Lot size: 1,700 sq. ft. front garden and 1,800 sq. ft. back garden, 80% native
Garden Age: The front garden was installed in 2015, and the back in 2021
Years on the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour:
Showcase Feature
The charming front garden contains a waterfall, stream, and shallow pond, which birds love to bathe in, and Dan and Lisa love to relax by. The delicate leaves and sky-blue flowers of our native flax brighten the garden from March through late summer, blending beautifully with the arching blue-green foliage and sprays of wheat-colored seed heads of the Mendocino reed grass. Evergreen prostrate California lilac functions as groundcover, delighting the bees in spring with its beautiful blue flowers, and everyone else the rest of the year with its glossy, dark green leaves.
The back garden features an inviting waterfall, stream, and shallow pond. The redwood that graces the back garden provides shade for chaparral currant, snowberry, other woodland plants, and Lisa and Dan, who delight in relaxing in their now-beautiful back garden.
Both gardens are the creation of Kelly Marshall of Kelly Marshall Garden Design.
Other Garden Attractions
• This garden is contoured with gentle undulations that work with the natural slope of the terrain.
• The meandering flagstone path in the front garden imparts a woodsy, natural ambiance.
• Weeds are pulled by hand; no pesticides are used in this—or any—Tour garden.
• Check out the outdoor shower in the back garden.
• Find out how you can receive a rebate of up to $2,000 to remove and replace your lawn with a water-wise garden! At this garden, flyers will be available with information on the Contra Costa Water District’s Lawn to Garden Rebate and free Landscape Design Assistance Program. If you include 70% or more natives in your plan you can have your own garden on the Tour!
Gardening for Wildlife
Three types of manzanita—the tall, purple-barked ‘Louis Edmunds’, wine-red barked ‘Sentinel’, and the low-growing ‘Big Sur’—attract wildlife. Birds adore the manzanita berries, hummingbirds, butterflies, and moths sip the nectar, and bees collect pollen from the cream-colored to pink urn-shaped blossoms. Chestnut-backed chickadees, lesser goldfinches, mourning doves, quail, and black-headed grosbeaks visit the garden for seeds, nesting material, dirt baths, and water. A gray fox checks out the garden in the evening. The large moss rock boulders scattered throughout the garden are not only attractive, but they also provide places for lizards to lounge.
Keystone species in this garden (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include California lilac, manzanita, lupine, sage, buckwheat, and penstemon.
