Lot size:
Garden Age:
Years on the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour: New this year!
Showcase Feature
Susan, who has been attending the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour since its inception in 2005, had long yearned for a native plant garden that would attract wildlife.
However, when she and Dennis moved into Susan’s childhood home they were challenged by the garden, which had been engulfed by a sea of weeds. After some experimentation they realized they didn’t have enough knowledge about how to design and install hardscape, or how to choose the appropriate native plants. Happily, they found Sallie Bryan of 4B Garden Design, who designed and installed a garden that would attract birds, bees, bugs, and butterflies. Sallie repurposed the hundred-year-old tumbledown rock walls that had previously terraced the slope; these stones are now enjoying a new life as the backbone of a 25′ long stream that emerges from a seep and tumbles down the hillside, cascading into several pools before spilling into a pond.
Other Garden Attractions
• The sound of water flowing down multiple small waterfalls attracts wildlife, as well as people.
• Fifty species of California native perennials will attract a variety of songbirds, butterflies, and other insects once the garden is established.
Gardening for Wildlife
Birds seen in the garden include hermit thrushes, ruby-crowned kinglets, brown towhees, gold- and white-crowned sparrows, titmice, juncos, and Bewick’s wrens. Numerous keystone species—plants on which butterflies and moths can lay their eggs—have been included in this garden. These include manzanitas, sages, California lilac, buckwheats, cream bush, currants and asters.
2,640 sq.ft. back garden, 95% native
Garden was installed in the winter of 2020
Video
“Getting started with a native plant garden: filmed in Susan and Dennis’ garden” by Susan Billings and landscape designer Sallie Bryan
