Finding the right plants to thrive on low maintenance, little water.
By Zachary Stahl
Posted February 21, 2008

Instead of grass, Carol LeNeve’s front yard is mostly covered in ankle-high Carmel creeper, a shrub with dark-green, oval leaves. LeNeve, dressed in a purple turtleneck and jeans, walks down her stone path toward Camino Real in Carmel. Oak leaves crackle under her sneakers. LeNeve points out the shrub’s light-blue flowers. They smell like ripe berries.

Underneath the shade-bearing branches of her yard’s giant oaks, LeNeve has planted Catalina perfume, coffeeberry and wild iris, among other species. Virtually every plant in the ground here is native to California, LeNeve says. Other than a little bit of pruning, LeNeve’s native garden requires little maintenance.

“I don’t water any of this,” LeNeve says. “Nothing.”

LeNeve used to have a lawn but switched to natives during the 1977 California drought.

“I decided to start growing natives because once they are in the ground, after about two years,” she says, “you really never have to water them again.”

Water conversation is just one benefit to a native home garden. And with the state pushing California American Water to dramatically curtail its water use, leaving the sprinklers on soon may not be an option for Peninsula residents.

Although fall is the best time to plant, recent sunny days are ideal for playing in the dirt. And Jane Atkins offers some convincing reasons why native is the way to go.

Atkins is president of Monterey Bay Chapter of the California Native Plant Society and the nursery and restoration manager at Hilton Bialek Biological Sciences Habitat at Carmel Middle School. The 10 acres includes a native plant nursery and an organic garden used to educate children about such topics as sustainability and food systems.

Atkins hoses down a few Monterey Pine trees in pots. She says the nursery grows about 30,000 plants annually for native restoration.

Since indigenous plants have adapted to the Central Coast’s Mediterranean climate, Atkins says, they don’t really need fertilizer. “They are used to going through the hot and dry periods,” she says. Natives also require little to no pesticides, she adds.

Rob De Bree, general manager at Elkhorn Native Plant Nursery in Moss Landing, adds that natives don’t attract as much disease or pests. People “don’t need to go out with their spray bottles, pesticides and fungicides to combat a lot of critters that people don’t want out in the yard,” De Bree says.

With plant habitats paved over by houses and businesses, Atkins says native gardens can help supply food for animals and insects. “By gardening with native plants you are providing habitat for migrating birds, for small mammals, for insects,” she says. The Habitat, which is a former Christmas tree lot, has attracted close to 180 different species of birds, Atkins says. Several nectar-producing natives, including hummingbird sage and sticky monkey flower, attract hummingbirds.

Atkins points to the damage that invasive species like pampas grass and ice plant have done by swallowing large habitat patches along the county’s coast.

Natives may be good for the environment, but what about aesthetics? Natives do dry up in the summer, Atkins admits. You can water them, she says, but they won’t live as long.

Walking over to a demonstration garden, Atkins grabs a few green iris shoots she recently cut back. Now they are shooting up again. Next to the irises are some dormant seaside daisies and bees bliss sage, which like the name implies attracts plenty of pollinators.

Even though many California natives bloom in the spring, several species are showing their flowers at the Habitat, like chaparral currant, which has pink, sweet-smelling flowers. “If you have a well-planned garden you can have flowers throughout the year,” Atkins says.

De Bree says nurseries also carry native selections that bear larger fruit and have prettier flowers and longer bloom times than usual for the species. Elkhorn also recommends native plants, such as succulents like stonecrop, that won’t burn as quickly during a fire and can help provide defensible space.

Nursery owners encourage gardeners to plan according to the soil type and amount of sun or shade in their yard. “If you choose the right native plants then they will grow on a consistent basis,” De Bree says.

But there is another way to go.

Drought Resistant Nurseries, with locations in Monterey and Carmel Valley, carries water-wise plants. “The lush English garden is simply not agreeable to the Mediterranean climate,” owner Thom Crow says while walking through rows of potted plants at his Carmel Valley nursery.

Crow wears a straw hat and shorts. His thin, braided pony tail droops over his shoulder. Crow opened his business during the beginning of a multi-year statewide drought that started in 1987. “We don’t do turf,” Crow says. “Stretching your water budget is a big part of it.”

Some of Crow’s plants are deep-rooted and store water in the soil. His succulents, like aloe, hold water in their leaves. “A lot of the native coastal plants take their moisture right from the air,” Crow says.

Still, Crow’s plants come from across the world, including Australia, Tasmania and South Africa. Even LeNeve doesn’t have a totally native garden. The Carmel resident and Native Plant Society member has non-native potted flowers all around her house. The pretty white and red petals offer a stark contrast to her native plants that look like foliage on the side of a hiking trail.

“I think with natives you have to kind of get an eye for the different shades of green,” LeNeve says. “You have to able to appreciate the color of foliage.” And LeNeve admits growing natives takes a bit of research.

But she says it’s worth it. The red petals of her island snapdragon attract hummingbirds. She has few problems with pests, other than some whiteflies and scale. She doesn’t have to hire a landscaping crew to keep up with her garden, and she saves money on her water bill.

2008 © Monterey County Weekly

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Read on to find out who were the Secret Picnic Superstars! Thank you very much to Peter Nelson(Picnic Chair-"El Jefe"), Lori Addison (Silent Auction Super Coordinator!), Jan Shriner (incredible Logistics!), Kathy Addington (Invitation Artwork and Related Creations of all things beautiful!), Alan Church (Grants and Awards and number one 'gopher' !), Dida Kutz (Silent Auction assistant and web site architect), Mary Paul, Amanda Yantos, "TNT" Tina and Tim Mcknew, Zeke Bean, Regina Williams, Bree Candiloro, Elena "Byrd" Navarro, Ringo Jutes, and Peter Nelson (World's numero uno Food Committee!), Tammy Jakl, Harry "The Baker" Simonian, and Mike Chiodini (great Kids Acitivities), Bruce Delgado (also Grants and Awards), Bill Hyman (logistics support and then more support!), Adrian Lopez and the Lopez family (474 tamales, pots of guac, and salsa muy fina!), Dale Hameister (Picnic Sound and DJ Booth), Evan Francis and Bruce and Judy Cowan (lively live music), Jackie Kourassis (logistics support), Mark Nelson of Culligan Water (logistics support and water for everyone), David Bates and Alan Church (clean and neat parking in sloppy conditions), David Dillon and Jose Cruz, both 14 years old, for installing Signs, Signs, Signs, along route to picnic, and last but not least, BLM staff at Fort Ord and Hollister for providing the site and much support, and DOZENS of other loving and caring people helped make this is an especially memorable picnic.

Chris Haugen (Chuck's nephew) took about 400 photos that are still being culled. Keep an eye on the Flikr album for some really fun photos from the picnic.

Also stay tuned as you and others, we hope, add comments about the event here.

Photo courtesy of
NPS info page on Yellow Lupine

Bruce Cowan responded Dec. 11, 2005:
IS YELLOW BUSH LUPINE INVASIVE?
Yellow bush lupine (Lupinus arboreus) is definitely considered an invasive species in California's north coast where it was apparently introduced. As far as I know, however, it is native in the Asilomar/Spanish Bay area of the Monterey Peninsula. Even so, it does have weedy tendencies. It is a prolific seeder and takes over restoration projects quickly, but is often killed by aphids or natural causes after two to four years-- leaving lots of unsightly dead shrubby material and countless new seedlings.

When I worked at Asilomar 1968-1974, I planted lots of yellow bush lupines, but they proved to be very unsatisfactory for the reasons stated above. Also they were not a dependable dune stabilizer. Subsequently I have never planted yellow bush lupine since, and in most of my landscape and restoration projects I usually pulled or hoed out seedlings whenever they appeared.

I have found the silver beach lupine (Lupinus chamissonis) to be superior and adaptable to dune environments, less weedy, longer lived and visually more attractive. It is native to Monterey Bay as far south as the Naval Postgrauate School dunes. I introduced a few to Asilomar from seeds collected at NPS, and they thrived and multipled. They were about the only California native plants besides beach sagewort that did well in the dunes and weren't eaten by the deer, and they provided colorful bloom besides. I and several other people also introduced some to a few private residential landscapes in the Asilomar
area, and they were a major component of plantings at the Spanish Bay golf course. Every spring their lush purple blooms were a welcome sight.

Unknown at the time, introducing L. chamissonis even from as close as seven miles away would have a very negative impact. They were found to hybridize with the endangered Tidestrom's lupine (Lupinus tidestromii), an inconspicuous dune plant that mostly hides under the sand and, unlike L. arboreus and L. chamissonis, is actually eaten by deer when it blooms. Thus L. tidestromii is becoming extremely rare.

The hybrids form broad silvery mats covered with purple flowers, are deer resistant, and are visually superior to either parent. But because of genetic contamination to an endangered species, both L. chamissonis and all known hybrids have been or are being removed from the Asilomar/Spanish Bay area.

I don't think L. arboreus/L. tidestromii hybrids occur, so the weediness of L. arboreus must be judged, I think, on the basis of how it behaves near a golf course or any situation.

As part of the 2005-06 Consolidated Grants Program, a total of approximately $143 million will be made available from six interrelated grant programs administered by the State and Regional Water Boards. The six consolidated programs are:

1. Nonpoint Source Pollution Control Program (Proposition 40, Chapter 4)
2. Coastal Nonpoint Source Pollution Control Program (Proposition 50, Chapter 5)
3. Nonpoint Source Implementation Program (Federal Clean Water Act, Section 319 (h))
4. Agricultural Water Quality Grant Program (Propositions 40 and 50, Chapters 4 and 5)
5. Urban Stormwater Program (Proposition 40, Chapter 4)
6. Integrated Watershed Management Program (Proposition 40, Chapter 4)

The technique of flaming weeds as a form of weed abatement has been around a long time in agricultural settings but it is relatively new in wild landscapes or wildland habitat restorartion settings.
Typically in the ag fields, workers carry a small 2.4-gallon, 10-lb. capacity propane tank (aka cylinder) attached to a backpack and they flame unwanted weeds in the fields or around buildings, inside ashpalt crevices, etc. Tractors are also fitted with attachments that have many orifices along a "boom" and flames are emitted to kill or set back weeds as the tractor moves between crop rows, etc.

Flaming is an exciting wildland restoration tool because its a safe and fun technique to use and works best when it is raining or very wet out. This provides a great alternative to herbicides but just on rainy days. Propane flaming kits are available that use either liquid withdrawal or vapor withdrawal systems and a variety of torches and propane cylinders.