Plants Made for Here
Welcome to the Weekly Edition
Happy Sunday! This week's newsletter is a little different – I'm combining my usual “In the Garden” and “Living Sustainably” sections into one bigger conversation about California native plants. It ties right into the contest I'm running this week, so the whole thing has a nice flow to it.
We'll start with some important updates for students (including details about this week's field trip), then dive deep into native plants and what it means to garden sustainably with them, and finish with a quiet reflection on patience and belonging.
For Students
Field Trip This Week
Quick reminder: this is field trip week! We'll be visiting Glendora Gardens Nursery at 1132 S Grand Ave, Glendora, CA 91740.
Field trip times:
Tuesday at 1 pm
Wednesday at 10 am and 1 pm
Thursday at 1 pm
The field trip is open to current students, but past students are welcome to join if you fill out a registration card. Non-students can also join us – you'll just need to fill out a registration form (it's free) for insurance purposes. You can register for just the one class if you'd like.
A quick note on parking: there is not parking lot at the nursery. If you're comfortable with a short walk, please park down the street. That way we can keep the spots right in front open for students who need them.
YouTube Contest Update
The contest is already underway, and we've got some great comments coming in! If you haven't entered yet, just watch my latest video and answer “Today's Question” in the comments.
The top five most-liked comments will each win a 1-gallon Salvia apiana ‘compacta’ – that's the compact white sage.
You can find all the details here: https://www.growingwithprofessorbrown.com/contest
Sustainability in the Garden: California Native Plants
In light of this week's contest, I want to spend some time talking about California native plants – why they matter, how to plant them properly, and what they have to teach us about gardening in harmony with where we live.
Why Native Plants?
Let's start with the basics: what are the benefits of native plants, and why should we care about them?
California native plants evolved here over thousands of years. They're adapted to our climate, our soil, our rainfall patterns, and our dry summers. That means they naturally require less water, less fertilizer, and less intervention once they're established. They fit here because this is where they belong.
But it's more than just convenience. Native plants support local ecosystems in ways that non-natives often can't. They provide food and habitat for native pollinators – bees, butterflies, hummingbirds – and for other creatures that have co-evolved with these plants.
When we plant natives, we're not just adding something pretty to our yard. We're creating space for other living things to survive and thrive.
Most of my students have probably already seen this, but if you want a deeper introduction to native plants, I put together a video a while back that covers the basics and shares five of my favorites: Click here to watch the video.
Planning and Planting Natives the Right Way
Here's the thing about native plants: they can be incredibly tough and long-lived, but only if we set them up for success from the start. That means planning carefully and resisting the urge to “help” them too much.
First, consider your site. What kind of soil do you have? How much sun does the area get? What's the water situation? Native plants have specific preferences, and putting the right plant in the right place makes all the difference.
(Want to learn about Native plant needs? Visit: https://www.calscape.org/.)
If you're planting multiple natives together, that's great – they tend to do well in communities with other natives or with Mediterranean and drought-tolerant plants that have similar water needs. Grouping them this way makes watering easier and keeps you from overwatering some plants while underwatering others.
When it comes to actually putting the plant in the ground, depth matters. Don't plant too deep – and don't plant too shallow either. The root crown should be right at or just slightly above the soil line. If you're not sure how to do this properly, I walk through the whole process in my contest video: Click here to watch the video.
One more thing about planning: make sure the plant fits the space. We don't want to plant something that's going to get huge in a spot where it'll need constant pruning. Native plants don't like being hacked back smaller than they naturally want to be. It stresses them out and defeats the whole purpose of choosing a low-maintenance plant in the first place.
And if you live near hills or fire-prone areas, choose your plants carefully. Author of Firescaping: Protecting Your Home with a Fire-Resistant Landscape, and Cal Poly Pomona professor Douglas Kent – who was one of my professors – often said that native plants can be wonderful, but we also have to think about the purpose of our landscape.
Non-native plants can be good and useful too when they're used in the right place for the right reason. The point is to be thoughtful about what we're planting and why.
Why We Don't Amend Soil or Fertilize Natives
This is one of the hardest things for people to wrap their heads around, especially if they're used to traditional gardening: we don't amend the soil or fertilize California native plants.
Here's why. Native plants evolved in our native soil – which, let's be honest, are not very rich by conventional gardening standards. Clay, sand, rock – they're used to it. When we add compost or fertilizer, we're changing the conditions they're adapted to.
Fertilized natives often grow quickly and look great for a while, but they tend to live shorter lives. Sometimes they don't even make it through their first summer because their roots are weak and they can't handle the heat and drought.
The same goes for soil amendments. When you dig a big fancy hole, fill it with nice fluffy soil, and plant your native in it, you're creating what's essentially a pot in the ground. The roots stay in that amended area instead of spreading out into the native soil where they belong. Then, when summer comes and that little pocket of soil dries out, the plant suffers.
Instead, we want to work with the soil biology that's already there. Native plants have relationships with specific fungi and bacteria in the soil – relationships that help them access water and nutrients. When we disturb the soil too much or change its chemistry, we disrupt those relationships.
The best thing we can do is plant at the right time (fall is ideal for most natives), give them some water to get established, and then back off and let them do their thing.
Timing, Root Growth, and Patience
Speaking of timing: fall and early winter are the best times to plant California natives. Why? Because that's when they're focused on growing roots, not top growth.
In nature, natives spend the cool, wet months of fall and winter putting energy into their root systems. They're building the infrastructure they'll need to survive our long, hot, dry summers.
If we plant them in spring or summer, they're trying to grow leaves and flowers at the same time they're trying to establish roots – and that's a tough ask, especially when the weather's already heating up.
When we plant in fall, we're working with the plant's natural rhythm. We're giving it months to grow deep, strong roots before it has to deal with summer stress. And those strong roots make all the difference. They're what allow the plant to survive on little to no summer water once it's established.
This is where patience comes in. It can be hard to watch a plant just sit there, not doing much, especially when we're used to seeing fast growth. But that's exactly what we want. Slow, steady root growth now means a healthy, resilient plant later.
If you're worried about keeping roots healthy, the right kind of mulch can help. A thin layer of mulch around the base of the plant (but not touching the stem) helps keep the soil cool and moist. Just be careful if you're in a fire-prone area – you want to be thoughtful about what materials you're using and how close they are to structures.
The Bigger Picture: Sustainability, Biodiversity, and Resilience
So what does all this have to do with sustainability?
Everything, really.
Regenerative gardening is about doing less and getting more benefit. It's about working with natural systems instead of against them. And native plants, when they're planned properly and cared for the right way, embody that idea perfectly. They require fewer inputs – less water, less fertilizer, less fuss – because they're designed for this place.
But the benefits go beyond our own gardens. When we plant natives, we're supporting biodiversity. And biodiversity matters – not just as an abstract concept, but in real, tangible ways.
Think about it like this: ecosystems are like nets. The more strands in the net, the stronger it is. If you pull out a few strands, the net still holds. But if you keep pulling strands – if you keep losing species – eventually the whole thing falls apart.
Biodiversity gives ecosystems resilience. It means that if one species struggles, others can step in and fill that role. It means pollinators have options, predators have prey, and plants have the partners they need to reproduce and spread.
Our fire suppression practices over the last century have changed California's ecosystems in ways we're only beginning to understand. We've disrupted natural fire cycles, which has affected everything from plant communities to the animals that depend on them.
We can't undo that overnight, but we can make choices in our own yards that help support the creatures that are still here – the bees, the butterflies, the birds, the insects we don't always notice but that keep the whole system running.
Other creatures deserve to live, too. And when we create space for them – when we plant the flowers that feed them, the shrubs that shelter them, the trees that give them places to nest – we're doing more than just making our yards look nice. We're participating in something bigger.
Learning from Native Plants
There's a writer and botanist named Robin Wall Kimmerer who talks about plants as teachers. She suggests that if we pay attention – really pay attention – plants have something to teach us. Not just about gardening, but about how to live.
I think native plants have a lot to teach us. They teach us about belonging, about what it means to be adapted to a place. They teach us patience – that real strength takes time to build, that roots matter more than the showy stuff we can see above ground. They teach us that we don't always need to intervene, that sometimes the best thing we can do is step back and let things be.
When we honor native plants – when we take the time to understand what they need, when we resist the urge to “improve” them, when we let them grow the way they're meant to – we're learning to listen. And maybe that's one of the most valuable lessons of all.
Thought of the Week: Belonging and Patience
There's something powerful about planting something that belongs where you are.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately – about what it means to be native to a place, to be so deeply adapted that you don't just survive there, you thrive there. To be part of a web of relationships that have been building for longer than we can imagine.
Most of us aren't native to the places we live. We've moved, or our parents moved, or their parents moved. We're all, in some way, trying to figure out how to belong.
But maybe that's what makes native plants such good teachers. They show us that belonging takes time. It takes patience. It takes putting down roots – real roots, the kind you can't see but that matter more than anything visible above the surface.
And maybe they show us that belonging isn't about being perfect. It's about being in relationship – with the soil, with the rain, with the creatures that share the space. It's about giving and receiving, about being part of something instead of apart from it.
I don't know what you're working on in your garden right now, or in your life. But I do know this: the things that last are the things that take time. The things that matter are often the things we can't see right away.
So be patient with your plants. Be patient with yourself. Put down roots. Let things grow slowly. Trust that the work you're doing now – the quiet, invisible work – will matter more than you know.
Take care of yourselves this week. I'll see you next Sunday.
All the best,
Professor Brown
If this newsletter was helpful or meaningful to you this week, you’re welcome to share it with someone who might enjoy it too.
The buttons below make it easy to share by email or on Facebook, and you can personalize the message however you’d like.
Thank you - I really appreciate your help in spreading the word.
