hummingbird on salvia clevelandii alpine cleveland sage

Las Pilitas Nursery

California Native Plants are all we grow!

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3232 Las Pilitas Rd
Santa Margarita, CA 93453
Fri. & Sat. from 9am-4pm
8331 Nelson Way
Escondido, CA 92026
Tues. to Sat. from 9am-4pm

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Native Plants Nature of California Native gardens California images Selected Native Plants Garden DIY Wildlife

General Help

Ok I assume you're at this page because you're lost, stuck or a complete computer newbie. God help you if you're all three. Learning computers when you're fifty, sixty, or even thirty, is a very humbling experience. My advice is to try and break the computer as often as possible, not physically but by using it. Read, read, and read some more and you'll become much more comfortable using the keyboard and mouse. Remember they've taught gorillas to use computers, ah, maybe that's not a good example. One of our customers described herself as a chimp with a stick, trying to get the termites out of the nest, maybe that's closer? So get a banana and keep trying. Also, if you don't have a computer yet but are going to buy one for web stuff and email. Buy an Android, a Mac or a pre-built Linux computer. We had one windows machine (that I loathed) that had to be rebuilt two or three times in one year, the other six linux and two mac machines combined required no service.
We spend a great deal on the website, you can help support it. - grid24_6

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Help moving around

The highlighted words are hyper-links that send you off to other pages. This web site has about 3200 pages organized into at least 5 levels. Move through the hyperlinks (usually blue text with underlining)to the next level. The hyper-links can be Planting for Deer, text, boxes, or mapped pictures. Content in the form of pictures and information is what the web is about. We've moved from a printed catalog to the web because of customer requests for pictures. Trying to update the 'Manual of California Native Plants' killed 3 computers. The 1000 images made up a 100+ meg file.(It's now ten times bigger.) It is a whole lot easier and cheaper to give you full content on the web.

Click on the bird to go to the bird pages to read about bird gardens and specific bird genus and species.Sometimes the pages have trouble printing right because of your software, your monitor or we screwed something up. Try clicking on the page in various spots and checking it in print preview.

Set your display to a reasonable setting. If you have a mondern monitor and computer that is at least 1600X1200, ask someone to help you if your monitor is set at 800X600. You're already probably half blind for the monitor.

What is a Native Plant?

Native plants are plants that have evolved on the site. Within reason, that was to the last major climate change. In California that's at least 10000-20000 years. That sounds fairly easy but California is not what it was. The forests are gone, replaced with chaparral at best, annualized grasslands(weeds) at worst. We've attempted to correct for this with the mynativeplants.com selector. But take a walk or drive in your area and see if you can find a weed free(grass free) slope or area. Those trees and shrubs are probably the ones you should be planting. Not the weedy ones,(Star thistle, brome, most of the grasses, Castor bean, Arundo, pampas grass, Bermuda grass) but the pines, oaks, mountain lilac, manzanitas, sages, poppies,and lupines that are supposed to be there.

Herbicides

For those of you that are terrified of all pesticides this site has the best information I've seen. In larger yards and acreage keep the weeds out, or learn about what the safest chemical controls are! The EXtension TOXicology NETwork
There are other folks out there with brains and some spunk. You are not alone in liking native plants. - grid24_6
You are not alone.