Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour

This fall the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour is once again coordinating a Fall Native Plant Sale Extravaganza, which will take place on Sunday, October 20, 2013 from 10:00–4:00. A portion of the proceeds from this sale go to support the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour.

This full-day shopping opportunity will offer native plant fans a good selection of native plants at the best time of year to plant them. The Extravaganza provides the opportunity to purchase unique or hard-to-find native plants that are not normally available in most nurseries. Knowledgeable staff will be on hand to help shoppers select the best plants for their gardens.

For information on how to successfully plant natives, please see Yerba Buena Nursery’s excellent Transplant Guide.

Plants will be available for sale at the following nurseries on Sunday, October 20, 2013 from 10:00–4:00

• Alameda – Ploughshares Nursery, 2701 Main Street, Alameda, 510 755 1102, ploughsharesnursery.com.  Ploughshares offers a diverse and interesting selection of natives, including succulents such as Dudleya ‘Frank Reinalt,’ with its attractive gray leaves and tiny yellow flowers, and the beautiful Romneya coulteri ‘Matilija Poppy’ with its huge ‘fried egg’ blooms.  Hummingbird lovers will enjoy Salvia spathacea ‘Hummingbird Sage’ and Penstemon heterophyllus with its purple tubular flowers.  Butterfly enthusiasts appreciate our selection of verbena, including Verbena lilacina ‘De La Mina’ and several different milkweeds.  For sunny gardens, Ploughshares has manzanita and California lilac for use as ground covers as well as tall feature plants.  Ploughshares Nursery is a social enterprise of Alameda Point Collaborative and proceeds for sales are used to help maintain supportive housing for formerly homeless families and individuals. View the list of plants for sale here.
• Berkeley – U.C. Botanical Garden at Berkeley at 200 Centennial Drive.  You can view the list of native plants the Botanical Garden will have for sale here: http://ucbgcn.blogspot.com.  The Garden has a good number of handsome manzanita and California lilac; some tall, and some prostrate, for use as ground covers. Also available are a number of buckwheats, from the larger Saint Catherine’s lace down to smaller seaside varieties.  Other shrubs, such coffeeberry, lemonadeberry, pink flowering and fuschia-flowering currant, and sages will be available, as well as a number of vines, such as honeysuckle, Virgin’s bower, and wild grapes. For those who want color, there will be some nice flowering perennials.  For shade, come see wild ginger, columbine, yerba buena and large native coral bells, as well as some shrubs.  This sale benefits the U.C. Botanical Garden.
• Concord – Markham Nature Park and Arboreteum will sell native plants at 1202 La Vista Avenue, Concord. Come early for the best selection of native ornamental grasses, trees, shrubs, and perennials. The Arboretum has plants to satisfy the beginning gardener, as well as unusual plants to delight the plant collector. Among these are beautiful native bulbs, manzanitas, bee attracting sages, and hardy succulents. Garden talks: 11:00 and 2:00 “Top 10 plants for a native plant garden.” Proceeds of this plant sale support Markham Nature Park and Arboretum.
• Oakland – East Bay Wilds is located at 2777 Foothill Blvd., Oakland; note that the entrance is on 28th Ave. Owner Pete Veilleux grows more than four hundred kinds of proven natives that are particularly beautiful, reliable, and hard to find. Some of these are extremely difficult to propagate and therefore hard to find elsewhere, and Pete maintains a waiting list for these plants.  He also carries a wide selection of plants that he has experimented with and found useful for specific landscape problem areas, such as plants to grow between pavers, or fast ground covers that can outpace weeds.  Some of the plants East Bay Wilds regularly carries are hummingbird sage, hound’s tongue, wooly mule’s ears, Island bush poppy, wooly blue curls, rare and beautiful ferns, flannelbush, a fast-growing strain of western redbud, Sagehen strawberry, Barrie Coate flowering currants, fragrant golden currant, leafy reedgrass, burr marigold, purple three-awn, Marion Sampson hummingbird mint, Sonoma sage, Pickeringias (chapparal pea), Everett’s choice California fuchsia, prostrate coastal sage, many, many kinds of manzanitas, buckwheats, California lilac, penstemons, hybrid monkeyflowers, sedges, and a wide selection of sages. See the plant list here:/ View Flicker photos here.
• Richmond – Annie’s Annuals, 740 Market Ave. Richmond, (510) 215-1671.  Did you know that Annie’s grows, sells, and ships more than 275 different varieties of California native plants?   Use the directions below; Internet mapping sites, such as Mapquest and Google Maps will give you wrong directions! Take I-80 east toward Sacramento. Exit at San Pablo Dam Rd. (two exits past San Pablo Ave.) and make a left at the light. Turn right onto San Pablo Ave. Turn left at Church Lane, which becomes Market Ave. Go approx. 1.5 miles (through 2 lights — 23rd St. and Rumrill) and over 2 railroad tracks. “Annie’s” is on the left a few feet past the second set of tracks, where you will see the sign and large green fence. You will not see an address.
• Richmond – The Watershed Nursery, 601A Canal Blvd. Richmond, (510) 234-2222.  The Watershed Nursery’s plant selection includes many species that are found growing naturally around the Bay Area and are also superb for California gardens. These species are adapted to our particular microclimates and soils and provide important resources for local pollinators. The Watershed Nursery also carries a large selection of California Native cultivars grown specifically for the garden. If you need help selecting species for your site check out our Plant Finder and come visit the nursery in Point Richmond, where our experienced staff will help you pick the right plants for your conditions. View the Watershed Nursery’s Plant List here.

The Watershed Nursery will host two free, one hour talks:

Native Medicinal Plants:
10 am – 11 am

The talk will be given by Arcelia Moreno, an experienced Bay Area herbalist, and will cover the medicinal properties of a variety of plants native to California, as well as harvesting practices and preparation.  This talk will include both English and Spanish language components.

Native California Flora Pollination:
The birds and the bees
12 noon -1 pm

The talk will be given by Andrew Vare, a Watershed Nursery employee as well as a beekeeper with hives in the Napa Valley. The intention is to facilitate a discussion on the grass-roots movement to help all pollinators, driven by the crucial human interdependency. The talk will cover topics in native gardening and land management practices that are focused on helping bees, butterflies and birds, all of whom do such important work in the food web.