Product Description

Inspirational, practical, and easy to use, this book was created with the aim of conveying the awesome diversity and beauty of California's native plants and demonstrating how they can be brought into ecologically sound, attractive, workable, and artful gardens. Structured around major California plant communities--bluffs, redwoods, the Channel Islands, coastal scrub, grasslands, deserts, oak woodlands, mixed evergreen woodlands, riparian, chaparral, mountain meadows, and wetlands--the book's twelve chapters each include sample plans for a native garden design accompanied by original drawings, color photographs, a plant list, tips on successful gardening with individual species, and more. Both residential and professional gardeners will learn the benefits of going native with gardens that require less water and fewer fertilizers, attract wildlife, engage the senses, create a sense of place, and, at the same time, preserve our rich natural heritage.
Designing Native California Gardens includes:
* More than 600 selected native species recommended for the garden
* More than 300 photographs of native plants, natural plant communities, and residential native gardens
* Recommended places to visit for viewing each plant community

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78822 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
"This book not only tells you all about hundreds of these beautiful plants but -- most important -- how and where to deploy them to great effect."--San Jose Mercury News

From the Inside Flap
"An excellent how-to book on California native plant landscaping . . . with plans, photographs, and plant lists which are sure to fire the imagination of any gardener."--Arvind Kumar, California Native Plant Society

About the Author
Glenn Keator, a California plant specialist, is author of Introduction to Trees of the San Francisco Bay Area (UC Press), The Life of an Oak, Plants of the East Bay Parks, and Complete Garden Guide to the Native Perennials of California. Alrie Middlebrook is the founder and president of Middlebrook Gardens in San Jose, California, a design company that specializes in California native gardens. She is author of Eating California. They have been hiking California and teaching classes on California native plants for thirteen years.

Customer Reviews

Great guidebook!
As a beginner with CA natives I found this to be the book I was seeking. There are good explanations of the state's plant communities, examples of design plans, guidance on how to implement a plan for that community and good photos of real landscaping and the plants. The plant selections presented for each community have good descriptions and and seem from my weekly increasing experience to be those that succeed in home landscaping. I refer to it all the time as I take on areas of my yard to restore. North, south, east, west our yards are complex. This book helps one figure them out relative to CA natives.

Colorful new gardening book focuses on state's native plants
Bay Area botanist Glenn Keator and San Jose horticulturalist and designer Alrie Middlebrook are on a mission. They want to convince Californians to plan and create gardens with native plant species in mind.

Why?

As Keator writes, "the most compelling reason is to create a sense of place. & What better way is there to remind ourselves of this special geographic region we call home than to recreate, in our own yards, the native gardens found in the wild? Anyone can have a garden with roses (mostly hybrids from China and Europe), petunias (from South America), fuchsias (from mountainous South and Central America), and impatiens (many from Africa)."

Besides, says Keator, native plants are already adapted to the area and likely will survive. They attract native pollinators and reduce the amount of water and pesticides required. Keator and Middlebrook make a convincing case in "Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens" ($27.50 in paperback from Phyllis M. Faber/University of California Press).

More than 300 full-color photographs enrich the book and several appendices provide sources of natives and a planting calendar.

The book is a practical exploration of a dozen plant communities in the state, several of which are well represented locally. Each chapter begins with an overview and is anchored by a diagram and explanation of one of Middlebrook's own garden projects or concepts.

Readers are provided with design notes, a scope of work for the given project and a rich compilation of plants to use. The goal is not to duplicate Middlebrook's work but rather to appreciate the beauty that can be created using California natives.

The authors conclude their chapters with an annotated list of "places to visit" to see the native plant communities in the wild. The Oak Woodland chapter, for example, pictures a "carpet of Ithuriel's spear (Triteleia laxa)" on Table Mountain; readers are directed to Loafer Creek State Park at Lake Oroville to observe "blue oak woodland mixed with gray pines and scattered interior live oaks." Keator notes that "many fortunate gardeners already have oaks on their property, yet many ornamentals require the summer water that slowly kills these magnificent trees. California's oak woodlands provide a fine palette of plants perfectly adapted to grow under oaks."

In the Grasslands chapter, Bear Valley in Colusa County features "glueseed, goldfields, royal larkspur, creamcups and owl's clover"; Feather Falls, an example of mixed-evergreen forest, presents such understory plants as western mock-orange and Sierra fawn lily.

And then there's the ponderosa pine. A sense of place, indeed.

Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

The Perfect Book for Any Californian Who Wants to Save the Environment in Their Own Backyard
This book is excellent, with many good photographic examples of complete native landscape. It also set for an excellent philosophy for landscape design for the both the use of native and non-native plants. However it really shouldn't be thought of as a complete source for native gardening. I would also suggest that you pick up 'California Native Plants for the Garden' by Carol Bornstein, David Fross, and Bart O'Brien. Even between these two books all of the possibilities for beautiful California native plants and landscapes created using them have not yet been fully explored, but these books are an excellent start.