DryStoneGarden

meadowfoam and stream orchid

meadow foam and maianthemum

Tomorrow is the Bringing Back the Natives Tour. The Regional Parks Botanic Garden at Tilden and the Fleming garden, both on the tour, are two of the states oldest and best gardens for California natives, and right about now is the time when they look their best.

The Fleming garden is the absolute must-see garden of the tour. It goes way beyond what is typical of a residential or native garden, and I think it’s especially interesting to also see the botanic garden on the same day. The two gardens are somewhat linked, besides the fact that they are both in the Berkeley hills; I don’t know exact details of the histories of either garden, but I do know that Jenny Fleming was involved with the botanic garden, and her garden is sort of like she made a condensed, concentrated form of the botanic garden at her own home. Luke Hass, who does the maintenance for the Fleming garden, has a couple of articles about the garden on his website. RootedinCalifornia has some recent photos and the tour’s website has others. It’s an amazing garden that has to be seen in person to be appreciated.

Both gardens are over fifty years old, which makes them unique places to see native plants used in Bay Area gardens. Often times on native tours it can be boring to see a lot of the same plants at every garden, but in this case it’s interesting to see similar plants used in both settings. The naturalized plantings of meadow foam, Limnanthes douglasii, are a good example. In the Fleming garden it’s intermingled with stream orchid, Epipactis gigantea, while the Tilden garden has the yellow form, Pt. Reyes meadow foam, Limnanthes douglasii var. sulphurea, with Maianthemum. The meadow foam is an annual, but it’s growing in a way that only happens in a mature garden.

Below, I put more photos of meadow foam below: the Pt. Reyes form naturalized among some aspens at the botanic garden, the regular form naturalized in our vegi garden without anything interplanted, two flowers of the regular form popping up through a snowberry, Symphoricarpos albus, in our garden, and the regular form with the stream orchid again. It grows naturally in vernal pools, so all the plants it’s combined with can take wet spring conditions. It’s not the prettiest plant after it finishes blooming, while you wait for the seeds to form, and it’s kind of weedy looking even while you wait for the flowers, but for now it’s looking really nice. (more…)