Lot size: 400 sq. ft. front, 400 sq. ft. side and 1,200 sq. ft. back garden, 90% native

Garden Age: Garden was installed in 2024

Years on the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour: New this year!

Parking
Park on West Shell Avenue

Showcase Feature
The parking strip in front of the house is bordered by fast-growing deergrass, a perennial that puts up graceful, two-foot-long golden plumes when in flower. Songbirds visit for its seeds. Behind the fence is a small secluded seating area planted with an attractive combination of grasslike, evergreen gray rush and the aromatic yerba buena.

Substantial mounds encircle the back garden—providing visual interest, and the drainage that most natives need—and they will create a privacy screen when mature. The mounds are planted with an attractive combination of apricot mallow, purple-flowering California lilac, lavender pitcher sage, red-flowering spice bush, fragrant low-growing yellow wooly sunflower, and yarrow, with its ferny leaves and cream-colored flowers—and more.

Other Garden Attractions
• Large, glazed pots contain wooly blue curls.
• The fruit trees (Bing cherry, Navel orange, apricot, lime) and the natives are on a separate irrigation zones.
• Rosy buckwheat flourish near the house.

Gardening for Wildlife
Hummingbirds, finches, butterflies and lizards frequent this garden. A bird bath provides much-needed water for our avian friends.

Dutchman’s pipevine waits hopefully for the large, iridescent blue-black pipevine swallowtail butterfly: pipevine is the only plant it can lay its eggs on.

Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants—in this garden include California lilac, buckwheat, native strawberry, and penstemon.

At least partially wheelchair accessible? No