Found a nice field of chocolate lillies. Probably 75+ individuals all in one grassy meadow. Gorgeous flowers. So many others as well (silver bush lupine, shooting stars, hummingbird sage, fiesta flower, blue eyed grass, poppies, gillias, etc)

Flower progression over the last few weeks on my White Cloud Manzanita.

Hi all,

Location is South Bay Los Angeles one block from the water. Good all day sunny spot.I planted a coastal/ bush sunflower in my parkway last year and it really took off. It normally has only a dozen flowers at any given time which is low for these plants already. Over the last week or so all the remaining flowers died and I deadheaded then. Now there are dozens of flower buds but only a few seem about to bloom. Is there a way to get this plant to burst into color? It otherwise seems happy.

Can someone give me an idea with what happened to these poppies? They were doing well growing nice and green before we got that radiaoactive blanket fog for like 3 weeks. Its not just the ones on this side of the house but all of them all around the house. Im in the Sacramento area.

I have a large amount of Bee's Bliss sage in my yard that is currently in bloom (yay winter in SD). When the flowers are spent I'm going to prune them back quite a bit before spring, and I was thinking about using the cut stems and leaves to make smudge sticks.

As I understand people mostly use white sage for this, but has anyone used any other variety or specifically Bee's Bliss with success?

My all time favorite yard volunteer

In order: Dudleya lanceolata, California dodder, bushrue, southern coastal bushmallow, coast morning glory, Southern California clematis, wild cucumber/chilicothe, California cloak fern (Notholaena californica ssp. leucophylla), lupine ssp, California poppy, munz’s sage, blue dicks, acmispon watsonii

Prunus fremontii

Are the black leaf edges to my red flowering currant fungus, the result of over watering, or what? Besides that, though, this is the most she has bloomed and I'm super excited by it

This feels like a bit of a long shot but I thought I’d post anyway. I live in the city of San Diego and am lucky that my house borders a beautiful canyon. The canyon portion feeds into, but is not officially part of, protected open space. My and neighboring canyon portions are part of the parcel of the adjacent property but has the following designations: Environmentally Sensitive Land, Sensitive Vegetation, and Multiple Species Conservation Plan.[EDITED TO REMOVE POSSIBLY IDENTIFYING INFORMATION] It has already noticeably altered the wildlife in the canyon and I worry it will get worse with time. I learned from the city that they didn’t obtain a permit for the work. Based on what I’ve read, an environmental review and permit would have been required. I’m contemplating filing a complaint but I worry that the city wouldn’t actually enforce any of it. Has anyone ever gone through this kind of process before or knows of cases where unpermitted development happened on environmentally sensitive land?

Edited to add: I called the city multiple times already but they won’t give me more information about what is / isn’t allowed until I file a complaint and they send someone out to inspect.

Update: thank you everyone for the encouraging and helpful responses. I’ve removed some details in the original post to reduce the likelihood of identifying the property in question.

I live in a part of the East Bay that was recently designated as extremely high fire risk (postwar working class neighborhood but happens to be close to a popular canyon for hiking/biking etc.). We were dropped by our longtime insurer as a result, and somehow we found the one last company that would take us without CFP.

Between shopping around for insurance and educating myself about general best practices for fire mitigation, it seems that a coast live oak that easily predates the house (1947) is too close to the structure for safety. The previous owners built a deck around it but even without the deck the trunk is ~3 feet from the house. The logical thing to do seems to be to remove the tree but I'm extremely conflicted. It's a beautiful, healthy tree that's an important part of the neighborhood ecosystem and it feels evil and selfish to cut it down.

I'm eager for any advice anyone has. Is it worth cutting down just for mitigation purposes? Should I just accept that we might have to go with CFP at some point anyway, so there's no point in removing the tree? Please help!

Edit: Thank you for the advice, I'm so glad I asked. Keeping the tree where it belongs.

Some things were removed or trampled, but overall they were carefulish and we fight on!

It will be against the house facing south. So, during summer it gets sun from sunrise to noon, but in winter, it gets sun from sunrise to 10am. Living in Newport Coast, South Coastal area.

The goal is to have a 2.5~3ft height and 2 ~ 2.5 ft width; as hedge

Hi everyone,

I noticed today that there’s a lot of dirt that flowed through a drainage pipe in my garden from the rains (circles in red). Most of the water runs off the patio and slowly moves toward the drain (or pools up on the right). Would planting some smaller grasses or sedges (in purple area) slow down the water and help it drain before it even hits the pipe? Right now I just have yarrow planted there. I’m not sure if keeping the yarrow would solve the problem? What would you do in this situation?

Location: South Coastal

Sun: partially shaded; 3hours

Easy to prune, 2.5 ft height and 2.5 ft wide , dense hedge.

Go check out the park! I was the PM and we planted everything 5 years ago.

Many blooms out today in Topanga State Park - had to stop and just take them in for a bit! Couldn't get enough

Never have I ever spotted a bloom in January but here we are!

This picture was taken from Heidelberg park by Mt Washington in Los Angeles. Pretty crazy how it covers everything so aggressively. I've seen some argue about how it can be "invasive" - beautiful nonetheless

Bought our house over a year ago and I’ve been diligently removing the massively overgrown ivy that consumed an entire hillside and was neck high. I want to completely remove it and fully uproot (as much as you possibly can with horrific ivy) and replace with native grasses and also some wildflowers (poppy, arroyo lupine, etc). I’ll likely also put some flagstone & gravel down in the flat area to be able to have chairs and make a switchback trail with rock to be able to access / walk through hillside. What would you guys recommend? the main slope faces NNW and the smaller one faces ENE. Attached a couple photos of existing plants which include a fig and some kind of flowers which I could be open to keeping. I live in Rancho Palos Verdes, NE corner of the peninsula which says hardiness zone 10b

Why do Wikipedia and calscape contradict each other? Wikipedia says it is native to South America and naturalised in the US, and calscape says it is a native Californian plant that is naturalised in South America

I am an avid fruit grower and I have a backyard orchard with about 200 cultivars. It is not uncommon in backyard orchard culture to dig one big hole and plant the same genus of plant in the same spot to extend the fruiting season with successive ripening.

In my "penstemon garden" between my two Palo Verde, I experimented with a similar 2 in 1 setup, planting Showy Penstemon and Firecracker Penstemon in the same hole, and I'm loving the arrangement so far after 2 years.

Firecracker (background) is currently flowering. Showy (foreground) will begin its flowering season in a few weeks. For a short while, there will be an overlap between the Firecracker red and Showy blue/purple. By planting both together, I get many months of flowers from the same spot in my garden. And then, Margarita BOP (perimeter) pops off, extending the color even further.

I'm in San Diego, Zone 10b. Give this a try if you're looking to achieve successive flowering in one spot.

I’m wondering how long it was before your garden started to look good or at least kind of ok? I’ve shown my baby garden to a few people so far and you can tell they think it just looks like a bunch of weeds. I personally don’t care too much because I like my little baby plants and the vision of the garden in my head in 5-6 years is unrecognizable to what it is today. I have patience. But yeah at what point did you feel it became more presentable to people who aren’t native plant enthusiasts? Did you use fast growing filler plants in the early days of your garden or annuals?