Planning a year-round garden - Santa Cruz Sentinel

ON GARDENING

Planning a year-round garden

Island pink yarrow (Achillea millefolium ‘Island Pink’). This cultivar, native to Santa Cruz Island, is distinguished from the common white yarrow by its bright pink flowers. Dark green foliage is topped with clusters of bright pink flowers on 1 1/2-foot tall stems, over a long season. This is a nectar plant for butterflies and bees. Prefers sun on the coast and part shade on inland sites. Grows 6 to 12 inches tall and 2 to 3 feet wide. This perennial spreads by rhizomes. PHOTOS COURTESY OF TOM KARWIN

California fuchsia (Epilobium canum var. latifolium ‘Everett’s Choice’). This evergreen perennial grows 6 to 12 inches tall and 2 to 3 feet wide, with small silvery leaves that hug the ground, making it among the lowest of all California fuchsias. Its red-orange tubular flowers float above the foliage. Hummingbirds rely upon the flowers as a food source in late summer and early autumn, when little else is blooming. As with all California fuchsias, a hard winter cut-back will produce a denser plant the following year. A member of the evening-primrose plant family (Onagraceae).

Santa Barbara daisy (Erigeron karvinskianus). This trailing groundcover grows 1 to 2 feet tall and spreads 3 to 5 feet wide. The small white daisies with a touch of pink bloom almost year-round. Bees, tiny beneficial flies and wasps are attracted to the flowers. It prefers a coastal climate, and the interior heat of summer makes it shut down. When the weather cools again in fall, this plant perks up and blooms until hard frost. A member of the sunflower plant family (Asteraceae). The genus includes 100-plus California native species and cultivars; native to Mexico.

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Now, one week into the summer season, gardeners can observe the transition from spring to summer blossoming.

Blossoms follow the seasons, not the calendar, and gardeners enjoy the garden’s evolution throughout the year.

The image gallery features a selection of summer bloomers in my garden. These are California natives, except one from Mexico. Some plants have extended bloom periods, with peaks during the summer months. That’s true of many plants called summer bloomers.

Developing a year-round garden involves searching for plants, selecting them and allocating time to acquire and install them for seasonal displays of blossoms.

Initial landscape design

A preliminary landscape design will narrow the search for plants.

Preparing the design begins with measuring the target garden’s size. For this exercise, we assume a level area with good soil and full sun exposure. Some target gardens will have a slope, rocks, poor drainage or partial or complete shade. Because such issues influence plant selection, the planner must consider them.

Given the site’s specifications, project the number of plants needed to complete the design. Consider the spacing between plants and the width of mature plants.

Then, indicate the height of plants needed for the design. For example, the design of an island bed typically features taller plants in the center. In contrast, a bed positioned against a building, wall or fence usually includes taller plants at the back. Note the number of plants of each height needed for the design.

This stage of the process should yield a list of the number of plants of each size, along with notes on cultivation requirements, such as those that prefer partial shade.

Plant search

We focus on California native plants. A year-round garden can also succeed with plants native to other Mediterranean climates, which thrive in Monterey Bay area gardens. The moderate local environment also supports other exotic plants, so a gardener attracted to less common varieties can include an extensive range of plants in a year-round garden.

We begin this topic with California native plants because they grow easily and support wildlife. The California Native Plant Society’s native plant database, Calscape, is an excellent tool for planning any garden and is well-constructed for planning a year-round garden of California native plants.

See “Advance your gardening knowledge” below for ideas on searching for plants suitable for a Mediterranean climate.

Calscape (calscape.org) includes a searchable database of 8,549 California’s native plants, including several cultivars. You can explore the site’s various pull-down menus, but for the present project, click on “Explore native plants.”

To begin the search, enter your ZIP code in the “I’m searching for” window. This action will narrow the search to plants that are well-suited for your garden. For a Monterey Bay area garden, the ZIP code entry would exclude plants that are best for California’s desert or mountain areas.

Then, review the extensive list of filters for your search. Each of the filters has a pull-down list of options to focus your search on the kinds of plants for your specific garden plan.

For this column’s project, planning a year-round garden, select your preferred option under the “Flowering Season” filter. Eventually, you will conduct a separate search of each option under this filter.

For a planting bed of small-to-moderate size, consider the options under the “Plant Type” filter. My preference would be to filter the search to “Perennial,” but you might prefer one or more filtering options.

A larger-scale project might include “Tree” and “Shrub” among the options.

Recall that today’s “Initial landscape design” section invited consideration of the plant cultivation issues of your target garden. If you have particular cultivation issues, include the appropriate options for the filters “Sun,” “Water,” “Special Uses” and “Soil Drainage.”

Most garden planning projects using Calscape will require multiple searches to compile a comprehensive list of plants that meet the project’s specific size and cultivation needs. A year-round project should require separate lists for each of the four seasons.

Once you have generated a Calscape list of plants of your interest, use the “Options” button at the top right of your results to select one of the options to export an Excel spreadsheet or print plant labels or plant signs for future reference.

You can click on each of the plants listed by Calscape for the plant’s description and overview of its characteristics.

To proceed to the plant acquisition stage, visit the Calscape page for each of the plants you would like to add to your garden and click on “View Availability at Nursery.”

Before ordering plants, determine when you should install them and when you can accomplish the installation. Ideally, you would acquire and install summer bloomers when they have the time to establish in the garden and develop blooms for the summer. This project takes schedule planning.

Creating a year-round garden is a lengthy project, a significant achievement and a great satisfaction.

Advance your gardening knowledge

Calscape is an extraordinary resource for garden planning. We have not found a comparable resource for planning a garden with other Mediterranean climate plants. The internet does have some relevant and valuable links, as listed below.

• Sherman Library and Gardens: Mediterranean Climates Garden Plant List

thesherman.org/mediterranean-garden-plant-list

• UC Master Gardener Program of Contra Costa County: Mediterranean Garden

tinyurl.com/3sne43ct

• The National Botanic Garden of Wales: Top 50 Mediterranean Plants for Pollinators

tinyurl.com/mjurrx7f

Another approach to searching for Mediterranean climate plants other than California natives is to utilize artificial intelligence. My trial of Chatgpt.com began with the prompt, “List perennial shrubs that are native to Mexico.” To narrow the list, I used a second prompt, “Suggest Mexican shrubs for a Mediterranean climate garden in the Monterey Bay area.”

Similar prompts could generate lists for plants from the Mediterranean Basin, South Africa, Australia’s southwestern coast or Chile’s central coast.

Enjoy your garden!

Tom Karwin is a past president of Friends of the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum and the Monterey Bay Iris Society, a past president and lifetime member of the Monterey Bay Area Cactus and Succulent Society, a Lifetime UC Master Gardener (certified 1999-2009), past board member of the Santa Cruz Hostel Society and active with the Pacific Horticultural Society and other garden-related societies. To view photos from his garden, visit facebook.com/ongardeningcom- 566511763375123. To review the archive of recent On Gardening columns, visit santacruzsentinel.com and search “Karwin.” Go to ongardening.com to review columns from 2012-2020 (and soon) from 2025. Send comments or questions by email to gardening@karwin.com.