Gardening with Native Plant-Matilija Bob The are still some open spaces for our Gardening with Native Plants. This is an in-person class held at the Conejo Valley Adult School in Thousand Oaks. There are 3 secession, Wednesday night from 6:00 to 7:30 beginning March 25th. While I’ve taught this...
Read More
Dividing Pacific Coast Irises- Matilija Bob 9/29/25 Pacific coast irises have their own quickness. If you want to divide them to have more of the same iris you have to divide them when their white roots start to grow. What is all this? Okay, in summer the pacific...
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...
Collecting Seeds from our pacific coast iris hybrids. This is the time of year when the seeds from our pacific coast irises are ready for harvest. We collect the seed capsules from our plants when the tips are beginning to split and put them in a paper bag. Next...
My new science experiment. Many of our California should be able to grow nicely indoors, especially our shade plants. I would think if they got indirect light and watered every 7 to 10 days. When watering maybe take them outside like orchids? I’ve tried this before but by day...
This is the time of year our pacific coast irises go into bloom. The early bloomers begin in early March and the bloom season lasts through very early June. These are hybrids of native irises and are short, 12″ tall +/- but with big flowers that are 4″ across....
Every once in a while we have a new plant that the bees and other wild things create. When they appear exceptional and different from the “rest” we try to make more of them. Salvia ‘JJ’ was spotted by two of our employees both named Jaime, growing on one...
The Fire and Back to Normal- Compared to so many others we got off “easy” from the Mountain Fire. While we’ll have some losses mostly from the winds and losing water for a short period of time it’s all minor stuff. Cal Fire did a great job at protecting...
Some Plants Are Dormant…and they should be planted now! Matilija Bob 10/27/24-Featured picture Asclepias speciosa and Lilium parvum. Even though there is no green showing ….they are just dormant and now is the time to plant them. All of our California natives and plants in general go through a...
Some prices will be going up November 1st…. We’ll be raising some retail prices beginning November 1st. The majority of our 1-gallon native plants we sell for $8 and we will be raising them to $9. The majority of our 5-gallon plants we currently sell for $25 will be...
Fall is Time to Plant Matilija Poppies- yes, now is finally planting time for these matilija poppies. There are actually two matilija poppies species both very similar and we won’t sweat the small stuff. The have a reputation of being hard to plant but once they establish it’s off...
Fall Planting and Pacific Coast irises….some of our native plants have a very strong seasonal planting time window. If your plant within in the window they will grow just fine. Outside the seasonal window not so much. Pacific coast irises are like this. In California we have 11 or...