Lot size: Lot size 1/10th acre back garden, 80% native
Garden Age: Native garden was planted in stages, beginning in 2000
Years on the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour: 6
Michael has turned an area that formerly contained only exotics into a charming native plant garden. Wide, gracefully curving garden beds, provide the drainage that most natives need, wrap around a reduced lawn. Recently Michael designed and installed a pond; the peaceful sound of falling water attracts winged and two-legged visitors alike. Currants, ferns, monkeyflower, and bee plant flourish in the shady part of the garden; stately, mature manzanitas anchor the sunny side. Chinese houses and clarkia brighten this attractive garden in spring.
Other Garden Attractions
- Bring your copy of Plants of the Tahoe Basin, and ask Michael, the author, to sign it.
- Buckeyes, oaks, and a flannel bush create privacy screens along the fenceline.
Gardening for Wildlife
The diversity of natives attracts flocks white-and golden-crowned sparrows, yellow-rumped warblers, and kinglets. Decomposing logs provide nooks and crannies for slender and arboreal salamanders. Pacific chorus frogs are also at home in this garden. Metallic blue-black pipevine swallowtail butterflies lay eggs on the Dutchman’s pipevine, the only host plant for this stunning butterfly. Bees love the manzanitas, California lilac, bee plant, penstemon, and annual wildflowers; hummingbirds are attracted to the hummingbird sages and monkeyflowers scattered throughout the garden.
Keystone species in this garden (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants — in this garden include oak, big leaf maple, California lilac, pink-flowered currant, sage, lupines, woodland and beach strawberry, cream bush, and penstemon.
