Marlene - Welcome! You will be moving to my neck of the woods up here in the northern part of California.
I hear Walnut Creek is a very nice place to live. When I lived in Sunnyvale (21 years ago), about an one hour drive from Walnut Creek, I knew someone who lived there. You might want to check out their website. http://www.ci.walnut-creek.ca.us/

When you get here, or maybe order it ahead of time, you will want to get a new Sunset's Western Garden Book. It is the bible for growing everything and anything out here. They also have a magazine which has lots of good information about CA living and gardening. In California, there are several micro climates even in a very small area. You can check out there website here. http://www.sunset.com/sunset/

I have a friend who lives 10 miles north and closer to the coast and the weather can be completely different from mine. I could have sun and it could be foggy or rainy or even 10 deg. colder there. When I lived in Sunnyvale I grew different plants then I can here close to the coast.

I remember what it was like living and gardening in the Midwest. At 25 I came from Illinois 29 years ago and I am still learning new things about gardening here. And you will be amazed at all the new plants you can grow outside that you never could before like tropical and semi tropical flowers and trees. And that you can have a vegetable garden year around. Lettuce, carrots, beets, tomatoes and many more in December.

The hard part is picking and choosing what to plant! And not being overwhelmed at all the choices at first. You will love driving around and seeing all the beautiful flowers even in the middle of winter.

No bugs and no humidity so you can spend all day outside and actually enjoy it. I must admit, California is a gardener's dream. If you have any more questions or need some advice send me an email and I will try to point you in the right direction. Enjoy your new home.

Marlene in Michigan - I live in Walnut Creek! You will love it here. Please e-mail me if you have any questions about the area. We have a Mediterranean climate zone 9.
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Below I've attached a link to a local nursery, my favorite place to go.

Edna

Here is a link that might be useful: Annies Annuals

I'm also a transplanted mid-westerner.

#1 no midwestern rules apply
#2 Walnut Creek has excellant resources; check out their classes on local gardening--- probably from the Master Gardeners of whatever county that is.
#3 You will need to pay attention to how much water your plants are losing in the summer's heat.
#4 All those wimpy indoor plants you use to grow are rampant outdoor 'everywheres' here.

It's a whole new world.... enjoy!

You'll love it here! In addition to reading the Sunset Western Garden Book, here are a few other suggestions:
1) Subscribe to Pacific Horticulture magazine, the full-color quarterly magazine for West Coast Gardeners.
2) Join a local garden group to learn from your neighbors about growing conditions in your new home.
3) Some of my favorite books on Mediterranean Gardening:
The Gardens of California, by Nancy Goslee Power
Sun Drenched Gardens, by Jan Smithen
Ornamental Trees for Mediterranean Gardens, by Steve Brigham & Don Walker (available on=line at www.sdhortsoc.org)
The New book of Salvias, by Betsy Clebsch

Welcome to California!

Here is a link that might be useful: Pacific Horticulture

Welcome!

Here are a few things you'll discover sooner or later, especially in a mild zone:

* Multiply by 2 (or 3) the plant size in most books and plant tags, and space your plants accordingly.

* Scented geraniums grow year-round, even in the ground!

* You won't have to bury your roses for winter.

* Hardening off? What's that? ;-)

* No need to wait until May to plant tomatoes.

* You'll be cutting roses and putting them in a vase in December.

* You'll be wishing it would snow once in a while so you could get a break from year-round gardening. :-)

Feel free to ask any question that comes to mind!

I hope you enjoy your new life here and that your husband's new job is all he hopes it to be.
Jen

Marlene,

Welcome! I'm another midwestern transplant. I moved to Davis for grad school and never went back. Wonder wonder why?

I didn't do any gardening in Minnesota - too young and foolish. I am now an avid gardener.

You've got some great referrals. Also check out Berkeley Horticulture and Magic Gardens - also in Berkeley. They both tend to be a little pricely, but a good place to research and poke around. Annie's is simply fabulous. Be sure to check out the web iste. You'll be anxious to get your hands in the California soil - clay and all...

BettyN

The Sunset Western Garden Book is indispensable. Every few years a new edition comes out, with the results of new research, and it's worth it to buy it again. There's a soft cover edition that's less expensive. Do you see how some of us list a "Sunset zone" in addition to our USDA zone? That's something this book started when they divided the western US into 24 additional zones, with lots more information than is contained in the USDA zones. When I see that someone is Sunset 15 I know that their growing conditions are quite different from mine in Sunset 22.

Basically we have 2 gardening seasons, cool ("winter") and hot. We plant cool weather vegetables in the fall, such as all the brassicas, lettuce, peas, turnips, beets, carrots, radishes, and so forth. Then in the early spring we plant the summer vegies, such as tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, squash, beans, etc. We never stop!!

Fall is the best time to plant perennials, shrubs, bulbs and trees. Especially native California plants. Many of us are using more and more natives, since they don't need the huge amounts of water that many non natives do. Of course in the Bay Area you'll have more rainfall than we get down here in LA.

Some cool weather annuals, such as pansies, are in full bloom right now and are planted in the fall. Others, such as marigolds, are planted in the spring and bloom during the heat of the summer. CA wildflower seeds are sown in the fall and are just now starting to bloom.

At the Organic Gardening website, those of us from CA get a lot of teasing from everyone else, because they're bored silly from not being able to garden, and we're as busy as ever.

Welcome!

Great comments from everyone.
The only things I can add is that Sunset also has a Western Landscaping book that may give you some great ideas on different types of gardens.
There is also a book put out by one of the water districts called Landscaping for summer dry climates that is excellent.
http://www.ebmud.com/conserving_&_recycling/plant_book/default.htm

As mentioned above fall as well as winter are the best times to plant (with the exception frost tender plants), especially after the rains have started because the soil is much easier to dig. In the summer it turns to concrete and you'll need a jackhammer, not to mention a zillion gallons of water...

Folks here are very helpful and friendly.

wanda

Everyone responding has been so friendly! I love it.

I am coming to the Bay area in a few weeks to start looking for places to live... But, more importantly, I'm going to the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show!!!

Keep any thoughts coming. I appreciate it.

Marlene in Michigan

You will find that alot of people in California are Michiganders who moved west. You will love the Flower and Garden Show. Annie Annuals is usually there as well as Digging Dog and other speciality nurseries. You can get guides to gardens, garden catalogs and many ideas to fill any space you need to. You will pay alot more for a home in California than Michigan so be prepared.

Penny

Penny is right, homes are pricey. The Bay Area is the most expensive place to live in the whole US. Homes run $600-$700.

I imagine houses in MI. I see a house with a big yard, lots of space.

Now imagine houses in CA. I see a big house, with only 10 feet of open space to each boundary line. Hope you get to have a yard to garden!

Also, basements are not just for the Midwest anymore. Big trend to basement space in CA.

And Walnut Creek gets hot in the Summer. Whew! No humidity though! Welcome.

Forget your tulips, delphiniums, home-grown apples, and peonies.

Embrace citrus (particularly Meyer lemons and Bearss limes, you will never go back to store-bought lemons and limes again), never having to prune your roses unless you want to (my neighbor never does and her hybrid teas are evergreen 7' bushes year-round), tibouchina, hibiscus (mine were flowering in January), as well as more common tender perennials like lamiums, petunias, helichrysums, morning glory (the perennial is a pernicious weed out here that can crush solid wood fences), salvias, gardenias, and such, which you can just plop into the ground. Never again will you need to dig up bulbs to "winter them over". Dahlias, callas, iris and cannas return faithfully without any special care at all.

Learn to love mulching. It keeps the weeds down and saves water, which is a precious resource out here. There is NO summer rain, we are dry from May to November so lawns are becoming increasingly less popular. Fire hazards loom large in summer so keeping brush and weeds down on hillsides is taken seriously. Homeowners who don't keep their lots cleared get big fines when the county inspectors make their rounds in May and June.

There is no "down time" for gardening here, unless it's too hot or too rainy to go out. Forget lying back and making dream lists with plant catalogs over the holidays! You will be out putting in new plants, cleaning up old ones, pruning like mad, buying Sluggo in the giant containers, and lusting after the new roses at Regan Nursery in Fremont, LOL. California is green in the wintertime and golden brown in the summer, which takes a while to get used to.

Welcome to the Bay Area! You will love it and we welcome new gardeners.

I lived most of my life in Walnut Creek and my parents still live there. It's a great place. Almost no crime, great schools, very upscale shopping and restaurants (somewhat reminiscent of Birmingham in Michigan), and lots of scenery (state and regional parks surround the city with hiking, biking, and horseback riding trails). Plus, there are lots of outdoor tennis courts, swimming pools, and a canal trail for running, rollerblading, biking as well.

You MUST VISIT the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek! It will blow your mind and give you great insight into what can be grown in the area that is very different from Michigan. It is beautiful year round at that place.

Winters are cool and sometimes rainy, sometimes dry. Dec and Jan are coldest, with days around 55F and occasionally dipping to around freezing by morning (though so rare that we don't scrape windshields). Summers are hot, dry, and perpetually sunny -- you may not see clouds in the sky for weeks at a time, and you may not experience rain for many months at a time. Summers average around 90F in the day, but very very low humidity, with nights cooling off to around 55F by daybreak (typical inland western US). But it tends to fluctuate from week to week from between about 80F when SF gets fogged in 25 miles to the west, to over 100F when it doesn't. You'll definitely get many days well into the 90s and a fair number above 100F. On those days, the nights stay about 10F warmer and the evnings are beautiful and balmy.

We grow all sorts of subtropicals: about six varieties of palms, bird of paradise, philodendron, hibiscus, macadamia, avocado, citrus, and also typical things like apricots, cherries, plums, and roses. You can also grow redwoods and cactus. You can pretty much grow anything!

Have fun!

Hi,
Welcome to the bay area. I live in Concord right next door to Walnut Creek. You are going to love the weather here and all the gardening. You will be real surpirsed by all the things that grow here. I complain about our winter with our daytime temp in the 50s. (lol)
Hope you love it as much as we do.
Linda

I think one of the most shocking things for you will be seeing all of the plants around here. Just driving through neighborhoods can be a treat, as you might see a king palm, banana plant, a garden of roses, or a huge bamboo grove. You will definitely enjoy gardening in this great climate!

Marlene here. We're supposed to get an ice storm here in the Detroit area tonight. March is probably our most unpredictable month weather-wise. In a bad ice storm, power lines are downed (live wires), it's hard to walk on the driveway or sidewalk without falling. This will be my last winter here (I hope).

I see the Bay area was having a storm with high winds. Do you guys ever have to protect your plants from wind or temperature? Living here, as the tulips are coming up in March and April, we still get freezing temps and snow.... you have to throw mulch on the bulbs coming up.

butterfly15_ca: When we came to Richmond the second week in January for my husband's job interview, there were a few flowers in bloom. I couldn't take my eye off of them. Like a little kid!

Stupid question - Does the Bay area have an autumn where the leaves turn beautiful colors and drop? I am trying to learn even these simple facts!

Thanks again. You guys have been very helpful and very friendly.

Marlene, Still in Michigan

With regards to autumn, yes and no. You can't generally say "the" leaves change color, because some trees, like eucalyptus, are green year round, and some plants, like palm trees, are in a whole other category. There is no "native" woodland area around Walnut Creek, so the fall color that you DO see is trees that have been planted in yards. Several varieties do put on a spectacular show. Liquidambar, Chinese Pistache, and a few others are really beautiful, and the color usually starts late and lasts late, usually peaking around Thanksgiving and lasting into December. Then, by late January, you'll get the first trees like almond trees and acacia blooming already, as well as many shrubs like camellias, euryops, bird of paradise, and others.

You could plant a garden that gives you either four seasons variety of flowers, leaves, color, and bare branches, OR you could have a completely evergreen garden, OR some combination of all of it. It's like having a blank canvas on which you can paint any style of garden you want: woodland, tropical, mediterranean, desert, cottage, etc.

You'll probably not be impressed too much with the fall color compared to Michigan, but the city of Walnut Creek does plant a lot of deciduous trees in town to give it that autumn feel, compared to places like San Francisco, where you really don't see much landscape change at all from season to season.

Boy, you'll be surprised when you get here because many flowering trees and shrubs have already finished blossoming and are already in full leaf -- I'll bet your plants are all still dormant...

As far as wind or temperature protection, mulch is not really in the vocabulary here. We haven't had any really bad windstorms this year, but sometimes you can, though not of the sort you would get with hurricanes in other areas. It's not really common to protect against wind or cold in general.

There are seasons in CA, but they're more subtle. It's a big change; my family moved here from PA when I was 8 years old. My mother was a gardener, and it was hard to give up certain plants but wonderful to find others.

There are few huge trees that turn all those beautiful colors in the fall. We have liquidamber, ginko, and a few others, but they tend to be smaller. Most trees are evergreen.

Spring is starting right now. New leaves are coming out on the deciduous trees. In my garden that's the fig, with apricot blossoms starting too. Most of the spring bulbs that you're used to don't do well in the hotter parts of CA, ie hyacinths, daffodils, crocus, tulips. But we have southern African bulbs that love it here, since the climates are similar. So my freesias are in full bloom, and the sparaxis are starting.

Many cool weather annuals are blooming now. Plus lots of spring flowering shrubs, just not the ones you're used to! Instead of forsythia, try ceanothus, a CA native with lovely blue flowers.

In Sunset zone 22 where I live, it frosted once for a few hours in the 18 years that I've lived in this house, and I ran out at midnight to throw old sheets over the orange and lemon trees. That's it! But your zone may be different. In southern CA the Santa Ana wind comes blasting in from the desert, but it's usually a warm wind. People learn to prune trees somewhat openly so the wind doesn't harm them.

When you plant stone fruit trees you'll need to be careful to buy varieties that don't need lots of chill hours. And you can have figs, naval oranges, lemons, etc, that love it here. In my garden I have a low chill apricot (Blenheim), a Black Mission fig, 2 Washington naval oranges, an Improved Meyer lemon, and a pineapple guava. In a previous garden I had an unknown plum that bore heavily. We eat our own fruit about 10 months out of the year.

I think you're biggest change in gardening thinking will be that it does not rain from May to November. So you have to supply the water, or it does not happen. There is no lush "wild" greenery like back East, unless you count dusty-looking half dead chaparral plants that hunker down thru the dry season. You have to pay big bucks for water. While 1/6 acre lots are the norm here, that's about all you can afford to pay to irrigate (it's about all you can afford to buy anyway in urban areas, cause real estate prices are out of sight here in California). You will probably have to water twice a week to grow the same plants in Walnut Creek that you grew in Michigan.

The next biggest difference is that it is obviously a lot warmer in winter. There are usually enough frosty nights that growing extremely sensitive tropicals means running out in the evening to cover them for the night, but most people can't resist giving them a try. Most hardy plants keep their top growth, and may even make some active growth in the winter, but stuff usually just sits still until it starts to warm up in late February (it's cold from mid-November til sometime in late February to mid March) We get most of our rain during that time frame too. You can't mulch heavily, like you do back East to protect tender plants because it is warm enough during the day for fungal growth to cause rot if the crown of the plant is covered.

Ditto what was said above. I'll just add that Walnut Creek has a fabulous downtown with wonderful restaurants and shopping. I live 12 miles south of Walnut Creek (San Ramon), and always enjoy my visits there.

I moved to San Francisco from Wisconsin in August 1978, and for the first year, I thought there were no seasons. That first winter here, I enjoyed growing pots of pansies, other 'summer' annuals and houseplants on my back deck at Christmastime. I laughed at people bundled up in winter jackets when it was 55 degrees outside. I also kept misinterpreting the weather. When it was gray and overcast, I expected rain, but the cloud cover usually burned off by midmorning. It wasn't until the second year here that I really observed the seasonal changes and began wearing a jacket during the winter.

Hello and welcome. I agree with the preceding recommendations and also recommend checking out the Mediterranean Garden Society. The "In print" section has a number of excellent books listed, one of my favorites is, "Gardens of the Sun" by Trevor Nottle. It's a great resource for learning how to "think" about gardening in this unique climate.

Ryan (Born in Jackson, MI but moved to California with my parents when I was 4 1/2 - I've visited but have never personally gardened there, only enjoyed the change of scenery during visits with extended family)

Marlene I saw you sign in name and about flipped. This is Diana502 from your high school. Where in the world have you been? We have not seen you on for a couple years. There have been lots of changes and we are huge.

Find our high school forum on Delphi. You are listed in the webpage (different from the forum) as a teacher there. I am in Sacramento - new to me from MI too so I am interested in this thread of conversation. We live pretty close.

One more thought on what's different gardening out here in CA -- "full sun" is a lot fiercer out here than in the Midwest and East Coast. Many plants that are blithely labeled "full sun" wither and fry when blasted by our hot summer Western exposures.

You'll be able to grow many plants in the shade that take 'full sun' in other regions. I have agapanthus, cannas, osteospermum, polyantha roses, salvias and alstroemeria in partially shaded but very bright beds, that do wonderfully well.

Welcome! You'll love it in California. I am originally from Massachusetts, myself, and find myself well able to control my nostalgia for snow, though it is still lurking somewhere deep inside! After a quick read, I didn't notice anybody mentioning the possibilities for growing cacti and other succulents. Please have a look at the Cacti Gallery forum and the Cacti and Succulents forum. Each has a link for the other, just before the messages.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cacti and other succulent pictures to tempt you

And one more reason (as if you needed any) to love California: butterflies in January!

I grow two passionflower vines, the standard purple and a lovely coral one. The butterflies ADORE the coral passiflora. It is on its third year -- BTW they're evergreen here, no problem -- and I have to be careful pruning it because there are so many little caterpillars and pupae cases all over it. On a sunny day there are always two or three, sometimes more, fluttering around my front garden between the lantana (another sun-loving, drought-resistant tender perennial we can easily grow here) and the passionflower vine.

They are orange with black markings, don't know the variety but I love having them in my garden!

It's the gulf fritillary butterfly, the only one that eats passionflower leaves, plus it's all they eat.

Succulents are easy to grow in CA. They don't mind shade or full sun, and hardly need any water at all. Some of them bloom, and they're all lovely.

So how are the moving plans coming along?

I live three hours North of Walnut Creek-- where people pay you and beg you to haul off their compost. I would 2nd the expense factor.