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Simply put, incorporating native plants into residential and commercial landscaping builds habitat for birds, pollinators, lizards, bugs, etc. Additionally, using native plants will significantly reduce irrigation requirements and fertilizer and pesticide use. California cholla, aka snake cholla, aka cane cholla, grows in long snakelike cylinders that can both get very tall and sprawl to cover a lot of ground.
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Add to this the need to shape hedges, edge and mow lawns, and cultivate seasonal planter beds, and gas-powered equipment comes into play. Did you know it’s against California law to kill or have rare, threatened, or endangered plant species? The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) can give you a permit to kill or have these species for things like science, education, or management reasons. When selecting plants, it is imperative to know the site and its nuances. Once this information is gathered, then plant selection can begin.
Hoary California Fuchsia
If you’re just getting started on your native garden, here are 32 of the best native plants for California landscapes. Foothill native Our Lord's Candle succulent is grown for its long, sharp-tip silvery-green blades that give it texture and structure. Spring bloom, when it occurs, is a tall spike covered in creamy white flowers. This beautiful perennial native poppy is often called the "fried egg plant" for its enormous white crepe papery flowers with their golden yellow centers. Matilija poppy spreads by aggressive underground runners, so plant it on a slope or other location with room to run. Informal gardens are not usually about focusing on a particular plant.
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As a shrub or small tree, it can grow very tall very quickly under proper care, and its white flowers attract butterflies and bees in summer. This wildflower has many cultivars in coastal Northern and Central California, with spring blooms in blue, purple, pink, white, or yellow. Some varieties grow in clumps and work well as a colorful groundcover in landscapes. The California fuchsia is a species of willowherb with bright red, thin flowers that somewhat resemble the flowers of a true fuchsia plant (thus the common name). It’s sometimes called the hummingbird flower because its flowers, which bloom in summer and fall, are extremely attractive to hummingbirds. Low growing, mat-forming perennial hummingbird sage has fruity fragrant leaves and stalks of intense pink flowers in spring.
Buckwheat blooms in late spring with rounded clusters of tiny flowers that look like a puff ball from far away, then keeps the flowers until fall, when they fade from white or pink to orange or brown. Lemonade berry grows as either a shrub or small tree, with more upright and tree-like growth inland and more low, sprawling growth in coastal areas. Whether you use this plant in your landscaping as a hedge or specimen tree, it will produce small red fruits that are an important food source for local wildlife such as birds and small mammals. Lemonade berry is closely related and grows similarly to another California native plant, sugar bush (Rhus ovata). California sagebrush (only one of the state’s native Artemisia species) has small, hairy leaves in light green or gray and sparse flower clusters ranging in color from white to yellow.
(Left) The combination of blue stone edging set in crisp right angles. Carefully manicured flower borders create a formal sensibility that's easy to replicate. Formal garden borders bring a precision to a space which allows each plant to shine and be admired. They’re also an ideal solution for smaller spaces such as courtyards or tight spaces often found between buildings and walls. Here are a few examples of formal gardens scaled for a residential backyard. Watercolor vector wreath with green eucalyptus leaves and flowers .

California Poppy
(Upper left) Hedged by a perfectly spaced row of boxwood globes and filled with peonies. This is an example of how romantic a formal border can be. That said, it pays to know a bit about basic garden border styles. When it comes to border styles, it's not always about what's in it as much as how it's built. Here is a selection of four-star and five-star reviews from customers who were delighted with the products they found in this category.
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Plants tend to spread by runners so give it room to roam. If you need a little help in that department, contact your local lawn care pro for help. They’ve got the expertise and know-how” to implement your native plant ideas. It is true that a "cottage" garden border is the most likely example of an informal garden. In these three examples, there’s not a rose or delphinium in sight, but each is totally informal.
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More specifically, it is important to understand which “zone” a person lives in when selecting plants. From there, it is equally important to understand what microclimates exist at the landscape site. If done correctly with calibrated equipment, pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizer applications can have a very low environmental impact. However, residential use of these products by the untrained community and untrained landscape maintenance workers can easily lead to excessive use and subsequent runoff into waterways. The adverse effects worsen if the irrigation habits of nonprofessionals lead to excessive water consumption, which creates even more runoff.
I suggest talking to the technicians at your local nursery to see if their stock will fit your needs and preferences. My hope is that, with newer irrigation controls hitting the market and better training for landscape workers, some of these problems will improve. With good information so easily accessible by the general public, I hope the homeowner behaviors improve, too. As for information, I have been referring more and more people to reach out to their local ag extension offices and master gardener programs.
If this speaks to you, chances are you love balance and clean lines in general. For more information about native California plants and why you should consider adding them to your garden, check out the California Native Plant Society (CNPS) native plant database. Ornamental plants require more water and are much more susceptible to insect damage and disease. Managing pests (including weeds) and disease in ornamentals requires more labor and typically includes some form of herbicide or pesticide use. Plus, ornamentals typically need to be on a fertilizer program.
This beautiful mounding perennial features tight, roundish leaves and peglike flower spikes topped in tufts of rose pink flower clusters from summer to fall. This native selection is beloved by birds and butterflies. This smallish agave grows as a colony of succulent rosettes, whose dusky green blades are edged in sharp teeth. Mother plants die after flowering but leave pups behind.
It is attractive to hummingbirds and is a great understory plant. This exemplary species among California’s many native bush mallows produces light pink flowers in elongated clusters during summer. Many cultivars of the chaparral mallow, growing mostly near the coast in Central and Southern California, vary in size and appearance. California has 18 native sage species that thrive in different parts of the state, some of which are white sage (pictured), musk sage, and desert sage.