SUCCULENTS:

General Characteristics of Dudleyas—
Approximately 40 species native to California and Mexico
Members of stonecrop family (Crassulaceae)
Can survive 20 or 50 years with little care.
Some are summer deciduous, (actually disappearing in summer) and die if watered in summer.
Others are evergreen, or will remain evergreen in foggy climate or with light occasional irrigation.
Most like to go dry in late summer.
Some species resent any summer irrigation.
Plants attract birds who collect and disperse the fine seeds.
Seeds are also spread by wind, may sprout on bare banks in the region thus helping spread these beautiful and non-weedy native plants.
When dudleyas fail in cultivation it is usually from root rot from over-watering.
All can survive without summer irrigation, though leaves may shrivel.

The following dudleyas that are available in the trade and worth trying on this green roof.

Fingertips, Ladies Fingers—(Dudleya edulis)

Attractive, low (1 foot tall and wide) evergreen plant. Native to San Diego coastal region. Grayish green foliage is edible, a source of food of Native Americans. Can take light, occasional summer irrigation. Needs some summer irrigation for survival if grown in full sun in sandy soil. I have observed it growing in pine needle debris on a north-facing, tile roof at the top of the Del Mar hill where it survived at least 45 years that I know of and stayed green year round with no summer irrigation other than drips of moisture on foggy days from overhanging foliage. Can take summer water. Its “fingers” will stay more plumped up through summer if occasionally watered very lightly overhead (like a light summer rain) or by drip. Plants are available at Las Pilatas Native Plant Nursery.

Catalina Island dudleya,—(D. virens ssp. hassei)

Evergreen plant endemic to Catalina Island, makes an excellent ground cover. Plants spread in profusely-branched mounds 6 to 8 inches high and wide. Tolerant of heavy soil.

Frank Reinelt dudleya, Anacapa dudleya (D. ‘Frank Reinelt’, D. ‘Anacapa’)

Improved selection with tight low mounds, 6 to 8 inches tall and 12 inches wide with profuse yellow flowers in spring. Silvery leaves flush rosey-purple in winter. Available from Native Sons Nursery, others.

Candleholder dudleya—(D. candelabrum)

Among many island endemic dudleyas this one from Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel islands is adapted to rocky soil. Rosettes of leaves are not finger-shaped, but measure 6 to 10 inches across. The leaves are chunky, green, flattened, and send up tight clusters of pale yellow flowers in spring, hence the name.

Britton dudleya—(D. brittonii)

Most popular of dudleyas, prized for its stunningly large (6 to 12-inch) rosette of luminous, whitish or silvery leaves. In spring sends up a tall (1 to 2 1/2 foot) flower stalk which turns red when it bears its yellow flowers. Makes a good pot plant since must have good drainage. Worth trying on the roof but may die from root rot and unlike other varieties named here, might need some brown leaves removed.

General Characteristics of Native Agaves
Most agave’s are too large for use on a roof or are native to hot interior regions and do not do well along the coast. However, the following agave is native to the coast and small enough for a roof. It can be seen growing wild in Torrey Pines Park and on coastal bluffs throughout southern California.

Shaw agave—(Agave shawii)

Bold-looking, architectural rosettes (3-foot tall and 2 feet wide) of succulent, sharply-spined, leaves are handsome year round and can be used as an effective barrier against foot traffic. Individual plants eventually create large colonies forming strong, sculptural accents. Can be used in drifts for good effect. Once an individual has matured it will send up a 7 or rarely even to 12 foot tall flower stalk with attractive rounded yellow bloom clusters that are irresistible to hummingbirds. A negative factor to this plant is that after bloom the entire rosette dies (though not the clump.) In nature the plants remain highly attractive despite the dead rosette and browning flower stalk bearing seed pods after blooms fade, but in a garden or perhaps on a roof, people may feel that the one dead rosette should be removed from the clump of new plants that by now has grown up around it. Also the flower stems may be too tall for harmonious appearance on a roof.

Shaw agave can adapt to irrigation and occasional water may improve its appearance in dry weather especially in shallow soil.

GRASSES

The main reason for any objection to grasses on this roof is the possible need for occasional mowing for safety and appearance, which might be difficult on a roof. A second reason is the problem with seedlings sprouting in the lagoon area. Nonetheless, here are two native grasses that don’t not seem to be particularly invasive and might be a good choices, providing an excellent appearance year round, and also might do well on this roof with little or no mowing:

Red Fescue—(Festuca rubra ‘Slopesaver’)

Red fescue is native to moist climates in California and is widely grown as an ornamental grass to provide an informal greensward or bank cover in sun or shade. It is available as sod or seed in as many as 40 named cultivars, the best known of which is given above. Given regular irrigation it maintains a beautiful green appearance year round. Tufted drifts 3 to 12 inches high spread by rhizomes. This grass is disease and pest free. It can be grown without mowing or can be mowed with a weed wacker if desired. Gray selections are drought-resistant. Red fescue would provide an extremely attractive sod roof and has been successfully used for this purpose.

Blue grama—(B. gracilis)

A tough, very drought-resistant, bunch grass that forms slowly spreading tufts, 4 to 16 inches tall, of wiry grass. It must have full sun and will die if over-watered. Allowing it to dry out completely between summer irrigations may be the best way to keep it happy. Best adapted to the hot, dry interior where it goes brown in winter, this grass may stay partially green in winter in this coastal zone, but it may not do as well as red fescue in a foggy coastal zone.

Related posts:

1. Native Plants Suitable For Planting Near A Coastal Lagoon
2. Native Grasses & Succulents Suitable For Planting Near A Coastal Lagoon
3. Native Plants Of Southern California’s Coastal Zones

The coastal zones of California, west of the mountains have a Mediterranean climate, which means dry summers with brilliant sunshine and blue skies, and almost all rainfall concentrated during the mild, winter and spring, averaging 10 to 40 inches per year (worldwide average for Mediterranean climates). Snowfall is rare except at high elevations.

Mediterranean climates occur on approximately 2% of the world’s total land, on the south and southwestern portions of a large land mass. There are 5 main areas: California, the Mediterranean Basin, Central Chile, Western Cape of South Africa, and Southwest and South Australia (which also faces West.)

Native plants of these regions are typically endemic to certain defined areas, because of climates within climates, caused by sun, shade, temperature, distance from coast, elevation, air currents, soil, and moisture. Not all native plants are drought resistant.

Plant adaptation, drought-evading tactics include: Summer-deciduous plants, bulbs store water in roots, annuals die after setting seeds, seeds spring up after fire, tap roots for rapid establishment combined with fine surface roots to catch moisture, plants springing from ground after fire, gray leaves resistant to sun, hairs on leaves to protect leave (hirsute), tough leathery leaves resist dehydration, thick succulent leaves and stems, protective waxy surface of leaves, mulch from fallen leaves.

Plant history of California:

• Much of California coastal region was covered with native bunchgrasses. Antelope (prong horns) abounded. The Indians burned off the thick chaparral in winter to make more spaces for grasses to grow and also to create pathways for themselves so they could get around through the thick growth. This was the California seen by Portola. In one area a botanist with his group described a valley covered with wild roses. Obviously this was a dry land, but not a desert! Native oaks also forested some portions.
• California poppy fields in Altadena were a landmark to Spanish galleons 30 miles distant, out  to sea. At first they thought it was a hillside covered with gold.
• The Mission era was marked by an influx of Spanish priests who imported food plants and used irrigation methods learned in Spain. They saved the wild landscape but brought in certain non-native plants such as California pepper, Canary Island palm, and, from Northern California, Monterey cypress.
• The Rancho era.
  - Cattle ate and destroyed our native grasses.
  - Ranchers imported European annual grasses that go brown in summer and now cover our hills

The privilege of living in San Diego, combined with the danger of fire.

• Compared to Amalfi coast where the hills burn but the houses are built of stone and all huddled together in walled, fireproof villages. We are just now beginning to learn about fire-resistant housing and gardens.
• Different types of Chaparral (Chaparral is not all alike. Each is a mix of many plants in a plant community, and these are distinguished and named for the dominant plant in each one.)
  - chamise chaparral,
  - coastal sage chaparral
  - ceonothus chaparral,
  - manzanita chapparal,
  - scrub oak chapparal,
  - others.

Similar plant communities or habitats in other Mediterranean climates around the world.

• Mantorral—Chile, or Espino (sparse savannah)
• Fynbos—South Africa (meaning “fine brush” or “fine bush”—proteas etc.) or Ericas (meaning heaths)
• Scrub Heath—Australia
• Maquis—Mediterranean (many types) and Garrigue (same thing but sparser and on poorer ground.)

Related posts:

1. Native Plants Of Southern California’s Coastal Zones
2. Planting California Native Plants
3. Native Plants Suitable For A Green Roof

Question:

Answer: I’m so glad you ordered my book. It covers all the plants we grow in handy month-by-month format but emphasizes drought-resistant gardening and plants throughout. Additionally, there are sections on native plants, the latest information on how to grow them, a new section on planting a desert garden —”Making a Garden is Like Baking a Cake”—, an updated succulent and cacti section, and a whole new section on fire-resistant gardening which especially impacts those living near wild areas. And it helps long time gardeners as well as new residents who soon find out how different gardening is here than anywhere else where they may have lived. I can’t count the times that people have told me they moved here from somewhere else, this book helped them from the get-go, and it is now their “gardening bible.”

Since you are new to gardening in Southern California, I also want to emphasize that a garden of succulents is not the only way to go. Succulents are just one large group of drought-resistant plants of many genuses that store water in their structural parts, such as leaves, branches, and trunks. Succulents can be stunning when planted in a well-designed arrangement, and yes, you could plant a whole drought-resistant garden of them as many gardeners have successfully done. However, you don’t have to carpet the ground with gravel and resort to nothing but prickly cacti or poisonous euphorbias in order to have a water-thrifty garden. You can plant a succulent garden that contains no euphorbias or cacti and still have a fascinatingly varied landscape. You could also plant a completely drought-resistant garden that does not contain a single succulent or cactus.

Take California native plants, for example, though a few of them are succulent plants most are not. During the last fifty years, while gardeners largely ignored native plants or brushed them aside as “difficult”, botanical gardens, hybridizers, and native plant enthusiasts came up with a whole raft of new, easy-to-grow selections and varieties and some of these need no summer water at all. Now that gardeners have at last become serious about saving water, they suddenly find that —Viola!—they have a whole plethora of wonderful species to plant that are much easier than those available years ago. Also, now there are several fine nurseries, such as Tree of Life Nursery near San Juan Capistrano, that specialize exclusively in native plants and are great fun to visit. (See Tree of Life website for hours and days open.)

In addition to native plants, many. but not all, grasses, palms, flowering subtropical trees, shrubs, and climbers—wisteria is a perfect example—, perennials, annuals, bulbs, shrubs, and even one rose are drought resistant. Lady Banks rose has no thorns, no diseases, and no pests and once established is highly drought-resistant. The largest rose in the world is a Lady Banks (Rosa banksiae ‘Lutea’) surviving for over a century in Tombstone Arizona without irrigation.

That said, among other books I especially recommend are Debra Baldwin’s “Designing with Succulents” and her new book “Succulent Container Gardens.” Another book that would help you is one I wrote called “The American Horticultural Society Southwest SMART GARDEN™ Regional Guide“. On pages 82 and 83 you will find a list of all the lists inside the book. Each page contains as many as 6 photographs of the plants on that particular list. Many but not all lists pertain to drought-resistant plants and they are arranged according to how you would use them. The book contains 8 pages on succulents alone: 2 pages each of succulent perennials, succulent shrubs, succulent climbers, and succulent trees. This book will teach you to recognize many of the plants that grow here but it will also help you choose good drought-resistant ones for your garden.

Every local gardener should own a copy of “Sunset Western Garden Book” and refer to the illustrated lists on drought-resistant plants in the beginning of the book. You can also identify which Sunset Climate Zone you are living in by referring to the opening pages of this book. Other wonderful books are: “California Native Plants for the Garden” by Bornstein, Fross, and O’Brien, “Native Landscaping from El Paso to L.A.” by Sally Waskowski with Andy Wasowski, and “Plants and Landscapes for Summer-Dry Climates of the San Francisco Bay Region” by the East Bay Municipal Utility District. All these books are chock full of wonderful photographs.

Related posts:

1. Drought tolerants for patio
2. Drought-resistant Lawn Substitute for People and Dogs
3. Southern California Organic Gardening, Month by Month

During the last few thousand years, in such places as China, Egypt, Persia, South America, India, and Europe there have been many eras when great gardens have been laid out and planted by the rich and powerful, but few times in history when, like now, almost every household boasts a small garden. Virtually every suburban home-owner today wants some kind of garden, but not everyone wishes to be involved with doing the gardening, and if one doesn’t like the process, why do it? Far better to hire someone else and spend one’s precious leisure time doing something one enjoys. Gardening is a hobby for those who love it. Those who don’t should take up golf or cooking or fishing or whatever else catches their fancy. Whenever someone says to me “Isn’t it a lot of work?” I know that person is not a born gardener.

Most things that are fun take time to learn and work to accomplish, but if one loves the process it’s not work; it’s play. The true gardener loves every step from the choice and cultivation of plants through their care. The very smells of moist black earth, old clay pots, and pungent leaves mean happiness. When I was young I often felt the most intense excitement while working in the garden and thinking ahead to what my project would look like in the end. It’s the same feeling that a painter may experience when painting or a writer when writing. The magic ingredient that can make hard work enjoyable is the inner vision of a good result. Planting seeds wouldn’t be any fun if we didn’t trust that they were going to coming up, but in return for each completed task, plants repay us many times over. The satisfying thing about gardening is that it’s filled with thousands of varied and pleasing rewards. When we plant a bed or finish building a wall, the sight of the improvement we’ve made is ample reward. And all the tips of plant care we pick up and use pay off, some within months and others within a few days. Deadhead a clump of annuals, and they continue flowering. Cut back a wisteria twiner to two buds, and it sports a bloom. Pour a kettle of boiling water down a row of parsley seeds right after planting, and they spring up in three days. Experiences like these can turn confirmed pessimists into optimists and make gardening a passion never to be given up by those who love it as long as strength and hope remain.

But before succumbing wholly to the passion of gardening, it’s necessary to define one’s practical needs. How does the space need to perform? And in what way might our needs change through the years? When the family is young we might want to create an outdoor space where our children or later grandchildren can play their games of imagination, perhaps with swings and slides, a tree house, a play house, or paths for tricycles. Other times the desire is to make outdoor rooms for entertaining, a central swimming pool perhaps, with places where people can gather, with comfortable furniture, fireplaces, and barbeques. Some folks love growing vegetables, or an orchard of deciduous or tropical fruits. Others desire a collection of plants, a sort of botanic garden. In this case it might not matter how the plants are arranged or if the paths go anywhere other than providing a way to get around and see the plant collection. I have friends who have an almost unquenchable desire for what’s new. They want to find and grow everything they can squash into every inch of available space, and the more exotic and rare a plant is, the greater their love for it. Most wonderful to them is the joy of finding a new plant that no one else knows and no one else grows.

When choosing a garden style, it’s well to remember that the style of the garden needs to go with the style of the house or it may seem grating and inharmonious. The style of the garden also needs to be sufficiently practical to fit one’s needs. For example a garden of hard surfaces, completely planted cacti won’t be practical for raising small children. Beyond these two limitations, in California, any style goes. Travelers create gardens to remind themselves of beloved places, immigrants fashion gardens reminiscent of countries where they were born. There are gardens made of nothing but seashells and others of fence-to-fence topiary. On the same block you can see a blousy English garden rubbing elbows with the austere all-green Japanese scheme. A South Seas paradise threatens to consume the drought-resistant, Spanish-style succulent garden next door. It’s all a matter of what makes you happy, and the very first step in creating a garden is to discover just what that is. I know of no other place where the choices of style are so many and varied as they are here in California.

I went on a garden tour the other day with two friends and one of them remarked to me, “I get so fed up when I hear people say ‘my garden is a Provencal garden, or it’s an Italian garden.’ Not all gardens in Provence are good ones, and many Italian gardens are a total mess! Why can’t gardeners say ‘This is a California garden!’” To some extent I agree with her, but not totally. I do agree that Californians, and Americans in general, tend to be too modest about their gardens not realizing what wonderful creations they have made. When Penelope Hobhouse was lecturing in Southern California a few years ago, she stayed with me in my house. In the course of one conversation Penny remarked how many outstanding gardens she has seen in the United States yet the owners often say ‘This is an English garden.’ “Americans aren’t yet quite sure of their garden talent,” she said, “but I have seen many great gardens in America that are every bit as good as English ones.”

But on the other hand, there is nothing wrong with imitating something good and worthwhile. The greatest gardens, both ancient and modern, always contain unique features you can’t see anywhere else, but some very good gardens have come about through taking inspiration from great landscapes that embody imaginative and original ideas. The memory of a marvelous foreign locale might suggest a way to frame a view. Handsome pots from Italy or Crete can set a tone. Olive trees and lavender remind us of the South of France. In my own garden I like to use natural materials such as bamboo and twigs cut out of the shrubbery for plant supports, but I got the idea while traveling in England and seeing the marvelous trellises that gardeners make there out of willow. The most important ingredient is creating a place that pleases oneself. By following your own heart and not caring too much about what other people think it’s quite likely you’ll end up pleasing the people whose opinion really counts.

Travel has influenced the style of American gardens since the 18th century, but since the 1950’s nothing has done more than color photography and printing to spread various styles of gardening and influence public taste. By studying photographs in the best magazines and books and by going on tours one can gradually develop educated taste and see what works and what doesn’t, what one likes and what one detests. One can look for ideas to adapt to one’s own space, see how other gardeners have terraced banks, or put in steps and paths and what plants they have chosen. For a gardener going on a garden tour is like visiting an art museum for a painter. Artists study the paintings to see how another painter got his effect, and gardeners do the same.

When people come to my garden they often say it is an English garden, but to me it’s not at all like an English garden. Like my friend who went with me on the garden tour last week, I want to demure, “It’s a California garden.” But if I wanted to honor the source of my inspiration, I would say it was California/Mediterranean, or perhaps French, since many French home gardens are thickly planted and more relaxed than English gardens.  I try to grow only those plants well adapted to our Mediterranean climate of plentiful sunshine, winter rains, and dry summers. To survive in the basic landscape of my garden, a plant has to be willing to go dry at times and not curl up and die. One thinks of the Mediterranean gardens one sees in Spain or Italy that are usually sparsely planted with many open spaces. I have open spaces in my garden also, but the beds are thickly planted, and I don’t like bare ground to show. To me, bare soil in a flowerbed is like a smile with a few missing teeth. If ever there is a patch of ground in my garden with no plant growing in it, I cover it with mulch. Years ago, I preached mulch with such vigor that one of our TV anchor-persons suffered a slip of the lip, “And now to show us how to plant potatoes,” she announced, “here comes Pat Mulch!” Today I’m beginning to temper these ideas because of concern for beneficials. I now leave some bare patches here and there in my garden because native bees need bare soil for survival.

Attention to details, such as the use of natural materials or allowing no bare ground, leads gradually to the development of an ideal or philosophy in gardening that goes beyond style. It could apply to any style or any climate just as Vita Sackville-West’s ideal of formal design with informal planting could apply to any strong design having formal aspects, including many unique modern gardens. My own ideal is to create a garden with a romantic atmosphere and then to live in it as much as possible. You could also call it a paradise garden, a “Garden of Eden.” But what do I mean by romantic? Here are some of the words I found in more than one dictionary to describe romance: “imagination, love, idealization, wafting one to another time or place, excitement,” and phrases such as: “adventure of the kind found in romantic literature, a romantic quality or spirit, to be fanciful or imaginative in thinking or talking, having some aspects of an imagined, though unseen reality, adventurous, idealistic, passionate, visionary, emphasis on feeling and originality, a suitable setting for love.”

I’ve known people who became so passionate about gardening, that it made them almost as happy as falling in love. Projecting one’s own feelings onto the garden is similar to an artist projecting feelings onto a painting or a lover onto a beloved person, and in return one’s own love is reflected back. But though gardening may become an obsession, it’s also very practical; it’s not all ideals and design, it’s mulch and it’s pea stakes. How does one actually carry out the plan and turn this nebulous idea of romance in the garden and romancing the garden into concrete reality without allowing the garden to completely consume or worry us?  It’s meant to provide happiness, after all, not stress. And how can anyone say what is good taste and what is not? Two people might look at the same landscape and one will like it and the other won’t.  Good taste in garden planting and design is one of those qualities about which we say, “I can’t tell you what it is, but I know it if I see it.”

Related posts:

1. Finding Your Garden’s Path
2. Garden Design
3. Formal Garden and Informal Plants

• Not listing any grasses due to invasive qualities.

Succulents

• Agave shawii—Shaw agave***
   Excellent barrier plant with clean appearance, bold, architectural  shape and ferocious spines. Uniquely-shaped bloom spike is   attractive to hummingbirds.
• Cylindropuntia prolifera—Coast cholla**
   Extremely prickly plant for keeping out intruders, not for use near paths.
• Opuntia littoralis; O. orricula—Coast prickley pear**
   Effective spiney barrier plant for use away from paths. Used on  banks will keep out intruders entering from above or around gates.

Related posts:

1. Native Plants Suitable For Planting Near A Coastal Lagoon
2. Native Shrubs Suitable For Planting Near A Coastal Lagoon
3. Native Annuals Suitable For Planting Near A Coastal Lagoon

• Flamingo lily (Anthurium andraeanum), Azalea ‘Alaska’ and others. (Other good varieties: ‘Happy Days’, ‘Phoenecia’, ‘Formosa’         is understock, often appears when sprouts grow from ground.
• Bat-faced cuphea (Cuphea llavea) Other good cupheas, include false heather (C.     hyssopifolia) All bring hummingbirds.
• Brazilian plume (Justicia carnea)
• Butterfly flower (Clerodendrum bungei ‘Ugandense’) for large tub.
• Cane begonia ‘Irene Nusse’ long bloom facing east or west.
• Cigar plant (Cuphea ignea)
• Fire cracker Plant (Crossandra ‘Orange Marmelade’)
• Geraniums: (Pelargonium spp.) ivy(Pelargonium peltatum), standard (P. x hortorum),,     scented (P. x fragrans) species types, and Martha Washingtons (P. x domesticum).
• Hydrangea, Hortensia (Hydrangea macrophylla) well-adapted to tubs or ground. Hallmark     plant of patios in Mediterranean countries. East-light best.
• Impatiens: East-facing best.
• Mandevilla (Mandevilla hybrids ‘Magic Dream’ & others. Formerly Dipladenia)
• Marguerites (Chrysanthemum frutescens, Argyranthemum frutescens.)
• Orchid cacti  (Epiphyllum.)
• Richmondensis begonia (B. ‘Richmondensis’.)
• Scaevola hybrids (Scaevola aemula ‘Blue Wonder’ & ‘New Wonder’.)
• Standard fuchsias, including ‘Swingtime’, ‘Voodoo’, ‘First Success’, ‘Gartenmeister     Bonstedt’
• Succulents—many wonderful varieties, such as Echeveria  ‘Sunburst’, propeller plant     (Crassula falcata), Black Aeonium (Aenonium arboreum ‘Zwartkop’.)
• Tree fuchsia (Fuchsia arborescens)
• Yellow shrimp plant (Justicia brandegeeana ‘Yellow Queen’) brings hummingbirds.

Related posts:

1. Patio Plants For Sun And Warmth
2. The Finest Patio Plants: How To Select, Grow, And Arrange
3. Patio Plants For Partial Shade