As a person who visits gardens large and small, fabulous and fantastic as part of what I do, I find it really easy - frustratingly easy - to fall into a trap of garden envy and discontent. Maybe my garden should be bigger? Or smaller? Maybe it should be more whimsical? Perhaps more formal and statuesque? If only I had more trees? More ferns? More flowers? More time? More money? Ahhh…if only I had more. Photo: The Breakers historic mansion and garden Newport, Rhode Island, summer 2009.

But then late October and November come upon me and the garden. In many areas, it is the end of the growing season for summer flowers and typical summer fruits and vegetables. It’s the beginning of seasonal rain and snow, the season of evergreens and winter vegetables. It is the season of deep bold colors exuberantly lighting up in contrast to the softening, lessening light - the last ditch efforts at glory for our roses, our tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. It’s the beginning of the citrus season in the valley portions of the North State. It’s the season of storing the fruits of our labor for winter; the season of digging hopeful and un-likely-looking bulbs into cooling, dark soil in hopes of spring beauty returning in time. It’s the season of that first killing frost having arrived in almost all gardening zones of our region and the beginning of simpler times in the garden. Photo: Autumn oak leaves. (more…)

Fall is the time to plant trees in the North State and a special edition of In a North State Garden aired this past Thursday, October 22nd, specifically discussing choosing, planting, and caring for trees in your North State garden. Two guest experts joined me to answer your tree questions and to discuss trees in the garden in general. It was a fascinating conversation, and I hope to have the podcast of the show up at Jewellgarden.com in a week or so. Photo: The gnarled evocative branches of an old oak tree.
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Northstate Public Radio - KFPR 88.9 FM Redding, CA and KCHO 91.7 FM Chico, CA is in the midst of their Fall 2009 Membership Drive and the theme of the drive is: Branching Out! During the drive, regular programming is replaced with special programming and I will be hosting a special, one-hour, live call-in edition of In a North State Garden this coming Thursday the 22nd of October from 10 - 11 am, featuring two special North State guests talking with us about trees in the North State garden. While you can only touch on a tiny amount of information pertaining to such a vast topic in the course of an hour, our conversation will try to cover some basic ideas on how to choose your trees, how to place and plant your trees and how to care for them over time, including how and when to water, feed and prune. So if you have questions - please feel free to tune in and call in at the time, or send me questions by email prior to the show and I will ask our guests during the show! Send questions to: Jennifer@jewellgarden.com. (Photos for this essay are all attempts at a Branching Out and/or Up visual metaphor.) (more…)

On October 3rd, the Red Bluff Garden Club Annual Floral Design Luncheon will be held at the Rolling Hills Casino from 8:30 am to 2:00 pm. This year entitled: “Garden Splendor - a Luncheon and More,” the design program will be led by nationally acclaimed floral designer Lorna Bonham, who will provide simple but unique floral designs that anyone can create. If you have never attemped a floral arrangment in your life or you’re an experienced designer, you will go home with new ideas. Come early to look over the raffle, amazing silent and live auction items as well as check out all the vendors: The Plant Barn and Gift Shop, Gourds Galore, Jenny’s Jewelry, Birdhouse and Crafts, The Gifted Garden, Graceful Charm Jewelry, A Stitch in Time, Natural Soy Candles, At Two Foxes and Photos by Megan! Tickets are available from Red Bluff Garden Club members and in Red Bluff from California Kitchen and Red Bluff Garden Center; in Corning from Interland Business; in Los Molinos from Latimers Pharmacy; in Chico from the Plant Barn, Little Red Hen Nursery, and Little Red Hen Gift Shop; in Redding, from Wild Thymes Nursery. For more Info: 530-529-2306 or 530-824-5661 or www.redbluffgardenclub.com. Photo: Flowers on the front page of the Red Bluff Garden Club’s very good website: www.redbluffgardenclub.com - check it out - you’ll love the music and butterflies entering to join in the fun.

Below is an profile about the Red Bluff Garden Club and their history and on-going work in our region, and which was published early this year.

Until I moved to the North State, I had never belonged to a garden club. My mother was never in a garden club, nor was my father, for that matter. I am not sure why, but in my own mind garden clubs were – well – ‘clubby’, sort of stuffy and a bit exclusive and not my cup of tea. But I had aunties – and not stuffy ones – who were very involved in their local garden clubs. My aunt in Virginia was one of these. When my cousins, her daughters, were married (at different times), the garden club ladies who had been long-time friends with my aunt came out in force - dressed in dirty jeans and muddy shoes, with their clippers and their beat-up cars full of garden stuff. They picked masses of flowers from their own gardens and spent the better part of the day before each of the weddings arranging. Finally, they arrived at each of the weddings cleaned up and flower-proud. This was not stuffy or clubby – this was a sisterhood of good gardeners doing good things. Photo: The new Cone & Kimball Plaza Clock Tower on the same corner in downtown Red Bluff where the historic clock tower stood.

Lorna Bonham, a retired educator, and Cathy Wilson, a retired nurse, are just such garden club ladies. Both are members of the Red Bluff Garden Club, a very active garden club dating back to the 1950s. Lorna’s mother was a charter member and her father was a well-known regional horticulturist. Cathy on the other hand has lived and gardened throughout the west and was a Master Gardener in the Yuba City area before moving to Red Bluff fairly recently. She has been a member of the Red Bluff Garden Club for a little over a year. But lifelong member or new member notwithstanding, Lorna and Cathy are both excellent examples of what garden club members for the most part actually are: good gardeners doing good things. Photo: Cathy Wilson (left) and Lorna Bonham (right), are members of the Red Bluff Garden Club and instrumental in the club’s part in the Cone & Kimball Plaza restoration project.

My copyright 1936 Taylor’s Encyclopedia of Gardening has this to say about garden clubs: “Second only to the experiment stations, the garden clubs are the greatest single agency of the advancement of gardening in America. Their lectures, test gardens and influence for better standards of the art of horticulture are of incalculable value.” According to the National Garden Clubs (once known as the Federated Garden Clubs), Inc website: “The first garden club in America was founded in January 1891 by The Ladies Garden Club of Athens (Georgia).” Originally garden clubs were often Ladies clubs or Men’s clubs, but in this day and age, they are men and women, young and old. Here and now, the North State is a region of active and dedicated garden clubs, the Red Bluff Garden Club being just one. See below for contact information on other garden clubs in our region.

One of the many good things that the Red Bluff Garden Club has taken on in the past few years is being a part of the community-based committee overseeing the restoration of the historic Cone & Kimball Plaza in downtown Red Bluff. As part of this committee, the garden club is working on the planting and garden aspect of the restoration and Lorna and Cathy have been instrumental on this front. I met with them one crisp morning last November to tour and to talk about the project. Photo: The raised planters have a vibrant combination of burnt-red Nandina ‘Firepower’ and Gaillardia ‘Little Goblin’ among other plants.

Here’s some background: The Cone & Kimball Building, with its 100-foot ornate Victorian clock tower, was originally built in 1886 and became “one of the most photographed buildings of the region.” It was often referred to as the “heart of Red Bluff” and was a regional icon. People driving across the North State often gauged where they were in their progress by how far they had to go to or how far they had come from the Red Bluff clock tower – which was visible for miles in all directions. On April 30, 1984 – at 98 years old - the building and its tower burned down. The resulting empty lot was fenced and lay barren for nearly 14 years. In 1997, the Red Bluff Rotary purchased the derelict lot and from there, formed a committee of community members and organizations, eventually including the Historical Red Bluff Association, city personnel, concerned individuals and the Red Bluff Garden Club. Together these groups hoped to “return the spot to a source of pride for the residents of Tehama County.” Photo: Vintage photo of the historic Cone & Kimball building in downtown Red Bluff. The building was often called the “heart of Red Bluff.”

According to grant applications written in 2001, “the plans for the Cone & Kimball Plaza included a replica of the tower on the corner where it originally stood, a small outdoor covered stage area, and a water feature along with benches and trees and shrubs to provide lots of shade and a restful downtown park…that will eventually become a part of the city park system.” The Red Bluff Garden Club took on the assignment of securing the funds and materials for the plantings as designed by the consulting landscape architect, Patrick Sullivan. The idea behind the design being to “select trees and shrubs and particular cultivars that suited to the area and will add color and/or a green background throughout the year.” Photo: Plans for the restoration of the Cone & Kimball site.

Ultimately, George Winter of Wyntour Gardens Nursery in Redding and the Red Bluff Garden Center in Red Bluff, agreed to provide many of the plants for the first stages of the plantings in 2001, including the seven prominent ornamental pears that form the backbone of the new plaza’s canopy. In the years since then, and under the direction of the Cone & Kimball committee, the new clock tower, the covered gazebo, the benches and walkways have all been completed.

In terms of the plantings, the sod is laid, the pear trees are maturing nicely, the planter boxes are filled with colorful and easy care perennials that can stand up to Central Valley heat. The raised planters have a vibrant combination of burnt-red Nandina ‘Firepower’ and the wide-leafed and wooly-textured silver sage, Salvia argentea. “Embracing” and “framing” the covered gazebo in fairly shady, far-back corner of the plaza are beds planted with the plump and welcoming shapes of Alberta Spruce (Picea) as well as the bright-yellow, strappy leaves of Acorus gramineus, and Osmanthus heterophyllus ‘Goshiki’, with its holly-like texture and its multi-colored, variegated leaves. Daffodil bulbs and Gaillardia ‘Little Goblin’ are planted throughout many of the beds to round out the early spring and late fall flowers. Photo: Burnt-red Nandina ‘Firepower’ and the wide-leafed and wooly-textured silver sage, Salvia argentea.

A mural on a wall adjacent to the plaza depicts a Victorian era park and avenue, complete with a Victorian couple strolling the boulevard. Working with that, the garden club planted an “avenue” of ‘Little Ollie’ Dwarf Standard Olive trees, under planted with purple-leafed Loropetalum chinense, or ‘Fringe Flower’. “We wanted to complement the mural, and with it to refer back to the Victorian history of the area as well as the importance of the Olive farms to the region,” Cathy explained to me. Paying homage to the history, pride and value of the heart of Red Bluff is clearly central to what this garden club project is about. Club members, currently overseen by President, Sharon Kessey, provide a good portion of the maintenance to the plantings throughout the year. Photo: The garden club planted an “avenue” of ‘Little Ollie’ Dwarf Standard Olive trees, under planted with purple-leafed Loropetalum chinense, or ‘Fringe Flower’.

The final phase of the total restoration project, and fund-raising for it, are well under-way. The restoration committee has still to choose, purchase and install a water-feature of some kind against the last remaining empty wall of the plaza. The Red Bluff Garden Club hopes, with the approval of the committee, to back the feature with a hedge of Camellia bushes, varieties of which they are researching as I write. The final touches are being placed on the walk-ways, including the laying of commemorative bricks edging main walkways to recognize the many people who have supported the overall project these many years. Donations are of course still being taken to finish the project – which the entire Cone & Kimball restoration committee hopes will be this year.

And you can still buy a brick with your name on it. How simple a gesture is that to help mend a broken heart? More information about the Red Bluff Garden Club and their monthly programs and community outreach projects, including their part in the Cone & Kimball Plaza restoration, can be found at: www.redbluffgardenclub.com

National and State Garden Club Organizations:

www.gcamerica.org
www.gardenclub.org/home.aspx
www.californiagardenclubs.com

For Regional Garden Clubs:

Anderson Valley Garden Club - President: Sue Anderson, Redding
email: anne-c@sbcglobal.net
YAC: Anne Capes, Anderson, CA

Cottonwood Garden Club- President: LaSaine Ware, Cottonwood, CA
YAC: Alice Spinks, Cottonwood, CA



Lake California Garden Club- President: Genevieve Leigh, Cottonwood, CA
email: gleigh@charter.net

Lewiston Garden Club - 
President: Barbara Bailey, Weaverville, CA
email: bbpatch@jett.net
YAC: Jenni Brookins, Weaverville, CA

Redding Wonderland Garden Club - President: Pat Malotte, Redding, CA
email: malottepat@wmconnect.com

Lake Shasta Garden Project - President: Lynni Miller, Shasta Lake, CA
email: lynni@thegrid.net



Trinity Garden Club- 
President: Rusty Lester, Weaverville, CA
email: wruetta@aol.com

Chico Horticulture Society -
Co-Presidents: Anna LaRossa, ajnrj@sbcglobal.net; Chico, CA
Emilie White, mleblanca@aol.com Chico, CA

Friendly Garden Club, Orland - President: Jo Wigdahl, Orland, CA
email: gerrywigdahl@thegrid.net



Garden Club of Colusa County- President: Cynthia D. White, Colusa, CA
email: jimncyn@frontiernet.net

Lake Oroville Area Garden Club - President: Joyce Rivera, Oroville, CA
email: joycie2u@sbcglobal.net

Magalia Beautification Association - President: Linda Weeks, Magala, CA
email: 2redhds@sbcglobal.net

Paradise Garden Club, Inc. - President: Donna Beronda, Paradise, CA
email: beronda@sbcglobal.net
web site: http://www.geocities.com/scpd730/PGCI.html

Sutter Buttes Garden Club - President: Kay Cockrell, Yuba City, CA Bev Foss 530-673-4565

In a North State Garden is an outreach program of the Gateway Science Museum - Exploring the Natural History of the North State, based in Chico, CA. In a North State Garden is radio and web-based and celebrates the art, craft and science of home gardening in California’s North State region. It is conceived, written, photographed and hosted by Jennifer Jewell - all rights reserved jewellgarden.com. In A North State Garden airs on Northstate Public Radio KCHO/KFPR radio, Saturday mornings at 7:34 AM Pacific time and Sunday morning at 8:34 AM Pacific time. Podcasts of past shows are available here. Weekly essays are also posted on anewscafe.com a regional news source that is positively North State.

I grew up spending several weeks each summer with my parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles in a small town on the rocky Rhode Island coast. In that breezy seaside climate, with sun and salt-air, the July and August roadsides and farmsteads were extravagantly adorned with the big, brash, bold and brazen blooms of hydrangeas. So-called mophead hydrangeas, lacecap hydrangeas and climbing hydrangeas were everywhere nodding their cheerful blue, pink and white heads. Now, mostly through association, hydrangeas are firmly in my top ten favorite garden flowers - they speak to me of summer vacation: of laughter and seashells, ice-cream cones and lighthouses, lightening bugs and late mornings with sandy sheets. Hyrdangeas are - simply put - happy. Photo: Blue lacecap hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla) along a stone wall in Little Compton, Rhode Island.

Hydrangeas are ancient plants and fossils of hydrangea foliage in the southeastern United States date back to the early tertiary period of our planet’s history. In contemporary times, they happily grow in almost any township with water from Maine to Florida, New York to California, Washington State to Southern California. They are cheerfully ubiquitous. And all this speaks volumes about their hardiness. They can take sun, wind and bitter winter cold. They don’t mind the burning salt air, and they can even take some drought once established - but one thing they don’t like to live without is what the coasts have year-round: humidity. Which might make you wonder how well they will do in the relatively dry and reliably hot North State? Photo: Climbing hydrangeas (Hydrangea petiolaris) along an old outbuilding in Little Compton, Rhode Island.

Chico home gardener, Daran Goodsell and the 20 various hydrangeas that flourish in her Chico garden are here to tell you that hydrangeas like the North State Garden just fine. Photo: Cheerful pink mophead hydrangeas (Hydrangea Macrophylla) and the white panicle of an oakleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) in Daran and Dan Goodsell’s Chico garden.

Daran and her husband Dan have been working on their current garden for about 5 years. When they moved in, Daran knew the backyard was ideal for hydrangeas because of its eastern exposure, which would allow for 4 -5 hours of morning light, and its many high trees, which would provide dappled mid-day light. She brought just one hydrangea with her from her old garden, but she was determined to get more. With this hydrangea expansion in mind, she and Dan prepared their backyard beds accordingly. “The soil is so important to hydrangeas,” Daran tells me, “they need nutrient rich soil and regular water, but they do not like to have wet feet.” To provide the right drainage, the Goodsells double dug their garden beds to loosen the soil more than two feet down, and then added 1 foot of new compost to the mix. This high concentration of organic matter mimics that of the woodland floor to which hydrangeas are native in East Asia and North and South America. Photo: Daran Goodsell among her hydrangeas.

In addition to the careful soil preparation, Daran feeds her hydrangeas two times a year, right before their bloom cycle and then as needed throughout the season. “You’ll know when they need a boost,” she tells me. “Their leaves will look yellow or heavily veined.” Daran uses an organic hydrangea/camellia (which is slightly acidic) food sold at nurseries. Finally, once a year, she top dresses her plants with a new 1-inch layer of compost to keep the soil loose and rich. Photo: The luminous creamy panicle of a mature oakleaf hydrangea (H. quercifolia) complementing the deep burgundy of a japanese maple in Daran Goodsell’s garden.

After the soil prep, regular water was the next consideration. Daran and Dan allowed for two kinds of water to the hydrangea beds: drip for the regular deep watering, and small mister heads to get humidity-like moisture to the foliage “especially on our hot, hot summer days,” says Daran. She waters her plants from May - October and does water them once a day in our hottest summer stretch. She then turns the misters on mid-day or early afternoon briefly for that shot of cooling moisture to the leaves. Hydrangeas are pretty thirsty plants, Daran stresses. “If watering or drainage is an issue - the way to go is containers,” Daran tells me. Photo: One of the hydrangea borders at the Goodsell garden.

Hydrangeas are a genus of more than 80 species and many, many cultivars and hyrbids of evergreen and deciduous shrubs and climbers. Native North American hydrangeas include: Hydrangea arborescens also known as smooth hydrangea, which is native to the eastern United States as far west as Iowa, and Hydrangea quercifolia, or oakleaf hydrangea, which is native to the southern US. While hydrangeas rarely grow as trees, the Hydrangea paniculata ‘Grandiflora’ - also known as the ‘Pee Gee’ Hydrangea, is often grown limbed up (with all lower branches removed to expose a main trunk) as a small tree. Hydrangea macrophylla is perhaps the most common species, and includes the common “mophead” and “lacecap” forms - often with their cotton-candy colors of blue or pink. Hydrangeas can run reddish, purple, blue or pink based on amount of available aluminum in their soil and aluminum is made available to the plants based on the acidity of the soil. To a certain extent, you can affect their color using soil supplements to alter the acidity. In general, white forms of hydrangeas will remain white in any soil, although some ‘white’ forms move from creamy to pinkish through the season. Photo: The red stem of H. macrophylla ‘Lady in Red’. The red stem holds winter interest much like red twig dogwood (Cornus sericea).

Hydrangea flower heads are actually large collections of small flowers - the most showy ones are sterile and the little fuzzy-looking ones in the center or underneath are the fertile flowers. These collections of flower heads, known as corymbs, come in various shapes and sizes from the flat form of the lacecaps and climbers (Hydrangea petiolaris) to the domed and rounded heads of the mopheads to the elongated panicles of the oakleaves and paniculatas. Daran likes the oakleaf hydrangeas best for beginning growers because they do not go fully deciduous and they have great burnished red fall color. “You just can’t kill them,” she assures me. Photo: A close up showing the sterile flat white flowers on a hydrangea corymb with the fertile flower heads below.

To keep your hydrangea plants in good form, prune the stems that flowered last year down to the first set of double leaves on the branch. You can prune right after blooms are done or you can leave the flower heads through the winter for winter interest. As cut flowers, it is hard to beat a hydrangea for drama, but they can be finicky and one will wilt right away while another will hold its bloom for weeks or even dry in the vase and be lovely as a dried flower. Some people recommend burning the end of the flower stem to seal the moisture into the stem, others advocate cutting the stem at a steep angle or even mashing the end of the stem to allow it to absorb as much water as possible. Photo: A purple form lacecap.

Currently, three sides of the Goodsell’s back garden are lined with hydrangeas. The common blue mophead blooms happily alongside the specialty varieties. Daran likes hydrangeas as much for their interesting foliage as for their stunning blooms - and her garden has three gray, white and green variegated plants as well as a coveted tri-color, which has white, yellow and green leaf markings. The star of the show (pardon the pun) when I visited in early summer was perhaps the ‘Starburst’ hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens ‘Haye’s Starburst’), whose delicate double-sterile flower heads are borne on varying length stems giving the impression of a shooting star. Gorgeous. Photo: Hydrangea arborescens ‘Haye’s Starburst’ in Daran’s garden.

Daran has orders in for at least four more hydrangeas she has read about about now “must have.” Dan, a former potter whose artistic work can be seen throughout their house and garden and whose old kiln bricks make up their garden patio, is in charge of garden hardscape - and something tells me he is going to be busy building and digging this fall. Photos: (Right) The variegation on Daran’s Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Variegata’, and (Left) her Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Tri-Color’.

In a North State Garden is a radio- and web-based outreach program of the Gateway Science Museum - Exploring the Natural History of the North State, based in Chico, CA. In a North State Garden celebrates the art, craft and science of home gardening in California’s North State region, and is conceived, written, photographed and hosted by Jennifer Jewell - all rights reserved jewellgarden.com. In A North State Garden airs on Northstate Public Radio KCHO/KFPR radio, Saturday mornings at 7:34 AM Pacific time and Sunday morning at 8:34 AM Pacific time. Podcasts of past shows are available here. Weekly essays are also posted on anewscafe.com a regional news source that is positively North State.

Lynette Gooch loves lavender. All kinds of lavender for all kinds of reasons. In the United Kingdom the gardening world has things known as National Collections, wherein when a specific garden has more species or varieties of any one kind of plant than any other garden, they can become designated a National Collection. Private gardens and gardeners are as likely to hold National Collections as larger public botanic gardens. In the United States, we do not have such a scheme, but if we did, Lynette Gooch and her husband Richard might well hold the National Collection of lavender with their 207 different named varieties of lavender at the display gardens in Whitmore: Tuscan Heights Lavender Gardens.

Grown as a culinary and medicinal herb throughout the world, throughout time, lavender (Lavandula) is a genus comprising multiple species and hybrids. Species of the genus originate from the Mediterranean, Africa and Asia, and the genus thrives in the Mediterranean climate of the North State.

The Tuscan Heights’ story started in 1999 when Lynette and Richard, farmer/gardeners at heart, were looking around the North State with possible re-location in mind. Living in Roseville at the time, Lynette is from Calaveras County originally and of strong Italian descent, with fond memories of the large family production garden she grew up helping to tend with her father. “Of five kids, I seem to have been the most gardening inclined, which I think has helped me out here!” she tells me the warm summer day I toured around the gardens. “We were about to leave and head home when Richard by chance picked a local discount classified paper and happened to read about land in Whitmore. ‘Where’s Whitmore?’, he asked me. So we drove up, I got out of the car, looked around, breathed deeply, kicked at the dirt with my foot and said - This is it. Let’s write the check.” Although the sloping land was covered in poison oak, manzanita and blackberry, Lynette knew she was home. The Fern Fire had devastated the area 12 years earlier, and Lynette could see that the soil had begun to recover and was ready for any garden she might want to grow. Neither she, the land nor Richard knew just what that garden would become.
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Who does not love a wildflower? While not every wildflower enthusiast is a gardener, every gardener I know is a wildflower enthusiast at some level.

I chatted recently with Linnea Hanson, former Forest Botanist and now Ecosystems Manager for the Plumas National Forest and Chris Christofferson, District Botanist for the Forest about the enduring appeal of wildflowers. “I am just a sucker for a pretty face – who isn’t?” said Chris, “wildflowers sport fabulous blooms and so many of them smell so great! I can’t resist them.” Linnea went on to say “The spring wildflower bloom is so exciting – when you have lived in the same area for a long time, you mark your internal seasonal clock by the wildflowers’ blooming – it’s like seeing old friends again and as you walk or drive through the region you want to call out – ‘Oh hi! the Tidy tips are out’ or ‘Look – the fiddleheads have returned!’ And it makes you happy.” Photo: Fiddlenecks (Amsinckia menziesii var. intermedia in March.)

Wildflowers start to bloom in force in the lower elevations of our region in late February early-March and keep on going through June, July and August in the higher elevations. According to Julie Nelson, Forest Botanist for the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, “The low elevation stuff is popping. Clikapudi Trail on the south side of Shasta Lake has beaucoup shooting stars (Dodecatheon hendersonii), hound’s tongue (Cynoglossum grande, one of my all time favorites), goldback fern (Pentagramma triangularis), osoberry (Oemleria cerasiformis) and toothwort (Cardamine californica) to name a few.” Photo: Coast Boykinia (Boykinia occidentalis).

Perhaps one of the reasons we love wildflowers is that they are not necessarily easy to grow or desirable in your home garden, and so their beauty is that much more fleeting and precious. With this in mind, as wildflower season continues, make sure to follow the commonsense rules best summarized as: “Take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footsteps – and those should generally be on the trail!” Further, pay attention and be observant so that you can avoid encounters that might detract from your wildflower viewing: always bring water, sunscreen, good shoes and appropriate clothing - raincoat, hat, gloves, etc. Keep your eyes open for poison oak and spring creatures such as rattlesnakes and bears that might be waking up. Photo: Buttercup (Ranunculus)

Finally, while picking wildflowers might be your first instinct, think again and leave the flowers where they are to bring beauty to the next viewers, feed the pollinators and continue to build the plant communities we love. If you want to have some of these gorgeous plants and flowers for yourself, purchase them from a reputable seller or grower such as your local garden center or nursery or better yet at one of our regional California Native Plant Society Plant Sale fundraisers, such as the Mt. Lassen chapter’s Wildflower Art Show and Plant Sale in Chico on April 19th. Photo: Douglas Lupine (Lupinus nanus).

Look through the events, classes, workshops and good wildflower viewing sites listed below and - Let the Show Begin!

Upcoming Events and Classes: (Listed chronologically)

o Shasta College Class Wildflowers of California (BOT 50 Section 2343) March 16 through April 27, Mondays, 6:00-8:50 pm. Learn to identify our local wildflowers along with examining their structural characteristics. Two field trips are planned to observe these beautiful flowers in their natural settings and to reinforce sight identification. Instructor: James Nelson. For more info: http://www.shastacollege.edu/cms.aspx?id=435 Photo: A single Buttercup (Ranunculus) on a rocky outcropping.

o Friends of the Chico Herbarium Name that Wildflower! Workshop, March 28th, led by Linnea Hanson and Jenny Marr. Will include some classroom instruction and some field work around Horseshoe Lake in Upper Bidwell Park, Chico. Students might see Twining Brodiaea (Dichelostemma volubile), Lupine Bicolor (Lupinus bicolor), Yellow Violets (Viola praemorsa), Ithuriel’s spear (Triteleia laxa), Yellow Carpet (Blennosperma nannum) and goldfields (Lasthenia californica). For the $35 entrance fee you get a full day of training AND the Peterson Field Guide to Wildflowers of the Pacific States - an outstanding value. For more info: http://www.csuchico.edu/biol/Herb/Events.htmlPhoto: Blue Dicks (Dichelostemma capitatum) in Chico’s Upper Bidwell Park in March.

o General Meeting for the Mt. Lassen Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, - April 2nd, 7:30 pm. Chris Christofferson will present a talk on Burning Bear Grass for California Indian Basketweavers. Butte County Library, Chico. More info: Gerry Ingco: 530-893-5123.

o 3rd Annual Wildflower & Nature Festival at Riverbend Park in Oroville April 4th & 5th, 10 – 4 pm each day. This two day festival will feature educational booths and tables hosted by the agencies whose task it is to manage the many land resources in our region – including education people about wildflowers and helping viewers to better enjoy and protect these treasures. Guided hikes on Table Mountain and to Feather Falls will be offered as well as Plant Sales, Wildlife Art, Barbeque and much more. And I have heard that Smokey the Bear just might be there! For more info: http://www.frrpd.com/index_files/WFF.htm. Photo: Iconic California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) blooming along a roadway in Chico in March.

o Mount Lassen Chapter of the CNPS Wildflower Plant Sale and Art Show! April 19th CARD CENTER, CHICO, 10 am – 4 pm. Mount Lassen Chapter of the CNPS Wildflower Plant Sale and Art Show! is the major Biennial Fundraiser for the Mount Lassen chapter of the CNPS. Over 200 species of plants from local plant communities will be labeled and on display for you to see. Deb Yau, owner of Native Springs Nursery in Yankee Hill, is in charge of the Native Plant Sale aspect of this event and tells me “This is a sale NOT to miss. It will feature treasures grown by members and local nurseries – things you wont see other places. You will be able to grow in your own garden some of the gorgeous wildflowers you love in the wild – and you will be supporting your garden’s diversity, the Mount Lassen chapter of CNPS, and native plant and pollinator populations! It’s a win-win-win.” The Native Plant Art Show will feature photographs, paintings and other art by regional artists depicting the wildflowers of our region. Educational Displays will have information about invasive and rare plants. Books, posters, t-shirts, and more will be for sale. Plant Experts will be on hand for your enjoyment and Nature Walks, and Children’s Activities will round out the activities. For more info Contact: Ellen Copeland: 530-345-1826. Photo: California Fuschia (Epilobium canum; syn. Zauschneria californica) at the McConnell Arboretum and Gardens in August.

o Cal Native Plant Soc Mt. Lassen Chapter General Meeting May 2, 7:30 pm with presentation on Managing Rare Plant Communities on Serpentine outcrops with Linnea Hanson. Butte County Library, Chico. More info: Gerry Ingco: 530-893-5123. Photo: Pipevine (Aristolochia californica) in bloom in lower Bidwell Park in Chico in February.

Good wildflower viewing sites throughout the season include: (generally listed moving from the south to the north)

➢ Table Mountain, which is in full swing now through April, and Feather Falls, which is just beginning now but should be in full swing in April, are both near Oroville and are great walk/hikes open to the public year round. Follow these links for maps and hike descriptions: http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/plumas/publications/pdfs/hiking/fr_featherfalls_infomap.pdf; http://www.calphoto.com/clcwl/table.pdf Photo: Wild Cucumber or Common Manroot (Marah fabaceus) twines through grass and scrub.

➢ Near Lake Oroville, The Potter’s Ravine Trail should be in bloom now through April and early May.

➢ Lumpkin Ridge Road – further up in the Plumas-National Forest and east of Oroville, west of Quincy – should be in full-bloom in May and “The Harlequin Lupine (Lupinus stiversii) will knock your socks off,” Chris Christofferson said.

➢ Rim Road above Concow is a rare plant community habitat on serpentine outcroppings and is a good place to watch fire recovery in action after last year’s fires. Photo: Miner’s Lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata) along a damp embankment in late February.

➢ Magalia – all along the Skyway provides great views over wildflower meadows and oak habitat.

➢ Bidwell Park in Chico: Horsehoe Lake and Trails in Upper Bidwell Park as well as most of Lower Bidwell park as well will be good wildflower viewing March – early May.

➢ Vina Plains Preserve is managed by the Nature Conservancy and they often host wildflower tours in spring. The site is home to more than 280 species of plants and you should see Adobe Lily (Fritillaria pluriflora). Because Vina Plains Preserve is a working ranch, it is open to the public on a very limited basis. For more information, call (530) 527-4261. Photo: Butter and Eggs (Triphysaria eriantha) blooming en masse in Upper Bidwell Park in Chico in March.

➢ The Sacramento River Bend Area, just north of Red Bluff, offers spectacular wildflower displays throughout the spring. Vast vistas of yellow and purple fields are common during a springtime hike along the Yana trail. Contact the Redding Field Office at (530) 224-2100 for more information.

➢ Sacramento River Trail in and around Redding – runs through part of the McConnell Arboretum and Gardens.

➢ Shasta Lake Clikapudi Trail on the south side of Shasta Lake is a good place to watch fire recovery in action–it burned several years ago in the Bear Fire. Here’s a link to a trail map:http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/shastatrinity/documents/st-main/maps/rogs/shasta-lake/trails.pdf. Photo: Tidy tips (Layia fremontii) in March.

➢ Blue Door Flat - northeast California, south of Alturas. “The Blue Door Flat area provides an interesting area to watch waterfowl, shorebirds and songbirds, as well as colorful wildflowers…in spring the meadow provides a fantastic array of color…” Contact the Alturas Field Office at (530) 233-4666.

➢ Later in the season, Waters Gulch and Squaw Valley Creek are good–see
http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/regions/pacificsouthwest/WatersGulch/index.shtml
http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/regions/pacificsouthwest/SquawValley/index.shtml Photo: Star-Lily (Zigadenus fremontii).

➢ Also later in the season - Bunker Hill Ridge on the Pacific Crest Trail should be in full bloom June/July. The trail around Little Grass Valley Reservoir provides a great view of the lake and the wildflowers in June/July.

Good resources:

Some great resources for learning about and identifying Wildflowers include the USDA Forest Service’s on-line resource Celebrating Wildflowers with in-depth discussions of issues facing wildflowers and other native plants, Children’s activities and Teaching resources – check it out: http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers Photo: Butter and Eggs (Triphysaria eriantha), Star-Lily (Zigadenus fremontii) and intermittent Tidy tips (Layia fremontii) light up a damp March meadow in the North State.

Many good books for about western and regional wildflowers are in publication – most of which are available at your local library, local books stores such as Lyons Books in Chico, and many should be available for purchase at the CNPS Mt. Lassen Chapter Wildflower Plant Sale and Art Show! On April 19th at the CARD center in Chico:

Peterson Field Guide Pacific States Wildflowers, Theodore F. Neihaus & Charles L. Ripper, Copyright 1998.

National Audubon Society Field Guide to Wildflowers Western Region, Richard Spellenberg, Copyright 2001 Knopf Publishing.

Wildflowers of Table Mountain, Butte County, California
 by Samantha Mackey and Albin Bills, illustrated by Larry Jansen,
Copyright 2004, CSU Chico Studies from the Herbarium.

Wildflowers of Nevada and Placer Counties, California, Copyright 2007, Redbud Chapter of the California Native Plant Society.

In a North State Garden is a radio- and web-based outreach program of the Northern California Natural History Museum, in Chico, Calif. The mission of In a North State Garden is to celebrate the art, craft and science of home gardening in California’s North State region. The program is conceived, written, photographed and hosted by Jennifer Jewell - all rights reserved. To read more from In A North State Garden or to listen to the podcasts aired on Northstate Public Radio KCHO/KFPR radio, click on jewellgarden.com. Weekly essays are also posted on anewscafe.com a regional news source that is positively North State.

Every year – about this time in the North Valley - the big spring bloom begins. And every year I think – it’s even more miraculous – even more lovely this year. Narcissus, hellebores, daphnes, camellias, magnolias, the first of the fruit trees – the beauty is abundant. And now that we’ve had some real rain and snow, I can actually enjoy the bloom with less worry. Close to 11 inches of rain – that’s how much rain I measured in my home garden in the month of February. The rain was so inspiring to me that some days I had to go check my rain gauge 2 or 3 times. I then ran inside, reported the newest numbers to my family and rushed to record the numbers in my journal. I know one good month of rain and snow will not reverse the past seasons’ unusually low precipitation. I know we are still in a drought – but this one good month sure doesn’t hurt. And when the March mountains are decked with snow and the valley is greening and damp, life in my garden feels just right. Photo: White Hellebores.

Although the first official day of spring is March 20th – hurray! - average last frost dates are still a ways away for most of us (early-April for the earliest of us) so don’t get too excited too quickly. Now is a great time for continuing to sow cold hardy vegetable seeds or planting out cold hardy perennials and shrubs to begin establishing before true spring. Now is also the time for feeding a balanced fertilizer to your trees, shrubs and lawns that are starting to show signs of growth. March 1st is a traditional date on which to feed citrus trees. And don’t forget that March 8th, we spring our clocks forward one hour. Photo: Looking across snow covered mountains from Mt. Shasta in mid- February.
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Diane Stout loves Prickly Pear (Opuntia spp.) cactus - all kinds of them. She likes them in artwork, she likes them in pots, she likes them in all shapes and sizes all around her Orland garden. She likes them so much she named her nursery in Orland after the plants. The home garden that she shares with her husband Dave is home to nearly 40 individual Opuntia plants, comprising 16 different species or varieties. Opuntias are quite hardy, very low-maintenance and, extremely drought tolerant. In general, they prefer full sun, lean rocky soil with sharp drainage, and once established, they need almost no supplemental water.Photo: Diane began her colllection in earnest by asking for cuttings from mature stands of Opuntias in the area, for instance from old farmsteads or churches. Here an established stand of Prickly Pears complement the side of an old industrial metal quonset hut in Los Molinos.

Opuntia is a genus of close to 200 species of cacti originating to North, Central and South America and the West Indies. The genus can be divided into what some people call the Prickly Pear cacti – with round but flatter pads, and the Cholla or Teddy Bear cacti – with heavily spined, oblong sausage-shaped pads. California beavertail cactus (Opuntia basilaris), Teddy Bear Cholla (O. bigelovii), Pancake or Dollar Joint Prickly Pear (O. chlorotica), Silver or Golden Cholla (O. echinocarpa), Old Man Prickly Pear (O. erinacea), and Buckhorn Cholla (O. acanthocarpa), are all considered native to California – mostly to the desert scrub and desert woodland regions of the state. Photo: A purple-fruited Opuntia.
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Over the past few months Karen McGrath, a Landscape Designer, and I have had an ongoing conversation about the many merits of using a good, trained designer to help in the initial design of a new garden or the renovation/remodel of an existing one. In her well articulated philosophy: “Landscape design is more than just shrubbing up the outside of a building. It is a logical planning process and also an art form that marries a site’s unique characteristics with people’s needs and wishes to create a totally unique outdoor place.” Karen is the owner of Karen McGrath Design, Landscapes for Outdoor Living based in Redding. Photo: A good Landscape Designer can help you choose and articulate good focal point sites and elements in a space.

As a gardener – and I like to think a pretty good gardener – using a designer to help me in my garden was once unthinkable to me. If I was a good gardener, why would I need a designer? I thought. Landscape architects, landscape designer and/or garden designers were for people who weren’t really gardeners, I reasoned. But then my family and I moved to a house with a really oddly shaped lot. And it had odd elements within that shape. And odd plantings – some I wanted, others I did not – numbered among those odd elements.

I had very solid ideas about what I wanted as several parts of the whole garden: I knew I wanted raised vegetable beds; I knew they would need to be fenced due to dogs, kids and rabbits; I knew I wanted the fenced veggie garden to be attractive; I knew I wanted a long perennial border; I knew I wanted to create some sort of “space” beneath a grove of old Ponderosa Pines; I knew I wanted a chicken coop, and so forth. But after three seasons in the garden, and after implementing and working on my wish list including installing the attractive vegetable garden, the chicken coop and some nice perennial beds, after planting and transplanting, sketching and re-sketching, I also knew I had reached a wall and was stumped. Photo: Some garden designs are more self-conscious or dramatic for effect than others. This is one of the display gardens at Cornerstone Gardens - Gallery Style Garden exhibits in Sonoma.

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