Lot size: 2,500 sq. ft. front garden
Garden Age: Garden was installed in stages, beginning in 2017
Years on the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour: New this year!
Showcase Feature
When Kat, owner of Kat Weiss Landscape Design, moved to the new house in 2017 she was not fazed by the plastic lawn, or the mature non-native and ecologically unproductive Chinese pistache and pepper trees, or the garden beds full of breath of heaven and star jasmine, which are also of little or no value to wildlife. (Well, maybe Kat was daunted; just a little.) What she wanted was a garden of beauty that reflected the climate in which we live, the plants she would see when out on hikes, and a place that provided food, shelter and nesting places for birds, butterflies, and native bees.
To avoid shocking the neighbors, Kat has chosen a Zen-like approach to transforming this garden; she is removing the non-natives little by little and replacing them with our own local keystone species, which provide the best habitat for our winged friends. Newly installed native plants that are of the greatest value to wildlife include blue and coast live oaks, a variety of manzanitas, California lilacs, currants, sages, and buckwheats.
Other Garden Attractions
- Stone recycled from a dismantled water feature elsewhere on site was reused to form a retaining wall to create better drainage.
- A baby blue oak will be the flagship tree on the property after the non-natives are transitioned out. Coast live oaks are now popping up around the property.
- Firecracker red California fuchsia and bright-yellow goldenrod ensure that color lasts well into fall.
- Grey-toned California sages contrast well against bright green black sage and sticky monkeyflower.
Gardening for Wildlife
No pesticides are used in this—or any!—Tour garden. Seed heads of buckwheat, sage, goldenrod, blue grama grass and more are left for any and all critters to enjoy. As a result, song birds visit the garden to glean seeds in the summer and fall, and they forage throughout the garden all year long, searching for insects. Cardboard was used under the mulch as weed control instead of weed fabric to allow worms, fungi, and mycorrhizae to flourish.
Videos of Kat’s garden
Transitioning from non-native ornamentals to California native plants
