Beautiful, Fire-safe California Native Plants

Since last year’s catastrophic fire season, the roar of the chainsaw has outcompeted bird song throughout the hills and valleys of Santa Cruz County. Complying with fire-safe landscaping means removing forty to fifty percent of the woody vegetation within a hundred-yard radius of the home, leaving only small islands of shrubby vegetation spaced more than a flame’s distance apart. It’s not a joyful task for people who moved to rural properties for their natural beauty.
However, inspiration can be found in the practices of Native Californians. They altered the land with fire in order to keep native prairies healthy and productive, and even to extend their range.
Indigenous Peoples also sowed seed and bulblets of native plants, tilling, weeding, and pruning them where they grew in the wild. The result was – the amazing spring floral displays that bring people out in droves, especially in super-bloom years.

Short and herbaceous, prairie plants can be ideal components within the “lean, green and clean” thirty-foot fire-safe zone, and in an urban garden, too. Linda Brodman, President of the Santa Cruz County chapter of CNPS, grows natives from the plant communities that once grew where her Santa Cruz condo now stands. She describes her garden as “a little bit of a coastal prairie, coastal woodland, with native bunch grasses, coyote brush, honeysuckle, iris, yerba buena, Ceanothus, etc. And of course my lovely coast live oaks that were planted by scrub jays.”

Whatever your local plant community—its herbaceous plants will beautify your garden. Descriptions of all Santa Cruz county plant communities are available at cruzcnps.org/plant-communities.

You can support the Santa Cruz County chapter of CNPS, by buying native plants at its Spring Sale. Details for purchasing and picking up plants are here: https://cruzcnps.org/shop/.

CNPS appreciates the support the UCSC Arboretum and Botanic Garden, for allowing CNPS plant sale customers to park in their visitor parking lot to pick up CNPS sale purchases. If you plan to visit the Arboretum after picking up your plants, please remember to pay the visitors’ fee. The Arboretum sells plants too—shop their offerings at arboretum.ucsc.edu.

The sale plants are grown by dedicated CNPS volunteers, with the support of Suncrest Nurseries in Watsonville, which donates growing space and materials, and cares for the plants between volunteer sessions.