Calif.: Cachuma Press, 2005, 271 pages.
table
ceanothus coyote brush elderberry hummingbird sage manzanita matilija poppy sugarbush toyon
© 2005 Tanya Kucak