Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens - Softcover

"This book not only tells you all about hundreds of these beautiful plants but -- most important -- how and where to deploy them to great effect." San Jose Mercury News "This excellent book is a must-read for anyone interested in cultivating native plants and working them into a landscape plan." -- Robert Walch Salinas Californian "Here's a beautiful and very informative book that any gardener who lives in California will love reading." -- Robert Walch Bookloons.com "A beautiful and very informative book." -- Robert Francis Aptos Times

Inspirational, practical, and easy to use, this book was created with the aim of conveying the awesome diversity and beauty of California's native plants and demonstrating how they can be brought into ecologically sound, attractive, workable, and artful gardens. Structured around major California plant communities - bluffs, redwoods, the Channel Islands, coastal scrub, grasslands, deserts, oak woodlands, mixed evergreen woodlands, riparian, chaparral, mountain meadows, and wetlands - the book's twelve chapters each include sample plans for a native garden design accompanied by original drawings, color photographs, a plant list, tips on successful gardening with individual species, and more. Both residential and professional gardeners will learn the benefits of going native with gardens that require less water and fewer fertilizers, attract wildlife, engage the senses, create a sense of place, and, at the same time, preserve our rich natural heritage. "Designing Native California Gardens" includes: more than 600 selected native species recommended for the garden; more than 300 photographs of native plants, natural plant communities, and residential native gardens; and, recommended places to visit for viewing each plant community.