New California garden

This snippet has been extracted from “Northern California Gardening” by “Katherine Grace Endicott”. New California garden is on of the most beautiful one in the world. “Tree Removal Berkeley CA” briefs you on this topic.

Plants suitable to northern California-the new California gardens

When spring arrives, northern California gardeners want to start planting even though it is better to plant most shrubs and trees in the fall.  Now that the urge to plant is strong, it is also a good time to consider what sorts of plants are best suited to northern California.  In the past, many of our gardens where based on the English park model, with sweeping green lawns and beds of plants that need a lot of summer water. Drought and water rationing demanded a new model. After all, drought is a regular feature of our climate, and we cannot ignore California’s dwindling water supply. Clearly, we needed to change our vision of what a garden should look like in California. 

What we needed was a garden of drought-resistant plants that was so gorgeous that we all wanted to copy it.  Wonderfully, gardeners and landscapers have been evolving just such a new garden style using loose, billowing perennial flowers and grasses that are drought tolerant.

New California garden
New California garden

Plants for a new northern California style come for, our own native plants and from plants native to climates similar to ours.  Local nurseries offer a number of flowering plants suitable to our dry-summer, wet-winter climate that will supply attractive year-around form with little or not water once established.  The following is a short list of flowering plants that should convince even the most skeptical gardener that drought-resistant does not mean drab.

  • Amethyst eryngium (eryngium amethystinum) is a good example of the unusual plants being used to create the new style in the northern California garden.  This stiff-branched, three-foot shrub has a distinctive thistle like quality. The long-lasting metallic-looking blue gray b looms with touches of amethyst are stiff bursts of spiny color.  This plant will grow in a well-drained, sunny location anywhere in northern California.  It blooms from summer into fall. Eryngium variifolium is similar, with branches of star thistles in lavender and gray and tidier leaves at the base of the plant that have interesting white veins.
  • Fleabane (erigeron rarvinsrianus) is a low-growing tangle of narrow leaves and small, fringed, white daisies tinged pink.  It is almost always in bloom and has a carefree country-garden appearance.  It can also be used in hanging baskets.
  • Fortnight lily (dieted vegeta, also called dietes iridioides) is a three-foot-high plant with narrow iris like leaves and open, waxy, white flowers blotched gaily with a touch of yellow orange.  It has a sculptural appearance and is good planted singly or in groups. Do not cut off the long flowering stalk because additional flowers will form on the same stem.
  • Golden shrub daisy (Euryops pectinatus) is a four-foot, rounded shrub that is covered with bright yellow daisies from late winter to early summer.  It should be trimmed after bloom. It tends to be a bit leggy so you may want a lower-growing plant in front of it.
  • Lavender cotton (santolina chamaecyparissus) is a two-foot, rounded, gray shrub with yellow button flowers.  The best part of this plant is the lovely gray foliage, which should be clipped to keep it full and lush.  Try combining it with other gray-foliaged, drought-resistant plants such as English lavender and Artemisia.
  • Jerusalem sage (phlomis fruticosa) is an old-fashioned garden plant that has staged a comeback in the new California garden.  Like many plants in the new garden style it has gray-green leaves that set off the unusual tiers of yellow flower clusters that form whorls along four-foot stems.  It takes full sun, lean soils, and drought conditions.  With water it will bloom repeatedly throughout the summer. Cut back the plant each fall by about one-third.
  • Lion’s tail (Leonotis leonurus) is a striking shrub that grows between three and six feet wide in full sun. its common name derives from the unusual orange flowers that form dense whorls covered with a furry coat that looks like fine hair.  It should be pruned to the ground in winter to keep it looking well groomed.
  • Many other sages have become quite popular because they are suitable to our climate.  Mexican bush sage (salvia leucantha) is a three-foot to four-foot gray-green shrub with long velvety purple spikes that reach dramatically for the sun. it should be planted at the back of a garden bed, and the old stalks should be trimmed to the ground because it will bloom almost continuously on new stalks.
  • A choice cultivar of our native salvia clevelandii is ‘Allen chickering,’ which grows into a dense four-foot shrub with fragrant leaves and deep lavender blossoms.  The leaves are so fragrant that one sniff of a crushed leaf and the gardener will half-believe she has gone to heaven in spite of herself.
  • Russian sage (perousria ‘blue spire’) is a wispy shrub with ghostly plumes of lavender blue flowers that seem to hover over the bed. The plant prefers well-drained soils in full sun.
  • Tree lavatera (lavatera thuringiaca) is grown for its showy flowers of dusty pinks or lavender with beautifully textured petals.  Despite the common name, this is a willowy, graceful shrub. It grows in many soils, rich or lean, in full sun with water or in drought conditions.
  • Yarrows are native to California, growing in dry scrub where their low, flat clusters of tight-knit bloom come as a surprise to the traveler.  Many new cultivars have soft sunset colors perfect for the California garden.  One of the best is ‘moonshine,’ which has finely dissected, fern like, gray-green foliage and soft lemon yellow flower heads.  Sun-loving and drought-tolerant, yarrow should be divided every few years and cut back after bloom.
New California garden
New California garden

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