moving this down....

Although 2/3 of CA plants may be facing extinction, only a handful are actually listed as endangered or threatened by the State or Federal government. That leaves a lot of rare plants that an be legally handled by any of us, and most of those will grow in a garden pretty easily as long as the proper conditions are provided. Anyone worried about the extinction of native plants should try to have at least a portion of the yard in natives. One of the main reasons that plants are threatened with extinction is that development (urban/suburban, agricultural, highways) has created barriers to the spread of native plants. As climate changes either due to man's actions or natural causes, plants have always migrated north, south, upslope, inland, or whatever, staying within a climate that they can tolerate. But now as natural habitats become fragmented by cities, farms, highways, or other places unsuitable to native plants, the natives (at least some of them) can't spread into new areas and may simply die out as climate or other conditions change. If we all had even a little bit of native vegetation in our yards, we might create stepping stones for natives to move through cities and suburbs as climate shifts. Your small patch of native vegetation may be just a tiny start toward helping native plants, but most development takes place in small steps too, and look how successful that has been.

The thing that concerns me is the mid-summer sun. Echeverias would look lovely, but they might burn up in the summer, depending on how hot it is there. Mine get cooked in the summer, so I had to move them all to the shade. Aeoniums get huge, and they can burn as well. I would buy needle- leaf or variegated ivies and leave them in their pots (6") and drop them into the planter. In the winter, you can drop red cyclamens in the four inch pots in between the ivies, and when they go dormant in the spring, you can substitute petunias or another colorful bedding annual like portulaca. Another option is Sprenger's asparagus ferns- but beware. The roots expand and you can't get the dang things out without breaking your pot. They drop berries which turn into plants within nanoseconds. I keep mine in plastic pots for this reason. These tough plants will take either full shade or blazing sun. It's just tough to find anything that will thrive in full shade for half the year and full sun for the hot summer months, especially if its roots are being cooked in a black planter. My dad had this problem on his patio- he bought gorgeous (expensive) hand-forged rusted-metal hanging pots, and that summer every plant was cooked in its own little cauldron. Boo. Renee

OA ...I always knew that in your secret life you were a Hollywood producer!!! That was very cool to watch! TFS! I just got a Christmas letter from a friend in MN whose son-in-law did not get back in July for a summer vac there (from CA) cause he was working on that 2012 Disney film ..."Rise of the Guardian" ..& then I see that in your film clip! LOL! TFS! Jeanne S.