Tree of Life Nursery - Saturday 31 March 2007

Tree of Life Nursery is located in San Juan Capistrano, approx 7 miles east on Ortega Highway.

I went to the San Diego Chapter sale earlier this month and found some great plants. There is no plant list available, but I'm sure it will be a good one.

http://www.occnps.org/

Saturday, March 31--Orange County Chapter
A portion of the days' profits will be donated to the chapters to support valuable programs

11:00 AM--Native Plants for Containers
Mike Evans, co-owner of Tree of Life Nursery, will present a talk and demonstration, free to the public, about container gardening with California native plants. Miniature habitats to attract birds and butterflies are easy when you select natives that thrive in containers. Learn some design basics, plant selection guidelines, and maintenance requirements.

After the talk, you can make your own "Habitat in Miniature" for a $20 fee. Containers and soil will be provided, along with a selection of plants from which to choose. To learn right now about some plants that are good for containers, click here to go to the Tree of Life website Sage Advice page and select Native Plants for Containers.

2:00 PM--Maintenance Tips for Home Gardeners--Caring for your California Native Plants
Dan Songster, Orange County Chapter, California Native Plant Society, will help you keep your gardens looking their best with practical advice about how to maintain a home garden. Emphasis will be placed on the small spaces and patio gardens that are common in Southern California.

Edited to add more location info.

This message was edited Mar 29, 2007 8:15 PM

Hi kaperc!

Thanks for the heads up -- DH and I drove down, went past the nursery, walked the San Juan Loop trail at a pretty fast clip (for us!) and still missed the afternoon talk on "maintenance", oh well.

Chatted with the reps of Orange County chapter and got on the e-mail list. Then I picked up a monkeyflower with plant that closely resembles the sticky monkeyflower but says it blooms in burgundy color (called "Alexandra"), and a plant of Phacelia campanularia that I hope will set seed (reseed) as it is an annual...

That was our big day!

~'spin!~

I was there for the container talk at 11. Then I wandered around -- A LOT! Came home with a Trichostema lanatum, several Oenothera speciosa (which are going into containers), a bulrush and some fiber optic grass for the pond, and Dendromecon harfordii. I was a happy camper. They all disappear into our landscape, but we've learned to think ahead.

I love monkeyflower - we have several mimulus guttatus around the pond and I hope they do OK with our summer heat. The bluebells are very pretty - I really like blue flowers. The nursery looked completely different than when I was there at the beginning of the month - what a difference a little rain and some warm temps can make!

Glad you had a nice time.

That's funny, I almost brought home a Trichostema lanatum there two (or was it three) years ago when there with Blooms -- but we used their "counter copy" of the Western Book and it said NEEDS PERFECT DRAINAGE... and what I have is perfect clay. So put it back.

Have already killed one sticky monkeyflower -- read somewhere (not going to swear it was where I bought it, now) not to water it AT ALL -- I did a little, I think, and have thought until now that I killed it with that little water (!) -- but the lady from CNPS told me today that it will need a little water (and this is a much bigger plant, too), for a YEAR then tapering off. Or at least until winter rains, if we get any...

Dendromecon -- that's the large shrub by their driveway that isn't Fremontodendron, isn't it? You must have a lot more room than I do!

~'spin!~ of the postage-stamp yards.

I've grown Trichostema lanatum in clay and it did fine (at least for 2 years, then I sold the house so it could be dead now for all I know!). I think the reason they say it needs perfect drainage is because most people are going to end up watering it in the summertime, and if you water it a lot in the summer and don't have perfect drainage then it probably will die.

As far as watering natives--the best thing to do is plant them in the fall, they'll get themselves nicely established over the winter, then you'll need to water them a little bit during the first summer, and after that they should be OK on their own. If you plant them in the spring, then they'll need somewhat regular water during the first summer, then they get the nice winter rains, then they may still need occasional water the following summer but after that they'll be fine on their own. Personally I've had trouble planting natives in spring/summer, it's tricky to give them enough water that they don't die from sun/heat but not so much that they rot, so I've sworn I'm never going to plant natives again except in the fall.

Yes, 'spin...and I agree, ecrane3. We do have lots of room and I prefer to plant in fall/winter.

When we moved in 3 years ago, we had an empty 1.25 acre lot on a slope, cut and fill to create the flat spot for our little house. It's a long skinny lot, situated east to west. The length of it is almost completely southern exposure. The only trees are in a woodland at what we call the back of our lot, behind a fence of prickly pear (Some day in another life, perhaps we'll do something with it.), and some lovely pines on the perimeter. The rest was weeds - mostly mustard and dove weed, with all the other usual culprits.

The soil is wonderful in some places and in others it is unbelievable - clay, dg, streaks of high iron content - we never know what we'll find. The first year we had to plant in the summer, because we needed to try to get erosion control underway around the house. Over 120 1-gallon plants - we lost a lot to gophers. The little bitty slope that faces east at the back of the house is lush now. The only real failure there is the fremontodendron, which I think I compromised by giving it summer water - kind of hard not to while I'm water the other stuff . It's about four feet tall, but has tiny leaves and has never bloomed. The manzanita, salvias (man-eating pozo blue & bee's bliss), redbud, are all happy.

We don't have perfect drainage as a whole, but there are places that do, especially that big south-facing slope at the end of the house. We also have breezes - our house is called Breezedale - and that slope is like a wind tunnel at times.

Given that we have so much area to cover, we plant when we can afford it, when we have the time to tend to the newbies, in small numbers so we don't overwhelm ourselves, and almost exclusively natives. We prefer to plant after the rains start in fall/winter, because the ground softens up - otherwise digging is back breaking and we have had to use a jackhammer in the past. But we need to do small plantings in the spring, too. We're starting to learn what is successful and what isn't, we've planted more trees (Catalina ironwood, palo verde, chilopsis), and John built a pond - mainly because he loves them (he's from England), but also to cover some dirt!

It's amazing how much time, money, and physical work is involved planting this much land. We didn't think it would be THIS hard, but would do it again in a heartbeat. Sorry to be so wordy, but it reminds me how much success we have had, even with all the failures. We love our home so much.

I'm jealous--I would love to have that amount of land! I know it would be a lot of work, but it would be so great to have all that space to yourself. I'm constantly running out of room to plant everything I want, even though I doubled the size of my lot when I moved last summer (now I have a huge 2/10 of an acre!). I had 2 acres when I lived in Ohio and it was so wonderful, maybe someday I'll be able to afford that here! I guess I could have it now if I wanted to spend hours every day in traffic to and from work, but for now at least I'll stick with the small lot and the short commute (plus the cheaper land is all farther east from here where it gets too hot in the summers and I would melt!)

We looked and looked for a lot - we wanted under an acre - but found this one and fell in love with it. We're 10 miles from the beach in a river valley and the breezes we get are mostly from the ocean - except when they turn around and become the horrid Santa Ana winds. Just about as far east as we care to go, too. My DH gets to work in about 25 minutes. We're also part way between the two major freeways from L.A. to San Diego. The only downside is that our cross street is a highway - prone to a lot of traffic accidents - so if there's a problem there we can't get in or out! It's due for major reconstruction, and that will have it's pluses and minuses, too.

Don't blame you for wanting the shorter commute, ecrane3 - driving long distances everyday is a terrible waste of life!

Got everything planted today. Now we have to get weeds sprayed. Our next big project is to plant a screen along the fence as a buffer for the highway - several more ironwood trees, big ceanothus, manzanita, and who knows what all in between. That will be about it for the year!