Going native Going native (May 21, 2004)

Enticements for a native garden sanctuary

By Sue Dremann

Imagine a garden sanctuary filled with native flowers and shrubs; with butterflies, dragonflies and hummingbirds darting from flower to flower; a chorus of tree frogs serenading in the warm evening sunset.

During this year's Going Native Garden Tour, visitors gathered ideas for their own personal native sanctuary. The second annual tour took about 1,300 people on a tour of 30 private gardens located from Redwood City to San Jose.

Melanie Cross' one-acre Palo Alto hilltop garden, included in the tour, surrounds her Tuscan villa-inspired home with a 50/50 mix of Mediterranean and California native plants. Cross chose Mediterranean plants with the same summer- and drought-tolerance characteristics as natives.

She wanted to create a truly native California landscape, complete with native fauna. "I wanted to use a lot of native plants to attract birds. To have birds you must have insects," she said. Her garden is filled with native bees, dragonflies and skippers.

And the birds have come. A Great Blue heron is a frequent visitor to the pond and garden, as are a pair of Mallard ducks. They can be seen sunning themselves on a rock in the pond along with her turtle, a red-eared slider.

The pond, a small waterfall and hand-built stream are the main focal point of the garden. A biofilter -- an eight-foot pit filled with lava rock -- entices natural bacteria that fill in the porous rocks' spaces. The beneficial bacteria eat algae, keeping the pond and stream clear.

Converting the orchard and dry grassland into a riparian corridor required Cross to go with the flow, adjusting her thinking to understand the changing dynamics of a wetland area. When the area near the pond turned into a moist meadow, she added marsh lupines, columbine and ranger's buttons, which create brushstrokes of color in the meadow in spring.

Figuring out what belongs there was largely a matter of experimentation, which Cross has engaged in since 1998. Plants that do well in the clay soil are what guides her, she said.

Sometimes, nature makes the decisions. Design-wise, a "volunteer" redbud sapling couldn't have appeared in a better place than if it had been consciously planted. Its graceful, curving red trunk and branches add a sculptural focal point to the meadow and pond area.

To learn more about the Going Native Garden Tour for 2005, and other native plant exhibits for this year, visit www.goingnativegardentour.com. Call (408) 274-6965 or e-mail info@goingnativegardentour.com.

E-mail a friend a link to this story.