Bringing Back the Natives: 2026

Since 2020, the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour has been available in both in-person and online formats, in response to COVID. This year the tour returned to its original format—available only in person! This would be my first time to actually visit the beautiful gardens (up to now I've only seen them via Zoom or YouTube). I immediately thought of my Aunt Char, and invited her to experience several of the gardens with me. Bayside tours were available on Saturday, and Inland tours were available on Sunday.

Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour is back for 2026!

With 72 gardens featured on the tour, it is important to have a plan. I don't think it would be possible to visit them all over the two-day period! Luckily the Bringing Back the Natives team provides excellent resources for identifying your top priorities. Planning materials include garden descriptions, maps showing the location of gardens, a downloadable Google map with all the garden sites identified, and a matrix showing all the features for each garden and green home. Once you register, you receive the addresses for the garden. When putting together our custom tour, I selected several gardens in the Albany and El Cerrito area (Bayside). The gardens ranged from close to the coast to all the way up into the hills.

Native plants in full bloom

Dutchman's Pipevine with informative signage

Pipeline swallowtail caterpillar (black and orange)

The first gardens that we visited were close to the coast and rich with native plants that thrived in their environments. Many of the gardens posted laminated signs that identify the plant, provide habitat and host information, and often a QR code for obtaining more information. For example, we saw signs for Dutchman's Pipevine (Aristolochia californica), which indicated the vine is a host for the pipevine swallowtail butterfly.

Aunt Char studying the plants that surround a water feature

A water feature adds so much to the landscape

This yard has chickens!

Further up in the hills, we saw more native plants all with informative signage. One home had installed black-out shades that protect birds from flying into the windows.

The black-out shades mitigate birds from hitting the windows

Native plants growing in the yard ,with helpful signage

Monarch chrysalis hanging on a raised bed (what a beautiful color)!

After several gardens, Aunt Char and I retreated to Fat Apples in El Cerrito for refreshment. We each had a slice of olallieberry/raspberry pie topped with French vanilla ice cream and a big glass of water to restore our energy. We have enjoyed many garden visits together over the years (I think Filoli is our favorite), as well as excursions to the San Francisco Garden Show at the Cow Palace in Daly City and the San Mateo County Event Center in San Mateo. Neither of us are particularly good at gardening, but we are both passionate about seeing them!

Hillside garden with hardscape and paths

Shady hillside plantings provide a serene entry way

Landscape with a view (notice the Bushmallow shrub)

Once rejuvenated we headed higher up into the hills for our final garden stop. This property had commanding views of the bay, great hardscape and paths, and the most serene plantings to the home's hillside entrance. We were  quite taken with the Eastern Bewildering Bushmallow shrub with its lovely pink flowers and sage green foliage (note to self: find out where this native plant is sold).

Native plants live here!

Aunt Char and I had so much fun visiting gardens on the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour. We saw beautiful plants, innovative ways to handle challenging garden sites, and wonderful garden details. We learned a lot from this first experience visiting the gardens in person. We'll use that experience next year to visit more Bayside gardens, and expand our range out to the Inland gardens.

Dye Project: Bolete with Titanium Oxalate

For my second mushroom dyeing project, I again decided to use the Boletus edulis that had popped up under the oak tree in our yard after fall and winter rains, and to recycle another cotton dish towel in my stash. The dish towel had been mordanted with alum, and I planned to use titanium oxalate as a mordant additive for this dye experiment.

A colony of Boletus edulis under the oak tree

Greenish-yellow mushroom underside (click on the picture to see the pores)

The dye color for B. edulis comes from the mushroom cap underside, which is very spongy. I separated the spongy underside to harvest the dye material. The color is greenish-yellow.

Extract the Dye

For this project, I had previously extracted the dye, and divided it for three different projects (with the plan to use alum, titanium oxalate, and ferrous sulfate as three separate mordant additives). For information about extracting the dye, see Dye Project: Bolete with Alum, the "Extract the Dye" section. Note that by this time, a film of mold had started to grow on the surface of the dye liquid, but I just skimmed it off. The pH of the liquid still registered 3 (moderately acid).

Dye the Fabric

Dye the fabric with the mushroom dye liquid. For this experiment, I recycled a cotton dish towel that had been mordanted with alum and then solar-dyed with Pittosporum capsules, which had produced a pale yellow (see Dye Project: Pittosporum). I used a third of the dye and added titanium oxalate as a mordant additive, saving the rest of the dye extract for one more future experiment.

Titanium produces a distinct palette (for example it gives a bright orange when combined with tannin). Some Boletus spp., including Boletus edulis, contain tannins among their bioactive compounds. More on titanium oxalate.

Boletus dye pot with titanium oxalate additive

Place the extracted mushroom dye in a dye pot and stir in 1/2 tsp titanium oxalate (.49 ounce) as an additive (7-10% WOF). I tested the pH of the liquid, which now registered 2 (strongly acid). Meanwhile, place the dish towel in clear water to soak for 20-30 minutes, to enable the fibers to soak up the dye.

Heat the mushroom dye to 185 °F (this takes about an hour to reach the temperature). Squeeze out the wet towel, and place it in the dye. Simmer for one hour, maintaining the temperature at 185°. Add water periodically to keep the fabric covered with dye extract.

Steep the cotton fabric overnight

Turn off the heat and let the fabric steep in the dye overnight. The next day, squeeze out excess dye, rinse the fabric, and then run it through the washing machine (cold water only), and hang to dry.

Full disclosure: I wasn't thinking, and actually added a mild textile soap [like Synthropol or Professional Textile Detergent (a.k.a., Dharma Dyer's Detergent)] to the rinse, and then dried the towel in the dryer (I usually just rinse and hang to dry, and then wash in mild detergent two weeks later, giving the dye time to set). It seemed to work OK, but was not my usual process.

Squeeze out excess dye and rinse thoroughly

The resulting color was an orangey-brown when wet, but it dried to a lighter shade. The photo really doesn't capture the actual color. Once again I wondered if the mushroom dye actually dyed the fabric at all, or did it simply cause a slight over-dye reaction with the previous Pittosporum capsule dye? It will be interesting to see the outcome of the future experiment planned, using iron.

The resulting color is a pale orangey-brown

 

Mushroom Hunter: Elias Magnus Fries

I first learned about mushroom hunter, Elias Magnus Fries (1794 -1878), from the writings of mycologist Dr. Susan D Libonati-Barnes in Mushrooms for Color. She described Fries as the Carl Linnaeus of mycology, and one of the founders of modern mushroom taxonomy. Before his early work in 1821, no reasonable order had been brought to fungi. Fries introduced a system that was very well organized, and based on features visible with the naked eye. Even though modern techniques are now being used to classify fungus, including microscopic and DNA techniques, his system is still used.

Fries was born in Femsjö, Sweden in 1794. He received botanical education from his father, who was a pastor and interested in natural history and flowering plants. Fries attended school in Växjö, and later received his Ph.D. from the University of Lund in 1814. He was appointed as a science lecturer at Lund, and began collecting and describing known species for his three-volume Systema Mycologicum (1821-32). He also developed a new system for classifying fungi and lichens, based on characteristics of the fruiting bodies. He used spore color and arrangement of the hymenophores (pores, gills, teeth, and so forth) as major taxonomic characteristics. Fries presented this system in Lichenographia Europaea Reformata (1831. 

Elias Magnus Fries (photo in the public domain in the U.S.)

Fries accepted a professorship at the University of Uppsala, and taught from 1834 - 1859. He was appointed Professor of Applied Economics in 1834, and became the Professor of Botany and Practical Economy in 1851. He retired from teaching in 1859 but continued to study fungi until his death in 1878. He was a prolific author of new fungal species and described 3210 of them during his career.

Fries in his sixties (photo by Henri Osti - public domain in the U.S.)

Fries and Christina Wieslander (1808 - 1862) raised nine children together. Many of them and their descendants went on to become botanists, lichenologists, researchers, head gardeners, and a physician with a strong interest in mycology. He left a multi-generation botanical legacy.

Learn More

• Backlund, Anders (3 February 2006). "The Fries Family of Botanists". Uppsala University. See: https://web.archive.org/web/20071209081753/http://www.systbot.uu.se/information/history/fries.htm. 

• "Elias Fries, Swedish Botanist". Britannica website. Provides a brief biography of Fries' works. See: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elias-Fries.

• "Elias Magnus Fries". Wikipedia website. Provides a brief biography of Fries and a summary of publications and references. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_Magnus_Fries.

• "Elias Magnus Fries (1794 - 1878) - a brief biography". First Nature website. Provides an overview of Fries' works and publications. See: https://www.first-nature.com/fungi/~biog-fries.php.

• Eriksson, Gunnar (2018). "Fries, Elias Magnus". Encyclopedia website. Provides a biography of Fries' life and works, with more details than other internet articles. See: https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/science-and-technology/botany-biographies/elias-magnus-fries.

• Fries, Elias Magnus (Lund, 1831). Lichenographia Europaea Reformata. Survey of known lichens of Europe and information about their distribution. For the curious, see: https://archive.org/details/lichenographiaeu00frie/page/n3/mode/2up.

• Fries, Elias Magnus (Lund, 1821). Systema Mycologicum (three volumes), by (1821). Survey of known fungi and a new system for classifying them. The original is in Latin, but Volume 1 is available in English at: https://www.amazon.com/Systema-Mycologicum-Latin-Elias-Magnus/dp/1022345052 

• Rice, Miriam and Beebee, Dorothy 1980. Mushrooms for Color. Mad River Press, Inc. Eureka, CA. See the chapter "Identifying and Classifying Mushrooms for Color" by Dr. S. D. Libonati-Barnes, for references to Fries (primarily pages 60 - 62).