Botanical Gardens: University of California, Santa Cruz Arboretum

Our first botanical garden of focus is the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum, located on the beautiful Santa Cruz campus about 75 miles south of the San Francisco Bay Area. It specializes in Mediterranean plants from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and California. I visited the garden when I took a Mediterranean Plant ID class at Merritt College, and reported on some of the fascinating flowers (see Aliens from Down Under).

 

The Santa Cruz Arboretum covers 135 acres, which enables them to accommodate group tours, and individual wandering.

Botanist Glenn Keator leads a group tour

An inviting path at the arboretum

The ample space provides room for plant communities, so you can view plants in situ and with other plants. What conditions, such as sun exposure, drainage, and aspect, ensure a thriving plant?

Plant communities provide layers of plants

Natural terrain for plants

Plants can spread to their mature size, which can be very valuable when researching plants for a particular garden design. Is there space for the plant to reach maturity? Would the plant require excessive maintenance if not?

These plants require lots of room to spread

Plants are labeled, making it easy to identify and learn.

Labels clearly identify plants at the arboretum

Many plants are offered for sale in Norrie’s Gift and Garden Shop, or in seasonal plant sales. The Arboretum also participates in the Koala Blooms plant introduction project, which is a joint venture with growers in California and Australia for introducing plants to the California market. This program enables them to evaluate plants for disease, hardiness, and invasiveness, before introducing them to the California market.

Succulents	Multi-generation flowers
South African daisies	Beautiful textures

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I recommend this arboretum for finding out more about Mediterranean plants, and seeing some pretty spectacular flowers in the process. Think of Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander while you’re there – these are some of the plants they may have encountered as they visited Australia while circumnavigating the globe in the 1700s.

Address: UC Santa Cruz Arboretum; Arboretum Road (use for newer GPS devices); Santa Cruz, CA Web Site: http://arboretum.ucsc.edu/ Downloadable Map: http://arboretum.ucsc.edu/pdfs/JoanMap.pdf For other botanical collections in the San Francisco Bay Area see: http://www.edenbythebay.blogspot.com/2015/02/botanical-collections-of-bay-area.html

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Growing California Native Plants

I used Growing California Native Plants, by Marjorie G. Schmidt and Katherine L. Greenberg to research plants for my front planter project. I used the second edition (revised and expanded), published by University of California Press, Berkeley in 2012. Schmidt published the first edition in 1980, and Greenberg expanded and reorganized the work (Greenberg received a Certificate of Landscape Design at Merritt College).

The book starts with an introduction to gardening with native plants, including descriptions of California habitats and plant communities. Native plant descriptions are organized into categories—trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, bulbs, vines, and grasses—followed by a plant selection guide grouped by garden requirements, and described by species. For example, I was especially drawn to the plant selection guides for Shade/Dry Situation, Coastal Conditions (being in the fog belt), Deer-Resistant Plants (thanks to my growing deer problem), and Under Oaks (for my huge oak in the front yard) The reference section includes a crisp, concise glossary; a reading list (including many of my favorite authors, such as Peter Dallman and Glenn Keator); and additional references for journals, references, botanic gardens, and plant and seed sources.

I love this book’s compact size, which can easily fit in a purse or day pack on a plant-buying expedition; and its beautiful pictures and illustrations. I also appreciate the tables of plant species, with information about plant distribution, and physical characteristics. This information makes it very easy to review and consider the merits of a particular plant for a garden site.

Oak Woodland Plant Community

The oak woodland plant community varies by region – Northern and Southern California, and coastal and foothill. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the oak woodland plant community is dominated by the Coast Live Oak, and is under the influence of fog and ocean breezes. Because of our microclimates, plant communities often intermingle if conditions are right, but a typical base palate of plants include:

• Trees: coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia), California bay (Umbellularia californica), California buckeye (Aesculus californica), tanbark oak (Lithocarpus densiflorus), and madrone (Arbutus menziesii).
• Shrubs and understory: toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia), manzanita (Arctostaphylos manzanita), coyote brush (Baccharis pilularis), Western redbud (Cercis occidentalis), California sagebrush (Artemisia californica), California fescue (Festuca californica), common wood fern (Dryopteris arguta), and sticky monkey flower (Mimulus aurantiacus).

Toyon berries in winter, add color to the garden and attract birds

Using these plants together—with their similar watering, drainage, and soil needs—can help ensure a successful native oak woodland garden that attracts pollinators and wildlife.

For photos of Northern oak woodland plants: http://www.laspilitas.com/nature-of-california/communities/northern-oak-woodland/plants. For information about oak woodland plant communities: Plant Life in the World’s Mediterranean Climates (Peter Dallman), and Designing California Native Gardens (Glenn Keator and Alrie Middlebrook).

Designing Gardens with California Natives

This is a great reference for designing beautiful, ecological gardens, using a plant community approach. The book focuses on California native plant communities (plants that grow together because of similar adaptations), including bluffs and cliffs, redwood forest, desert gardens, montane meadows, mixed evergreen forest, oak woodlands, grasslands, chaparral, riparian woodlands, and wetlands. The authors are Glenn Keator and Alrie Middlebrook; the publisher is University of California Press.

For each garden design, the authors provide a unique representation of the garden plan, practical project information, descriptions of plants and the plant community, and information about places to visit to see the plant community in nature. The resource section provides a comprehensive list of native plant sources, books, botanical gardens and arboreta, public gardens, websites, and a seasonal calendar for managing native gardens.

Glenn Keator is a botanist, author, and lecturer with extensive knowledge of California native plants. I’ve had the pleasure of taking his Mediterranean plant ID class at Merritt College. Alrie Middlebrook founded Middlebrook Gardens in San Jose, which specializes in designing California native gardens, and is also an author and lecturer. I was intrigued by her use of succession (moving through a series of simple-to-complex planting stages, culminating in a final stage) in her garden designs.

Water Features in Santa Cruz

In a short stretch of coastline, Santa Cruz includes saltwater beaches, lagoons (salty or brackish “lakes”), estuaries, and rivers or creeks. Each of these water features may be associated with distinctive geological formations, microclimates, and plant communities. According to botanist *Glenn Keator, plant communities are “repeatable assemblages of plants that grow together because of similar adaptations to microclimates, soils and slopes, and biotic factors.”

Natural Bridges State Beach - dunes and salt water.

Small lagoon at Natural Bridges State Beach. Moore Creek empties into the lagoon.

 San Lorenzo River runs through Santa Cruz, and empties into the Santa Cruz Harbor.

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By understanding the unique geology, microclimate, soil type, aspect, and native plant community, it is possible to plan a garden that includes a palette of plants, trees, and shrubs that works together. As my visits to the desert fostered my interest in dry climate plants, my visit to the Santa Cruz coast has fostered an interest in coastal and riparian plants. More research is needed.

* Keator, Glenn and Middlebrook, Alrie. Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens, page 7. University of California Press, Berkeley, Lost Angeles, London, 2007. ISBN 0520239784  or 9780520239784.