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Encelia farinosa, Brittlebush, Goldenhills, Incienso on a Newberry Springs hillside - grid24_12
Here's the Barstow image of a hillside with Encelia farinosa.
This Yarrow grows on coastal bluffs and sand dunes. Bluffy the dune slayer? - grid24_12
There's no irrigation on any of these coastal bluffs and they look good. If you irrigate coastal bluff in greatly increases your chances of a slide.
A planted coastal bluff. This was a native restoration  that had been a cow pasture. - grid24_12
Here's a landscaped coastal bluff near Cambria.
Coastal Sage scrub with Cliff buckwheat, Eriophyllum confertiflorum, Blackberry, Bracken Fern, Coyote Bush, Poison Oak, Coastal Live oak, etc.   - grid24_12
Coastal Sage Scrub used to extend from about San Diego to Monterey in various flavors. All the landscape was weed free and full of flowering plants most of the year.
Cliff Buckwheat in coastal sage scrub south of Los Osos. Often you can find a trail a few miles from your home full of native plants. - grid24_12
When the native landscape is replaced with weeds the yearly precipitation rate commonly drops to half of what it was before, erosion increases and stream flow decreases.
Quercus wislizenii frutescens, Dwarf scrub up about Los Angeles, courtesy of Roger and L. - grid24_12
The brown hillsides around Los Angeles are the non-native weeds. The green spots are the remaining native plants. The native plants burn slowly, the non-native plants flash. A thinned landscape of weed free native plants is generally safer than a mowed slope of non-native plants. (Because of spot fires.)
The Brown hills are why a native landscaping attracts so many hummingbirds and butterflies, they have no where else to go.
This is an area north of Big Bear where the Joshua tree woodland and Pinyon Juniper Woodland meet. Pinus monophylla,    Juniperus californica and Yucca breviflora. - grid24_12
And then theres the desert to the east. This is what the desert Joshua Tree/Juniper Woodland interface can look like.
Sphaeralcea ambigua out in Joshua Tree Woodland. - grid24_12
Notice there are no weeds in a native Joshua Tree woodland.
Salvia dorrii, purple desert sage with a sea of butterflies. To bad the Joshua Trees will not support a hammock.  - grid24_12
The desert has pockets of full vegetation.
A is a view of a native Creosote woodland that is fairly weed free. Notice the spacing of the plants in the landscape. The desert didn't burn until we covered it with weeds. When the weeds are allowed into a desert landscape and it burns, no more desert plants. - grid24_12
When the rainfall is very low like it is in parts of the desert the plants space themselves in the landscape.
Eriogonum wrightii subscaposum, Wright's Buckwheat southeast of Big Bear at about 8000 ft. - grid24_12
Even at 8000 ft. the plants naturally space themselves in the landscape. In desert areas there is commonly bare ground between plants. In forest areas there is natural mulch. In chaparral areas it's mixed.
The drier areas of the Transverse ranges approach desert rainfall and the landscape is a hybrid between forest and desert. Resources islands of plants and mulch, and bare ground in between. - grid24_12
 	Atriplex polycarpa out in the old Owens Lake bed. - grid24_12
A salt flat in Owens Valley. Much of the Western San Joaquin Vally looked like this.
Simi Valley is where they filmed many of the westerns in the 1930's. Now it's full of houses and weeds. - grid24_12
The valleys north of Los Angeles were full of ranches that the westerns were filmed at in the 1930's.
Ceanothus spinosus,  Red-Heart Mountain Lilac  near Santa Barbara. - grid24_12
San Marcos Pass has Ceanothus, Styrax, Oaks and even Pines.
Arctostaphylos crustacea subsp. eastwoodiana, Harris Grade manzanita, in its natural habitat of chaparral, in the California coastal zone.  Vaccinium ovatum is also present here along with Pinus muricata. Here it is making a square mile of mounding ground cover about 2 ft. high. It would be lovely if someone would give us money to do this. - grid24_12
Between Lompoc and Santa Maria there are Douglas Fir Trees, Huckleberries and Bishop pines.
Lupinus polyphyllus up on Mt. Pinos - grid24_12
Some of the Mt. Pinos area looks kind of like the Lompoc area above. Here it is low Buckwheats instead of low Manzanitas that make the ground cover.
A rather dry mountain meadow in the Southern Sierras - grid24_12
The Southern Sierras at about 7800 ft. The ground cover is largely a form of Ceanothus and Manzanita.
Leymus triticoides - creeping wild rye, Valley Wild rye, alkali rye down at the end of our road in Santa Margarita - grid24_12
A Central oak woodland 'meadow' Alkaline Rye and Valley Oaks used to cover much of the inland valleys of California.
A Sierra meadow at 7500 feet. - grid24_12
A Sierra Meadow up in Sequoia Park.
Penstemon oreocharis Meadow Penstemon - grid24_12
An Eastern Sierra Meadow.
California has very diverse native landscaping ideas out there for you to explore. This was on the east side of the Sierras just above the desert.
Other places you might find us roaming about:
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Copyright 1992-2014 Las Pilitas Nursery
Edited on Apr 17, 2014. Authors:
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