A California Native is Actually Two Gardens by Matilija Bob, 9/21/25
In California most of our native plants flower from late winter into maybe early summer. Beautiful flowering scenery everywhere including your native garden. What happens next? Summer, the temps go up, the flowering plants produce seeds, and bloom time is mostly over. Mostly over, is not completely over. There are a small number of California natives that flower in summer through the end of fall and some will flower in spring then off and on through fall. We also have a few that if you cut them back after they flower, water 1x/week they’ll flower all year.
In many ways it’s very much like having “two different gardens”, a spring garden then, very different but an equally beautiful summer garden. This term of “two gardens”, I really have to give credit to Matt who works for the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden and takes care of their nursery among other things, as we talked about this when we visited in June.
So, here’s what you want to think about when you’re planning your landscaping for your now “two gardens”. If you plant all spring blooming California natives then in summer you won’t like the result. Your garden will look like the dry hillsides. Likewise, if you pick plants that only flower in summer through winter you won’t like that result either. Think about planting something like a 50/50 mix with half blooming in spring the other half summer through fall. In my home garden about 50% of my California natives flower in spring, 40% flower in summer/fall, and 10% flower off and on all year (more on the off and on list later in another posting). When the seasons transition from spring to summer cut back the spring flowering plants to make then look neat. As summer arrives, you’ll only notice the summer/fall flowering plants, like our California fuchsia (Epilobium californica, E. cana, …E. ‘Catalina’ to mention only a few) and the spring flowering plants will fade in to the background with your beautiful summer garden bursting forth.
There are other considerations too of course. Like what if you want to add more summer flowering natives in summer? That’s fine and you can and they’ll do well. The summer flowering natives will do well if planted in the warmer summer but you’ll need to water more frequency to help get them established. What about planting for the “wild things”? A topic for another discussion.
Pictures below:
Santa Barbara Botanical Garden Spring and Summer
Matilija Bob’s Home Garden Spring then Summer
