That is a very beautiful garden, Jeane. Yup, get rid of that part of your name. Be patient. Next year, it will fill out. I have 3 large Hosta that I need to divide: 'Elegans', Sum & Substance' and Plantaginea. I can send you a piece of each for postage if you are interested. PLMK I will have a lot of Dahlia tubers to share as well. I also have a garden full of perennials that I am thinning out..especially Monarda 'Gardenview Scarlet' and many other stuffs.

I am in zone 14 also, although in Sacramento, so we get less wind. We have HOT days all summer, and cool evenings (I love summer evenings in this area of the country :). When we moved into our current house, it had 50(!) rose bushes, which were all really well adapted and seemed to thrive on neglect (of course, they didn't always look the best), so I don't think roses will be a problem for you unless the winds cause problems. I have had good luck with Dahlias, also, and see lavender and pansies everywhere around here. I am trying bleeding hearts for the first time this year, so I don't know about those, or fuschias. The main thing I have learned to focus on in my garden, especially the full sun areas, is making sure the plants can handle the dry heat. I seem to do well when I focus as much on the heat tolerance as the cold hardiness, especially in our front yard with the south/west exposure. Not sure about nurseries in your County, but if you are not too far from Sacramento we have several, including a few Capitol Nurseries, which are pretty good-sized and have knowledgeable gardeners on hand. Hope this helps a little - just my experiences.

I admit I'm an addictive plant book collector and just went to my shelves to see what I had on natives. What I found interesting is that I don't have any books specific to woodland natives, except for some that includes them and some that are about shade but not exclusive to natives. I have lots on prairie plants however. I really need to catalog my books someday - not during planting season though! In addition to the Diekelmann book, these are some of my native gardening books in no particular order: Gardening with Wildflowers and Native Plants published by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Record 1989. -a little book of collected articles, still relevant. Jones, Samuel B. and Foote, Leonard E. 1990. Gardening with Native Wild Flowers. Timber Press. 195 pgs. -My first native plant book, and still one of the best. Ladd, Doug and Oberle, Frank. 2005. Tallgrass Prairie Wildflowers. Morris Book Publishing. 263 pgs. -a very good field guide with excellent photos. Plants grouped by color. Johnson, Lorraine. 1998. Grow Wild!:Native Plant Gardening in Canada. Denise Schon Books. 154 pgs. -Lorraine Johnson is to Canada what Bill Cullina is to the US. A very useful book from coast to coast. Smith, J. Robert. 1980. The Prairie Garden: 70 Native Plants You Can Grow in Town or Country. University of Wisconsin Press. 219 pgs. -charts for habitat, color, and bloom times Wasowski, Sally. 2002. Gardening with Prairie Plants. University of Minnesota Press. 285 pgs. -I consider this the essential book for prairie gardens. Sternberg, Gus and Wilson, Jim. 1995. Landscaping with Native Trees. Chapters Publishing. 288 pgs. -Often we forget about planting native trees. Good info. Daniels, Stevie. 1995. The Wild Lawn Handbook: Alternatives to the Traditional Front Lawn. Macmillan. 223 pgs. -My first book on banning the bluegrass! Funny I live in Kentucky now. Also several local native plant guides and books on planting natives for wildlife habitat. And books on "natural" gardening that showcase natives but include some exotics, I'm thinking of the Druse books in particular. I'm going to have to pick up some of the books you have mentioned. And then get around to cataloging and organizing my library!

"If it doesn't really mean that, is there any real reason to stay with strictly "native" plants rather than ones "adapted to the environmental conditions"." There have been some wonderful threads on this question. I've put in a link to one of them here, and there is also some good stuff in the FAQs. I think you'll find a wide variety of personal takes on the native vs. non-native issue. One thing just about everybody agrees on is to avoid planting, spreading or encouraging non-native invasive plants, including those that spread when birds eat the seeds and fly away to plant them in the wild. Two big debates are: (1) what is a native? and (2) what about non-invasive non-natives? The 'what is a native' debate involves issues such as: (1) how far back do you go? do we assume that pre-European conditions are pristine or do we acknowledge that indigenous peoples manipulated the flora by burning, clearing, etc.? Do you say that plants that were native before the ice ages but never made it back up north in the centuries since are still native? (2) is native to the U.S. enough, or to my state?; my county?; (3) if something is native to a wetlands in your state, and you don't have a wetlands on your property (or your property was not a wetlands in the pre-European past), then is that plant native to your property? (same for sunny, wooded, alkaline, acid, etc.); (3) are any or all cultivars and hybrids natives? The 'what about non-invasive non-natives' debate is largely scientific, I think (I may get lots of disagreement here). Those of us who want to see the ecological diversity of pre-Colombian America restored (even a tiny bit) prefer to spend all our time and energy on natives. If the goal is restoring, recreating or honoring native plant communities (not just individual species), then there is no real place for non-natives, or at least no reason to expend time and energy on them. I see each native in my yard as a piece of a complex puzzle that includes the climate, the soil conditions, the wildlife, even the bacteria -- this puzzle gives me just a hint of what the tiny piece of land I am stewarding was like during the time of the pyramids, the Roman empire, the middle ages and early Renaissance, before the European immigrants artificially speeded up the natural processes of species distribution to a dangerous level. Adding a non-native is like trying to fit a piece of a different puzzle into the picture. One puzzle at a time is all I can handle. But if you are making a garden with native plants in it (as opposed to a native plant community), many people are perfectly comfortable with mixing natives and non-natives (as long as they are not invasives). For some people, native plants are a much-overlooked treasure trove of beautiful, interesting plants that serve a myriad of purposes. Anything that increases the cultivation of natives will, in the long run, help maintain and restore the vanishing diversity of our plant communities. I do think the point about 'adapted to local conditions' is a good one. Many native plant enthusiasts will remark that natives require less water, less soil amendment, less fertilizer, pest control, etc., than non-natives. But this is not true for all cases. A plant from Asia that grew in conditions identical to those in your yard may not need water, soil amendment or fertilizer (although pest control may be worse), while a so-called native plant that thrives in very wet conditions in your area will need lots of care if you try to plant it in a spot that's too dry. To me, that means the plant is not really native to the spot where you planted it, but this may seem like nitpicking. Sorry for the long-winded sermon -- this stuff really matters to me, -- wd Here is a link that might be useful: Helpful thread