Lot size: 600 sq. ft. front garden and parking strip, 1,800 sq. ft. back garden, 90% native
Garden Age: Garden was installed in 2015
Years on the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour: New this year!
Showcase Feature
The paths in this beautiful, elegant, and mature garden, which was designed by Tim, are bordered by a variety of evergreen shrubs from the coastal chaparral community, such as manzanita, California lilac, and sages—white, Cleveland, and St. Catherine’s lace—that provide greenery and stability throughout the year.
The front garden has something in bloom almost year-round: the cream-to-pink blossoms of the manzanita are the first to appear, in late winter, delighting hummingbirds and the native bees that buzz pollinate it. Lavender-to-purple brodiaea’s and purple-to-blue California lilac bloom in the spring and summer. From late summer through fall drifts of fire-engine red fuchsia brighten the garden.
In the natural and mostly hands-off back garden are plants from the coastal prairie: pink clarkias, orange poppies, and a riot of yellow tarweeds that delight native bees in the spring and summer. Bright yellow native sunflowers provide bursts of color in the fall and attract finches, which glean seeds from the dried flower heads long past the time when we would think there would be nothing there to eat any longer. Mugwort and Sonoma and black sages, fuchsia and pipevine find the places they are happiest and tumble over each other in wild profusion.
Native shrubs, such as toyon, and a variety of heritage fruit trees (Babcock and Suncrest peach, Blenheim apricot, and Seckel pear) line the fence.
Tim’s garden, the nearby traffic circle, and the Park Blvd. triangle (the latter two planted and tended by Tim, and described below) are ecological stepping stones for birds, which flit from one site to the other.
Other Garden Attractions
• Check out the attractive traffic circle at the south end of the block (at the intersection of Grosvenor and Holman), which Tim planted with a buckeye, manzanita, sage, and fuchsia, and tends.
• You might want to bring a picnic lunch to enjoy on log seats in the oak-studded Park Blvd. triangle. Tim planted these stately coast live oaks. This former dumping ground (think washing machines and lots of trash), was cleaned up, officially adopted, planted, and is tended by Tim, and now contains manzanita, California lilac, coffeeberry, sage, buckwheat, monkeyflower, and a fescue meadow.
• Deadheading in Tim’s garden, and at the traffic circle and Park Blvd. triangle is kept to a minimum: dried flowerheads are left on the plants to provide food for birds.
• A large boulder in the front garden at the house creates visual interest.
• Tim grows oaks for use in restoration projects, and at times has 200 of them in the nursery in the back yard.
Gardening for Wildlife
Resident and migrating songbirds are seen in the garden, as well as Downy and Nuttall’s woodpeckers, Stellar jays, barn owls, and Cooper’s hawks. Innumerable native bees, including leaf-cutter, summer longhorn, sweat, and carpenter, buzz from flower to flower collecting pollen. Flocks of cedar waxwings visit the garden in winter to feed on the toyon berries. Towhees and Bewick’s wrens have nested in the grape.
A hanging birdbath in the front garden, and a small water fountain in the back provide birds with clean sources of water. These are cleaned frequently, and kept off the ground to protect the birds from cats.
Tim leaves the leaves—to improve the soil; provide protection for the pupae of butterflies and moths, which overwinter in leaf litter; and to avoid throwing away chrysalis’ and cocoons that are attached to dried leaves. Leaves are so valuable that Tim intercepts them in the gutter and uses them on his lot. Leaf and brush piles provide places in which small creatures can shelter: newts and salamanders spend their days resting in cool, shady areas under log piles, which Tim said, he, “never disturbs.”
Four songbird nesting boxes in the back yard invite avian friends to settle in and raise their families in this welcoming environment.
Keystone species (watch this talk by Doug Tallamy!)
Keystone species—our own, local ecological powerhouse plants— in this garden include vine maple, pink flowering currant, thimbleberry, California lilac, hazelnut, dogwood, manzanita, lupine, California sunflower, buckwheat, sage, coffeeberry, snowberry, sagebrush, madrone, and penstemon.
Garden Talks
12:00 “Immerse yourself in nature” by Tim Vendlinski
At least partially wheelchair accessible? No
Parking – Is allowed only on the east side of the street. Parking will be tight: be prepared to walk a block or two, and don’t block the neighbor’s driveways.
