Lot size: 4,000 sq. ft. front garden on tour, 100% native
Garden Age: Garden was planted in stages, beginning in the fall of 2006.
Years on the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour:
Showcase Feature
This attractive, tranquil garden, designed by David Bigham and installed by Barbara, features a sunny meadow with low-growing grasses, sedges, and wildflowers surrounded by taller borders of grasses, wildflowers, and shrubs. All plants in this garden are native to the San Pablo Creek watershed; most were grown from seed or cuttings originating locally. A phalanx of soaproot lines the walkway; their delicate evening flower displays attract and delight night-pollinating moths and hard-working day-pollinating bumblebees who are making a few last pollination stops at the end a long day.
Now that the garden is mature, the structure is more apparent—note the well-developed row of iris along the parking strip, flanked by a row of purple needlegrass, California fuchsia, and monkeyflower, California sage, and redberry. Forming the backbone of the upper garden is a broad row of coast live oaks with large toyon, coffeeberry, rose, and gooseberry. Then the height and scale decreases—first there is a prominent row of snowberry, then California fescue, milkweed, soap plant, and buckwheat, then a smaller row of purple needlegrass and coyote mint above the retaining wall, then the fine-textured meadow in the lowest part of the garden.
Other Garden Attractions
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· Gardens grow and evolve! The coast live oaks along the parking strip were volunteer seedlings when Barbara and Phil started working on the garden.
· The household water bill has been dramatically reduced since removing the lawn and replacing it with natives.
· Barbara has been making baskets with plants grown in her own garden.
Gardening for Wildlife
In addition to happy bumblebees, and monarch butterflies that lay eggs on the milkweed, pipevine and anise swallowtail butterflies and many other winged creatures visit the garden. The garden is home to ringneck, sharp-tailed, gopher, and garter snakes; slender and arboreal salamanders; fence and alligator lizards; and skinks.
Since the garden was transformed there has been a great increase in the number and variety of birds—western bluebirds, Nuttall’s and downy woodpeckers, ruby-crowned kinglets, Swainson’s thrushes, house finches, five kinds of sparrows, California quail, chickadees, and oak titmice are now seen in the garden. Attracted by the delicious insects found on the plants, and the shelter, nesting materials, seeds, and berries, quail nest under the large grasses, and lesser goldfinches raise their young in the trees.
Keystone species in this garden (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include coast live and valley oaks, currants, wild rose, lupine, sages, buckwheat, and strawberry.
Green Home Features
Barbara and Phil have a plug-in hybrid car, solar panels, and, more recently, installed a heat pump for whole-house heating and cooling. Their solar panels have been more than adequate for car charging and domestic electric usage, but they will need to add capacity to support the heat pump and, eventually, the only remaining gas appliances (water heater and dryer), which they expect to replace with a heat pump water heater and an electric dryer over time—thus getting their house entirely off gas.
Barbara notes that one of the most cost-effective actions has been to ensure that their house was adequately insulated. To that end, they added attic insulation, recently replaced windows with more energy-saving dual-pane windows, and had an energy audit to detect air leaks.
Green Home Info: 88% reduction in carbon footprint!
Garden Talks
11:00 and 2:00 “How and why to obtain local native plants for your garden” by Barbara Leitner.
Photos and descriptions of plants
Video
“Our local native plant garden” video by Rachel Styer
