My local botanic garden periodically offers a class called "Edible and Medicinal California Native Plants" at either their Claremont or Westwood nurseries. I just looked at the calendar and see the next one is scheduled for Westwood in December. The class is free! But I don't know if you live close enough for this to be convenient. I haven't taken the class yet, but I did hear a little bit of a talk the instructor gave during the Native Sage Festival this year. I scanned the brochure that one of the attendees had. If I can find it I will post. Melissa Here is a link that might be useful: Programs at GNN Westwood (Veterans Garden)

There's a thread on Mons tiller fries in the sun, see below: "Mine fried after an hour or two in the sun, more so than my other tea roses so it's no longer with me in my hot garden. Clementina Carbonieri did the same thing. A pity, since both are beautiful roses. Ingrid." ***** From Straw: I'm adding own-root Yves Piaget on my rose-order for next year, along with Young Lycidas and Romantica "The McCartney" rose. I researched again on Yves Piaget: the person who grows Yves both as own-root vs. grafted reported wimpiness for both. Someone from PNW (rainy & cool) climate also reported Yves being wimpy. Robert Rippetoe in his Rancho Mirage climate of exreme heat, drought, and alkaline sandy soil .... grows Yves Piaget and uses it in his breeding program ... so it must be very good for him. I figured out what makes Romanticas works: fluffy potting soil for the roots to get big, then transfer to fertile clay. I have Yves Piaget's children bred by Robert Neil, I put gypsum in the pots, and they went beserk with growth. Ingrid in this forum once grew Yves, but it didn't do well in the heat ... she has loose de-composed granite soil high in potassium. That's different from Ingrid in Thousand Oaks, who has clay. According to Wikipedia, high potassium or high nitrogen drives down calcium. The Romanticas have a higher demand for calcium than other roses, they are very sensitive to salt, so saline soil is not suitable. Calcium in gypsum is used to de-salt saline soil. That explains why Mons.Tillier works for Jaspermplants in Arizona, but didn't work for Ingrid with high-potassium soil. Arizona is alkaline clay high in calcium like my Chicagoland clay ... I'm next to a limestone quarry. Calcium is known to firm up tissue of plants, and helps with drought-tolerance, which explains for the success of Romanticas in my limestone clay. Here's an excerpt on calcium from the site http://www.oxyfertil.com/royaume-uni/role-ca-mg-plante.html · increases the plant tissues' resistance and allows for more erect stems · contributes to normal root system development · increases resistance to outside attack Here is a link that might be useful: Does your Mons. Tillier fry in the sun? This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Fri, Jul 12, 13 at 10:58

I spoke with Keith Moore from West Feeds - he said if you are going to GPS the store use 7730 Dove Drive instead of 13758 Hwy 181 South. Guess CPS assigned the wrong address so you won't get to the right place.

Nothing that I would recommend, sadly. We ended up turning a bit more of the formerly grassy area into landscaped space (creating tree rings and planting some young trees, etc.) and the rest we have ceded to oxalis and its brethren until we have some time and money to do a more extensive overhaul. At this stage we're thinking most seriously of creating some hardscaped space to extend the living space a bit and then putting down sod in the small space that remains for a play space. We are in Northern CA where grass is challenging and expensive to maintain as far as water use, so want to minimize that use but do also have kids (no longer as young as when I first posted this!) who run and play pretty actively in that space, despite its small size. While the weeds make me nuts, they have actually done a decent job of holding the soil and addressing the mud, for better or worse. With the rainy winter this year, some of the original no-mow grass has returned, too.