An arid summer is a fact of life for North State gardeners. It’s the dry side of our Mediterranean climate. But ever-increasing awareness around the need for water conservation and creative use and re-use of water (as well as all of our resources including time and money) is a fact of life no matter where you live or garden. Photo: The dry creek bed and its planted edges in Michael Cook’s Sense of Place and Lawnless garden in Chico.

Northern California-based landscape designer Michael Cook recently completed a sweeping overhaul of the front yard of a Chico home at the end of a cul-de-sac in an older Chico neighborhood. And for it he transformed 10,000 square feet, 7,000 square feet of which was sad-looking, resource guzzling and unused sod into a naturalistic, habitat garden of light, movement and beauty - and which requires far less water, far less maintenance time and money. On top of that, the garden also incorporates many of the on-site materials into its design and creatively re-uses rain when it does fall. All told - this approach creates not only a beautiful garden, but a garden with a strong and compelling sense of place - our place - the North State garden. Photo: Garden designer Michael Cook.

When Michael Cook was first approached about working in this Chico garden, the owners made it clear that they both work full-time and commute in and out of the area so they had little time to spend on the garden. Nature lovers both, they also made it clear that they wanted a space that was pollinator friendly, low-maintenance, but lovely. The wanted to have the garden design work for them well into their retirement years and so the garden and its pathways, entrances and exits needed to be fully accessible. They did not ask Michael to remove the 10,000 square feet of sod, but that’s the proposal he brought to them and they were thrilled. Photo: Front pocket garden with ornamental grasses and regionally inspired fence, gates and gabions in Michael Cook’s Sense of Place and Lawnless garden in Chico.

“I started with the idea of a sense of place,” Michael told me as he walked me through the project. “I wanted materials and a plant palette that very clearly spoke to where the garden is located and the agricultural and natural history interests of the owners. I also wanted it to conserve as many resources as possible.” Photo: California fuchsias and Nasella are some of Cook’s plant selections for this Chico garden.

A young married man, Michael is quick to acknowledge that lawn has its place. “Lawns are cooling, that fresh dark green color in the midst of our summers can be very refreshing aesthetically as well,” he said, “but there should be a specific reason for sod - for your kids to play, your pets to play, as a frame or a border to other plantings. You should not just SETTLE for sod because you have no other idea what to do. We are on the edge of a great paradigm shift in terms of how the mainstream of people see their gardens/yards, and projects like this help to push us as a culture closer to that edge of more thoughtful, resourceful and beautiful expectations.” Photo: Front pocket garden with ornamental grasses and regionally inspired fence, gates and gabions in Michael Cook’s Sense of Place and Lawnless garden in Chico.

For the Chico garden project, Michael and his crew, including Alvaro Garcia of Nayo’s Landscaping, started with removal of the old sod, which had been left unwatered for several months before work began. He then began a process of forming swales and topography of the otherwise flat space to create some visual interest as well as good drainage for dryland plants at the tops of the swales and water efficient micro-climates at the lowest points in the swales. It was at this land-forming stage in the garden that Michael installed low-water use drip emitters and landscape lighting. But not too much landscape, lighting: “Just enough to give a sense of safe passage at night. Light pollution with a lot of up-lights, etc. would have been inconsistent with the goals of the garden.” Photo: Gaura and ornamental grasses catch the light and add nice movement and drama in the garden.

“The suggestion of water is always a good idea in a dry garden, and of course this garden will indeed have water sometimes pouring through it during the winter months,” Michael points out. With both the dry months and the wet months in mind, he designed a series of two pools on either side of the entrance ‘bridge’ to the front door of the house. “The bridge helped us deal with the stair issue at the front entrance, and the two small ponds which recirculate water allowed for a feel of water and lush plantings year round in a small and contained way.” Flowing ‘down stream’ from the two self-contained pool gardens, is a long rock arroyo or dry creek bed, which is in fact the outlet for water from the roof which is piped from the roof gutter, under a garden pathway and over to the rock bed. “The winter roof water fills this creek bed, which then filters and allows the water to percolate slowly into the ground, rather than eroding the front garden area and being wasted run-off in the street and into any storm drains.” Photo: Entrance bridge and recirculating water gardens.

The swales and berms and dry creek bed all have a nice curvaceous feel to them and reflect and work visually in harmony with the way the lot sits at the end of its cul-de-sac. As some of the land work was being done, and the many, many tumbled rocks from ancient creek beds were exposed, Michael determined that he would incorporate the rounded rocks into gabions as fence posts throughout the garden. Harkening back to the rounded rock walls that punctuate our countryside in the North State, these gabions look both rustic and agricultural at the same time as they are have a modern, urban feel with their nicely proportioned metal framing - all built by Michael with the help of his father. The now rusted metal rail fencing that marks the front of the garden provides a similar look and feel, and was also designed and constructed by Michael. Metal artist Jeff Howell added other metal touches such as the oak leaf emblazoned metal bands across garden gates. Photo: Rusted metal fence designed and built by landscape designer Michael Cook.

When it came to choosing plants for the garden, Michael knew he wanted to incorporate a lot of natives as well as other year-round Mediterranean/drought-adapted plants. “The key is massing and repeating colors and shapes. When you have such a big space and close to a blank slate - if you are working on lawn overhaul in your garden, putting one of each thing you like will result in a disjointed and choppy feeling. Put 3 to 5 of each plant type in 3 to 5 different areas throughout your space. This will lead to a sense of flow. And spread them out - give them room to breath and show off as specimens.” Michael’s plant choices for this garden, which gets a lot of full sun each day, include: California fuchsia (Zauschnaria), achillea, bunch grasses, such as: Nasella tenuissima, Muhlenbergia, Calamagrostis x acutlflora ‘Karl Foerster’, and Fescue. Photo: Dry creek bed swale and its plantings looking over one end of a little water garden designed and built Cook.

Many gardeners I know have taken the leap and transformed unused sections of lawn into something more. One gardening friend has experimented with a few lawn alternatives, bit by bit over time so that now all of her garden looks decimated at once. She does not love just silver plants, and really wanted a lawn alternative that was a fresh green most of the time. In the front of her subdivision home she removed a large section of sod and planted out a low-growing creeping thyme ‘lawn,’ which takes very little water relative to a traditional sod lawn, needs no mowing and keeps a nice deep green color year-round. In the back of her home, she removed close to a quarter acre of lawn surrounding her swimming pool and planted the space in a spreading and low-growing oregano. The variety she chose was supposed to be a non-flowering selection, and while several of hers are flowering, they still look wonderful and though they started as 2 inch plugs spaced about 18 inches apart on center, they have filled in the space almost completely in less than 6 months. She is watering 1 to 2 times per week this first summer, but intends to cut this back to 1 or 2 times every other week as of summer 2011, when the plants will be nicely established. “The color is that rich green that I wanted, and when the plants are mowed every two to three weeks, the scent is fabulous and the clippings break down into amazing compost,” she enthused. Walking on the oregano in bare feet is also a pretty nice sensation, “although just after it’s been mowed, you can get a woody stem that’s less than ideal,” she admitted. Photo: Lovely and regionally inspired metal work details on entrance gates and gabions.

Another gardening friend, Gwen Quail, is deep into a long process of removing the sod from a sloping hill-side front lawn in a very traditional little development neighborhood. “I wanted to decrease my water use, by half and increase the visual interest of my front garden,” she told me. Trouble is, the sloping and highly compacted soil of her front garden meant that not only did the developer-installed sod do poorly because of low water absorption and high water run-off, but other plants were having a hard time surviving the situation as well. Gwen had the sod removed earlier this summer, and then had a load of rich compost delivered and spread it over the entire area. She has been watering this in lightly in the hopes of lightening the compaction below, but so far to no avail. She has also had three different reputable landscapers give her proposed designs and bids on solving the front slope and compacted soil, and got three very different solutions back - only one of which adequately solved the drainage issues in her mind. Photo: Young ornamental oregano lawn flanking a Chico pool. Lower: Creeping thyme ‘lawn’ in a Chico front garden.

So while Michael Cook’s words of wisdom stand: Don’t settle lawn; additional advice would be, especially if you are taking on the project yourself, consider the technical aspects of the area - including drainage, exposure and your personal goals and be realistic and patient - biting off only as much as you can handle in the time you have. Photo: Upper: Feather grass, gaura and Russian sage along a border in this lawnless Chico garden designed and built by Michael Cook. Lower: Cook chose to include this New Zealand Flax (Phormium spp.) as a nod to the home country of own of the garden’s owners. A dragon fly takes suns himself on one of the leaf tips.

To contact Michael Cook: michaelcook21@yahoo.com

Jewellgarden.com’s new line of lovely little note cards are bite sized and ready to enjoy on-line or at local fine shops near you. As spring turns to summer and summer to fall, look for Edibles in the Garden blank journals, note cards featuring seeds and fruits as well as 2011 calendars and blank journals. A portion of all sales of the Edibles in the Garden note cards goes to Slow Food Shasta Cascade and the many projects it supports. All of Jewellgarden.com’s cards are printed in Chico by Quadco printing using 100% recycled paper and vegetable-based ink.

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In a North State Garden is a weekly Northstate Public Radio and web-based program celebrating the art, craft and science of home gardening in Northern California and made possible in part by the Gateway Science Museum - Exploring the Natural History of the North State and on the campus of CSU, Chico. In a North State Garden is conceived, written, photographed and hosted by Jennifer Jewell - all rights reserved jewellgarden.com. In A North State Garden airs on Northstate Public 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 simultaneously universal and positively North State.

This piece was originally published in August of 2009, but beautiful plants are always worth revisiting, especially in high summer. Enjoy.

Have you noticed how the concept of beauty evolves as you grow older or as you garden longer? Just ten years ago, if you had told me that I would consider a bouquet of carnivorous plants as lovely a sight as I had ever seen, I would have replied (politely, I hope) that I was really more of a pansy, peony or poppy girl. So no-one was more surprised than I was when I recently encountered a bouquet of carnivorous plant spent flower heads and traps and I thought to myself that they were some of the most strikingly lovely plants I’d ever seen. It’s not that I have forsaken peonies, not at all. Rather, I can happily attest that one of the benefits of growing older as a gardener (and as a person) is that your concept of beauty deepens and widens to include all manner of beauty. Photo: A sample of David and Cathy Walther’s carnivorous plant collection, including the double-flowered, speckled white trapped Sarracenia leucophylla ‘Tarnok’.

David Walther, co-owner with his wife Cathy of Spring Fever Nursery in Yankee Hill, has been intrigued by carnivorous plants and been growing them in his home garden for close to 10 years. His collection currently includes many plants comprising multiple varieties of half a dozen or so species. I first saw David’s collection in mid-spring, when a handful were beginning to bloom. I visited them again in late-summer and their dramatic colors, structures and over-all interest were still going strong. While many carnivorous plants have very attractive and showy flowers, it is the traps and the spent seed heads that persist and that, in my opinion, hold multi-season interest for the gardener. Photo: Sarracenia flava, the tall plant with dangling yellow flower petals, in bloom and Sarracenia leucophylla x. willisii ‘Dana’s Delight’ in bud.

Evidence of carnivorous plants dates back to the Cretaceous Period (1144 to 65 million years ago). Currently, botanists believe that there are close to 600 species of carnivorous plants and fungi, from something like 15 genera and 7 families, and which live around the world. Several carnivorous plants are native to California including the California pitcher plant (Darlingtonia californica) and a sundew (Drosera). Photo: A small venus fly-trap (Dionaea muscipula)

Carnivorous plants could also be referred to as insectivorous plants, as insects of all kinds are their normal prey. Carnivorous plants the world over have evolved at different times in response to impoverished circumstances – be it very dry soil without sufficient nutrients or very wet and acidic bog conditions. As result of poor growing conditions, the plants could not derive the nutrients they needed in order to survive and reproduce and so they developed means of getting their nutrients from nutrient-rich insects in the vicinity. The technical definition of a carnivorous plant is one that attracts, captures, kills and digests its prey, but many plant people include as carnivorous plants that just do some of these steps. Photo: David cut open a Sarracenia trap for me to demonstrate how many bugs the plant has digested. While they do capture a lot of bugs, they are not actually effective bug control.

In general, carnivorous plants attract different insects for food than they do for the purposes of pollination. Furthermore, carnivorous plants do not use their reproductive parts (flowers) in order to capture or digest insects and their digestive parts are not involved in pollination or reproduction. Photo: An ant crawling on the operculum or lid of a pitcher trap. The shape of the operculum helps to protect the trap from overflowing with rainwater and helps to direct bugs into the trap.

Beyond botanical classifications, carnivorous plants are categorized by their degree of carnivory – full-time, meaning they do not obtain any of their nutrients from the soil, or part-time, meaning they get some of their nutrients from their soil/water and some from insect prey. They are also categorized by the kinds of traps that they use – active or passive fly-paper (wherein bugs are attracted to a sticky liquid on the plant’s leaves that binds them like glue), pitcher/pitfall and lobster-pot traps (wherein insects are attracted by a scent inside of cup or pitcher which they cannot get back out of) and steel or snap-traps (wherein the traps actually close around the trapped prey, such as the venus fly traps), and finally mousetraps, which are only found on aquatic carnivorous plants and are in the form of a bladder which when triggered inflates itself and sucks in water and its prey. Wow. Amazing, but less lovely in a bouquet, I would think. Photo: David points out the structure of a Sarracenia flower. The petals are the yellow parts hanging down the longest, the sepals are less long and hang down over the petals. David is lifting one up. The stigmas (pointing up and tucked under the petals) are all joined together by an upside-down umbrella-shaped style to form a little basin beneath the pollen-bearing anthers and filaments.

While some plants have been recognized as carnivorous for a very long time, other plants have only recently been recognized as such, including some species of Bromeliads. You might have noticed that bromeliad leaves often form a little cup, which prior to the 1980s was believed to be only for conservation of water. In the 1980s it was discovered that some bromeliads actually absorb and use the nutrients of the insects that (inadvertently or by design) drown in these little water basins. Some other plants’ flowers – like the famed dutchman’s pipes (various Aristolchia) or jack-in-the-pulpits (various Arisaema), look a lot like carnivorous traps, but they are in fact flowers trying to attract pollinators, not traps trying to attract food. Photos: Carnivorous looking non-carnivores. A Dutchman’s Pipe on the left and an Arisaema on the right.

David Walther’s carnivorous plant collection has developed a little each year since he originally became interested in them. Since many carnivores grow naturally in peaty or boggy conditions, David grows his planted in old wine-barrel halfs, which he fills with 50% sand and 50% peat or sphagnum moss. These he keeps watered well. “It’s not that they drink a lot of water, but more that they like wet feet and the materials in which they are planted retain a lot of water, so I don’t actually water these more than I water my other plants,” explains David. Because they generally grow in humid as well as moist conditions, and thrive under stress, David also plants his containers quite tightly, and then overseeds them with a small delicate grass or restio. This grassy cover helps to keep water from evaporating too quickly and keep the plants’ roots cool. While the conditions should be wet, they should not be stagnant. David has mesh-covered drainage holes in his barrels and he prefers his wooden containers over plastic ones because they allow for respiration and evaporation. Photo: David inspecting his carnivorous plants.

Most carnivorous plants are delicate when it comes to replicating their desired conditions. David’s carnivorous plants generally like good amounts of bright light. They do not like being fertilized and he makes sure to water them with rested water – meaning water that you have let sit out in a watering can or a bucket for 12 – 24 hours. This helps to ensure that any added chemicals like chlorine have dissipated. Photo: Two of David’s carnivorous plant containers. David does not cover or take his plants in in winter and they do fine each spring at his 2300 foot elevation location.

Because carnivorous plants allocate their energy perhaps even more carefully than other flowering plants, their structures are fascinating. Unlike other flowering plants that grow leaves primarily for photosynthesis and flowers primarily to attract pollinators so that they can reproduce and ensure the survival of their species, carnivorous plants have to do at least twice that and get it done with less: they grow their traps as well as their flowers, produce their sticky liquids and muscillage to attract insects as well as the enzymes to kill and break the bugs’ down into nutrients. In the winter, when light is low, temperatures are low and bugs are scarce, many carnivorous plants send up leaves called phyllodes not related to the plant’s traps but just for the purpose of additional photosynthesis. Photo: The speckled pattern on Sarracenia traps.

“It is amazing how the many parts all work together – beautifully – towards the ultimate goal of capturing food,” David says to me with evident respect for his plants. He goes on to explain: “Most of the pitfall or lobster-trap style plants have a sort of top – called an operculum - which helps to keep the trap from overflowing with too much rainwater. Most operculum are shaped in such a way that they also help to direct and funnel potential prey in the direction of the trap.” Photos: Left, photo courtesy of David and Cathy Walther: A little frog peeking out of a trap - waiting for a snack. Right: A spider dealing with a bee beneath a spent Sarracenia flower head.

While most bugs should use caution in the presence of a carnivorous plants, some creatures have developed an understanding of how to work with them and take advantage of other insects being attracted to them. While examining some traps, David and I see a green spider that has set up its web on the lip of a Sarracenia’s spent flower head. It is very busy wrapping a bee for later. “Small frogs will creep into a trap backwards and wait for their dinner to come to them,” David tells me. “The business of evolution and survival is ingenious.”

And oddly enough, it is strikingly beautiful at the same time.

Carnivorous Plant Societies:

International Carnivorous Plant Society: www.sarracenia.com/faq.html

Bay Area Carnivorous Plant Society: www.bacps.org/ Photo: Sarracenia rubra.

Carnivorous Plant Books: (of which there are many, so look around) Photo: David showing which traps go with the Sarracenia leucophylla ‘Tarnok’ flowers.

Carnivorous Plants of the United States and Canada, Donald E. Schnell; Timber Press, 2002.

Glistening Carnivores: The Sticky-Leaved Insect Eating Plants, Stewart McPherson; Redfern Natural History Production, 2008.

Carnivorous Plants - Care and Cultivation, Marcel Lecoufle; Blandford Press, 1990.

The Savage Garden: Cultivating Carnivorous Plants, Peter D’Amato; Ten Speed Press, 1998.

Insectivorous Plants, Charles Darwin; originally published in London in 1875; re-issued most recently: University Press of the Pacific, 2002 (paperback).

Carnivorous Plant Nurseries: Photo: One of David’s fork-leafed sundews (Drosera).

Spring Fever Nursery, Yankee Hill. Open by Appt: 5683 Wendy Way Yankee Hill, CA; 530- 534-1556, also at the Chico Saturday Farmer’s Market and the Paradise Tuesday Market.

Magnolia Gift & Garden, Chico (www.magnoliagandg.com) 1367 East Avenue, Chico; 530-894-5410. They carry a selection of Spring Fever’s carnivorous plants.

Hortus Botanicus, Fort Bragg – (www.hortusb.com/) 20103 Hanson Road, Fort Bragg, CA 95437; 707-964-4786.

California Carnivores: www.californiacarnivores.com/
Photos: Sunlight through a Saracenia trap, left; Sarracenia minor, right.

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Jewellgarden.com’s new line of lovely little note cards are bite sized and ready to enjoy on-line or at local fine shops near you. As spring turns to summer and summer to fall, look for Edibles in the Garden blank journals, note cards featuring seeds and fruits as well as 2011 calendars and blank journals. A portion of all sales of the Edibles in the Garden note cards goes to Slow Food Shasta Cascade and the many projects it supports. All of Jewellgarden.com’s cards are printed in Chico by Quadco printing using 100% recycled paper and vegetable-based ink. Yum.

Follow Jewellgarden.com/In a North State Garden on Facebook - become a fan today!