Lot size: 900 sq. foot back garden, 80% natives
Garden Age: Garden was started in 2003
Years on the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour: 4
Showcase Feature
Christine designed and installed this intimate, charming, and child-friendly garden. Bunch grasses, snowberry, Douglas iris and hummingbird sage blanket the garden in a simple, recurring plant palette. The airy gazebo, which is embraced by a native grapevine, and welcoming hammock (nestled in a corner and surrounded by waving bunchgrasses and snowberry) provide the family with opportunities to relax in this serene oasis, which is just a stone’s throw away from the busy downtown area. An outdoor shower, (with recycled bathroom fixtures as planters) and a bubbling fountain provide outdoor bathing opportunities for human and birds alike.
Other Garden Attractions
• An existing concrete path was broken out (concrete was also collected from construction projects) and re-used to make raised beds that improved poor drainage.
• The glossy green leaves of the creeping California lilac make a beautiful ground-cover.
• Ceanothus ‘Ray Hartman’, elderberry, and other shrubs create a living screen between the garden and adjacent park.
• The garden is mulched to reduce weeds; those that get through are pulled by hand. No chemical weed killers are use in this—or any—Tour garden!
Gardening for Wildlife
Two fountains provide a water source for the many birds that now frequent the garden.
Hummingbirds, finches, juncos, warblers, wrens, towhees, and woodpeckers are drawn in by the water, and also attracted to the native grape and elderberries, and the groundcovers, shrubs, and trees of varying heights. ‘Austin Griffith’ and ‘Howard McMinn’ manzanitas attract hummingbirds and native bees in late winter and early spring, with their beautiful urn-shaped cream-to-pink colored blossoms.
