Summer Joy! California Fuchsias and Bees

The California "Moonglow" poppies have ceded the stage and the California Fuchsias are having their moment. Known also as Epilobium canum, these have the common name of 'fuchsia' as the flower form is reminiscent of the imported plant by that name.  

These plants are powerhouses in the garden, blooming from late July into October, and feeding White Lined Sphinx moth caterpillars (in my sister-in-law's garden) and a variety of bees. I had originally planted just one of these plants to try it out, and as soon as it bloomed, a hummingbird appeared. After drinking from its meager 12 blossoms, the hummingbird zoomed over to me, hovered in front of my face as if to say "plant more!"  I wound up adding 5 more and am so glad that I did. The hummingbirds visit this frequently and it is a favorite with the bees.

Even late in the day the blossoms seem to glow and draw a lot of comments from neighbors and other passer-by. A troop of Girl Scouts toured the garden one afternoon, and some stayed behind to collect seeds. Luckily I had some extra empty packets handy. 

The seeds pop open and are held in place briefly by their 'fluff'. I learned quickly that the trick to harvesting is to keep your hand around the pod, and nip it off the stem with your thumbnail. Trying to tear the pod off the stem severs it as they snap easily and this wastes the unripened pods further up the stem. 

The European honeybees crawl all the way in the flower and completely disappear. There were typically 15-20 buzzing around at any given moment. As I was harvesting seeds, they'd sense my presence and fly over to another area on the plant. We worked quite closely together but were careful to respect each other's space. It was actually quite relaxing to hear all of their humming and buzzing. 

I believe this tiny bee is a Tripartite Sweat Bee, based on information on iNaturalist.org. I noticed that the European honeybees dominated most of the mature flowers, but this little bee could fit into flowers that were barely opened, or sip nectar from a flower bud.

It was such a challenge to photograph this tiny sweat bee as it was so small and very quick. It was nice to see some bee diversity in the garden, though. It seems that with each new California native plant that I introduce into the garden, a new crop of bees and other insects show up. That is very exciting and I can't wait to see what the next phase will bring!

                                Hummingbird with Epilobium canum (c) Ann Parsons (CC-BY-NC)

I could never seem to capture a picture of the hummingbirds when they visited these plants, which was frequently.  But just so you can visualize how much these birds love these flowers, I'm including a beautiful image from iNaturalist.org taken by Ann Parsons, with copyright information, above.  Enjoy!

May Moonglow

 

Back in February I scattered some California native Moonglow Poppy seeds along the front border. I hoped they'd bloom in time for the April 2 Growing Natives Garden Tour, but with the colder weather, they didn't actually bloom until early May. But oh what a beautiful show - well worth the wait!  

The poppies lit up the border, and provided visual interest running parallel to the Catalina Perfume (Ribes viburnifolium) that is still maturing. 

Their luminescence really lit up this area that is dappled shade all morning and full sun all afternoon and evening. 

As I looked closely at the poppies, I noticed tiny bees that I hadn't seen in the garden before. 

I believe they are Arizona Small Carpenter Bees, but I'm waiting for confirmation from iNaturalist.org. But the important thing is that, with each new element I add to the garden, a new species emerges and seems to desperately need these precious native plant resources.  It feels wonderful to see the immediate impact of these plants, and feel that I'm doing my part to support them.

Still Life

The land we live on is a small patch of coastal scrub in San Carlos, California. When we moved here in 2007, it looked like a picture from a magazine, with Japanese maples, Chilean jasmine, French (via China) roses, all kept in a tidy corral by an English Box hedge (from southern Europe). 

But the garden was just that, a picture. A "still life." The plants were picture perfect, tidy and pruned. They would have fed the ecosystems in their native countries, but here, far from the insects they co-evolved with, they were simply pretty objects for us to look at.  Our gardener came and meticulously clipped the plants, mowed the lawn and aerated it. He clipped seed heads from our Mexican sage and kept things looking, well, picture perfect.  

Before: Our garden as a "still life" picture, with imported 

plants, providing no food for local ecosystems.

But as it turns out, this picture has a very steep price. 

My husband and I were so busy working that it did not occur to us that there was something seriously wrong with our 'picture garden'. This all changed in 2020 when things slowed down a bit during the pandemic. We started to spend more time in the garden and wondered why there wasn't more life there.  

The French word for a still life painting is "nature morte" or "dead nature" and I think this best describes gardens like ours - filled with imported plants that do not feed anything. Our garden seemed nice, but it was a food desert to the starving bees, butterflies, salamanders, birds and mammals. These species have been here for thousands of years and co-evolved with native plants so that they are specialized to eat certain ones. like monarch caterpillars eating only milkweed. But my house and imported garden replaced their habitat. When we multiply this by the vast number of gardens like ours across the country and the globe, these food deserts quickly become a starving planet.  

A Western Monarch nectars on a Showy Milkweed 

shortly before laying eggs on it. The monarch and 

this plant co-evolved together and it is the only food 

source for caterpillars for this butterfly and for the 

Queen butterfly as well.

So, in the fall of 2020, we decided to turn this around. We added native 'keystone' plants to our garden first. These are the plants that support the greatest number of caterpillars as these are the biggest converters of plant material to the entire remaining food chain. Native local varieties of buckwheat, manzanita, ceanothus, coffeeberry, currants, gooseberries, filled our garden.  During this first year, we started noticing a wider variety of bees and butterflies visiting the flowers. 

Common Checkered Skipper resting on sage seed heads, 

after spending her caterpillar stage on native mallow. 

As we worked, we also discovered that our landscape was not entirely 'dead.'  A massive Valley Oak produced acorns and leaves that fed mammals and insects alike. But we had not realized that in the past, we'd been working against nature through our obsessive tidiness.  As soon as the insect laden leaves, acorns, and small branches landed on the ground we would sweep them up and put them in the green bin. As our bounty was hauled off to create methane in landfills, our local birds starved. The insects, especially caterpillars, are the only foods their babies can eat. 

As soon as we learned this, we started leaving the leaves. The biodiversity exploded!  In addition to bee and butterfly diversity, we noticed moths of all sizes. There was even a humorous moment as I tried to capture a short video of an elusive but colorful one, resulting in a 'high speed chase' through the thick blanket of leaves. It escaped its opportunity for fame. With the moths came a wider variety of birds. We had never seen western bluebirds in our neighborhood before but here they were, scouting out nesting sites in our oak and foraging for insects among the leaves. Hummingbirds visited the flowers for nectar, and hovered around the oak, flicking their long tongues to catch gnats in the air (80% of their diet is protein from insects).

Lesser Black Letter Moth pupa and adult. 

Both need leaf litter and debris to overwinter 

and both provide food for baby and adult birds. 

We left the acorns on the ground, and they were eaten by deer, blue jays and woodpeckers. Acorns also provided food for three orphaned baby racoons that moved into a hollow part of the oak's trunk and a squirrel family in a hollow limb.  I gathered some acorns to start new trees to give away, but had to choose carefully as insects would bore into them immediately, again providing food that would move its way up the ecosystem. 

A young orphaned racoon finds a home and food sources

 in the embrace of a Valley Oak (Quercus lobata). 

Note that the leaves are from a soon-to-be removed 

Japanese maple that grew next to the oak, but has no wildlife value.

Now, as we enter our third year of embracing this new, yet ancient, way of gardening we look out our window and see something quite different.  It is not a static still life, but rather a living breathing and excitingly vibrant vision - a "nature vivante" that is teeming with life.

Learn more about habitat gardening here:

Habitat Revolution - California Native Plant Society (cnps.org)

Some SF Bay Area Resources:

Gardening (cnps-scv.org)

Gardening info « Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour

Design your garden here:

Calscape - Bay Area Garden Planner

Handy Habitat Checklist:

NWF_Garden-Certification-Checklist.ashx

Ahhh, sit back and enjoy the birdsong - so much nicer than our old boring lawn!

The Bring Back Bay Area Bees Butterflies & Birds Garden

In January of 2021, we removed our lawn and started planting drought tolerant California native plants. These native plants co-evolved with other native species over thousands of years. In the process, they became the only source of food for the caterpillars that feed baby birds, and serve as the foundation for the bulk of our local ecosystem. We were inspired by Doug Tallamy's lecture, "Nature's Best Hope" (also a NY Times bestselling book) You can read more about this in my welcome post, and watch his video here: https://bit.ly/Tallamy-CAPlants 

Fast forward to today, with unexpected rains that provided a reminder that the fall native California planting season is just around the corner. This inspired me to do a bit of weeding in between the showers and start to imagine the next steps for each garden area.  Since we started over a year and a half ago, the front yard has been transformed from lackluster lawn to four garden 'rooms': 

1) The Courtyard Garden between the sidewalk and driveway

In the foreground, manzanita Louis Edward and to the left of it, a delicate grey California fuchsia. Behind the chairs, flowering currants and carpenteria replaced non-native maples (the trees we removed not only do not feed any species, they were also a fire hazard so close to the house). Note that there are maples native to California that do feed the ecosystem: Home > Maple (all) for California (calscape.org) 

California Fuchsia - Salmon colored variety, possibly Sierra Salmon; these, and most red tubular native flowers, are hummingbird magnets. Since bees don't use red flowers generally, these have much more nectar for the hummingbirds. 

Red Flowering Buckwheat waiting to get planted. Buckwheat flowers attract a wide variety of insects, the leaves host many species of butterflies. More info is here: Red-flowered Buckwheat, Eriogonum grande var. rubescens (calscape.org)

2) The Meadow on the left and, 3) The Swale Garden on the right, both on the other side of the sidewalk

This beautiful ancient Valley Oak (Quercus lobata) has nourished this land for centuries. The leaves feed the soil and protect thousands of insects that feed the birds, salamanders and many other species. The acorns feed deer, racoons, squirrels and thousands more insects. We saw a hummingbird hovering near this oak, its tiny tongue flicking gnats out of the air. We subsequently learned that 80% of a hummingbird's diet is insects, which are also the primary food source for its babies. 

Red Flowering Currant (Ribes sanguineum) in foreground, with native asters (Aster chilensis) in between following the curve of the swale

 The gorgeous Fuchsia-flowered Gooseberry (Ribes speciosum) is beloved by hummingbirds for its nectar and many other birds for its berries. 

It is tucked into a quiet corner of the swale garden, as its thorns are not beloved by humans. It is a nice plant for places where you want

to discourage people/dogs/or anything else that might trample your garden.

Manzanita "Dr. Hurd" underplanted with red flowering buckwheat in the Swale Garden

Close up of Pacific Asters (Symphyotrichum chilense) in the Swale Garden

- these are a bee magnet!

California native Woodland Strawberry (Fragaria vesca) in the Swale Garden

Elsewhere we have Beach Strawberry (Fragaria chiloensis) that prefers

 a bit more sun.

4) The Cafe Garden adjacent to the front door: 

To the right in the picture above are the native plants that are just becoming established this year. To the left are well established non-natives: in the foreground is Pieris japonica (from Japan), and on the other side of the birdbath is Sarcococca humilis (from China/India). I love these plants, and look forward to seeing them someday in their native countries, feeding the caterpillars and other insects that build the food webs in those local ecosystems. In the meantime, I need to remove them to make room for plants that will feed mine. 

Coffeeberry "Eve Case" - this compact coffeeberry feeds many species of butterflies and moths, and does well in shade 

Hummingbird sage seedlings - these do well in the shade of oak trees and are very popular with hummingbirds and bees

Birdbath with rocks for bees and butterflies

This is another view of the Cafe Garden: California natives include Coffeeberry, Hummingbird Sage, three Dark Star Ceanothus, and Dutchman's Pipevine seedlings along the trellis. Non-native azalea is in bloom. In the distance part of the Swale Garden is visible. Note: Dutchman's Pipevine is the only host plant for the caterpillars of the gorgeous Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly. It loves shade so will hopefully do well here. Learn more here: Pipevine Swallowtail, Battus philenor (calscape.org)

As I buzzed through each of these garden rooms, tidying up, I was amazed at some of the changes we've seen in just a year and a half. For instance, this past year was the first time we followed the Xerces Society's guidelines to "Leave the Leaves" - just sweeping them from hard surfaces, and from the 'meadow' and into piles around our plants. https://bit.ly/Leave-the-Leaves  

This serves to provide habitat for thousands of insects, including butterfly and moth pupae, that feed birds (especially the babies). The decomposing leaves also put nutrients back into the soil, soften the native clay so it is easier to pull weeds, and breed beneficial mycorrhiza - a fungus that live in plant roots and provides essential micronutrients, helps with water absorption, and secretes chemicals to kill soil pathogens. You can read more about it here: Planting Guide (calscape.org).  

I had to pull very few weeds today, and the ones that I did pull came up easily as the ground was soft.  In contrast, the ground in the meadow where we removed leaves was as hard as a rock and I'll need to use a hoe to get the weeds out.  There are thousands more insects that flit up when I disturb any space in the garden, such as pulling the few weeds that showed up. And as a result, I'm seeing more birds.  

The leaves also provided a nice environment for acorns to germinate so we have some oaks popping up around the yard. I'm going to leave some of these in place as they may someday replace the ancient Valley Oak we have in the garden now. Doug Tallamy also mentioned coppicing oaks, which is more commonplace in the Eastern United States. It keeps them smaller but still provides food to the ecosystem. https://bit.ly/Nature-of-Oaks

I'm looking forward to starting some more seeds and trying out some more plants in each of these garden rooms. It is exciting to see the birds, bees and butterflies start to increase as we add more natives and walk away from the stressful and noisy mow and blow approach to gardening that we had in the past.  

We've surpassed our goal of having at least 70% native plants by volume, and are closer to 99%.  Here is the current plant list:

California Native Plants:

Trees:

Valley Oak (Quercus lobata) 

Blue Elderberry (Sambucus mexicana)

Redbud (Cercis occidentalis) Wegman's Nursery (lg); Watershed Nursery (sm).

Toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia "Davis Gold") - grown from seed 

Toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia) CNL Nursery

Shrubs:

Ribes: 

    Red Flowering Currant (Ribes sanguinium) CNL Nursery / Wegman's Nursery

    Catalina Currant (Ribes viburnifolium) - Summerwinds Nursery

    Golden Currant (Ribes aureum) - Watershed Nursery

    Fuchsiaflower Gooseberry (Ribes speciosum)

Manzanita 

    Arctostaphylos manzanita "Dr. Hurd" - Wegman's Nursery

    Arctostaphylos bakeri "Louis Edmund" - Summer Winds Nursery

    Arctostaphylos edmundsii "Carmel Sur" - Yerba Buena Nursery

    Arctostaphylos Pacific Mist - California Native Landscapes (CNL) Nursery

California Lilac

    Ceanothus "Dark Star" -  Wegman's Nursery / CNL Nursery

    Ceanothus (white) - CNL Nursery

Coffeeberry (Frangula californica "Eve Case") - Summer Winds Nursery

Coffeeberry (Frangula californica "Mound San Bruno") - CNL Nursery

Monkeyflower (Diplacus aurantiacus) - Yerba Buena Nursery

Sages:

    Hummingbird Sage (Salvia spathacea) CNPS - SCV Nursery

    Black Sage (Salvia mellifera) - Regional Botanic Garden

    Salvia "Pozo Blue" (a hybrid of s. clevelandii and s. leucophylla) - gift

    Cleveland Sage (Salvia clevelandii) - gift

Perennials:

Bee Plant (Scrophularia californica) - CNPS - SCV Nursery

Blue Eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium bellum) - Wegman's Nursery

California Fuchsia (Epilobium canum) - Murphy's Nursery

California Hedgenettle (Stachys bullata) - Yerba Buena Nursery

Cliff Maids (Lewisia cotyledon) - Yerba Buena Nursery; Summerwinds Nursery

Foothill Penstemmon (Penstemon heterophyllus) - Wegman's Nursery

Iris (Iris "Pacific Coast") - Regional Botanic Park Nursery

Island Alum Root (Heuchera maxima) - CNL Nursery; Summerwinds Nursery

Pacific Aster (Symphyotrichum chilense) - Murphy's Nursery

Red Flowered Buckwheat (Eriogonum grande var. rubescens) - Yerba Buena Nursery

Soap plant (Chlorogalum pomeridianum) - Native Here Nursery

Verbena (Verbena lilacina "De La Mina") - CNL Nursery

Wooly Blue Curls (white version) (Trichostema lanatum) - CNL Nursery

Yampah (Perideridia kelloggii) - Native Here Nursery

Ground Covers:

Yerba Buena (Clinopodium douglasii) - Yerba Buena Nursery

Woodland Strawberry (Fragaria vesca) - Yerba Buena Nursery / Summerwinds Nursery

Beach Strawberry (Fragaria chiloensis) - friend's garden

Sand Dune Sedge (Carex pansa) - Summerwinds Nursery Palo Alto

Vines:

Dutchman's Pipevine (Aristolochia californica) - Yerba Buena & CNL Nurseries

Hairy Honeysuckle (Lonicera hispidula)

Grasses:

Meadow Barley (Hordeum brachyantherum)

Purple needle grass (Stipa pulchra) - Regional Botanic Park Nursery

Mendocino Reedgrass / Leafy Reedgrass (Calimagrostis foliosa) - CNL Nursery

From Seed:

California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) - Larner Seeds

Elegant Clarkia (Clarkia unguiculata) - Larner Seeds

Tidy Tips (Layia platyglossa) - Larner Seeds

Non-Native:

Lawn (removed 11/25/21 - thank you, Doug Tallamy for the inspiration!)

Chilean jasmine (removed 9/13/22) 

Pierris japonicus (removed 10/2/22)

Sarcaccoca humulis (removed 10/2/22)

Japanese Maples - by house (removed 11/15/22)

Box hedge (removed 1/15/23)

Azelea (bird cover, will remove when ceanothus and coffeeberry mature)

Japanese Maple - (by oak, used as bird perch, will remove when toyons mature)

Camelia - by window, used as bird perch; will remove when sambucus matures

Lavender (popular bee and hummingbird nectar source; seeds for finches, keeping it)

Australia - Birds of the Blue Mountains and Sydney

A recent trip to Sydney and the nearby Blue Mountains region with the family provided the opportunity to explore the ways that Australians are promoting habitat gardening and biodiversity in this region.  

We stayed at a lovely AirBnb in Leura, NSW, in the Blue Mountains. Most of this area is a massive wildlife reserve and is rich with biodiversity. The variety of birdsong, especially in the mornings, was amazing. Here are a few of the ones that we captured on camera, though we could hear hundreds more. They are the most active before dawn and at dusk, so images were hard to capture. If you go, I highly recommend staying in a place that has an adjoining wild space so you can fully experience the wildlife here.

Grandson, Charlie, took a picture of this red and green King Parrot in the back yard:

I jumped up in the middle of a conversation in the living room so I could capture this image of the Eastern Spinebill in a (non-native) flowering quince. This bird returned to this bush regularly to nectar on the flowers, so if I lived here, I'd actually consider planting it as part of my 30% non-native garden area.

At a lookout near Leura, I saw these beautiful birds but have not yet identified them. 

This Sulphur Crested Cockatoo was in a eucalyptus tree on Lindeman Road in Leura. We often saw flocks of these flying around this area in the morning, though they seemed to head east for the middle part of the day. 

This was as close as I could get to this Australian magpie, though the throaty songs of these birds was ubiquitous in the morning and evening bird choir. 

We returned from a long walk along Lindeman Road to find Crimson Rosellas in the garden at our AirBnb. This one perched in the same quince mentioned earlier. 

We went into Sydney for a day and met up with relatives Alice and Scarlett for lunch at the Sydney Botanical Gardens. The regal black and white ibises were everywhere, but as they forage for food in urban environments, they have earned the unfortunate nickname 'bin chickens'.  I still think they are lovely!

Nearby, a Kukaburra perched on a high branch and surveyed the scene.

We walked from the Botanical Garden to the Circulary Quay where we saw many of these gulls, with their bright orange beaks and feet and light golden eyes. 

It's Working! The Leafcutter Bees Have Arrived!

 

At last!  We have leafcutter bees in our garden!  We have been busy and traveling, so did not actually see them take some of these leaves for their nests, but we are so happy to see that they have found our garden in any case.  We're watching for them now, noting that leafcutter bees are striped like a honey bee, but carry pollen on their abdomens (see image below). 

They are solitary bees that cut circular pieces of leaves from plants such as Western redbud, rose and azalea. They then use these pieces to line their nest and also plug the spaces between their egg cells. You can find them nesting in wood, hollow stems from plants, or in other natural cavities. It is easy to encourage them to nest in your garden by providing them with some of these natural materials or even a 'bee hotel': https://beegarden.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/How-to-build-and-use-bee-blocks.pdf

California is home to over 1,600 species of native bees - more than any other state.  These bees have evolved to specialize on certain native plants, and play unique roles in our complex ecosystems.  Learn more about the types of bees here: https://arboretum.sf.ucdavis.edu/blog/beyond-honey-bee-learn-more-about-california-native-bees

I hope you'll be inspired to grow some native plants to benefit these amazing beneficials!

Happy (native) gardening!

Jennifer

Close up of Leafcutter Bee markings on leaves (c) Jennifer Dirking

   Leafcutter bee nectaring in a California native Cobweb Thistle 

(Circium occidentale) (c) Jennifer Dirking 

Remember: Never use pesticides.  Even the organic ones kill bees that pollinator our plants.  Encourage your neighbors to stop using pesticides that will kill your butterflies and bees when they visit those gardens as well. Avoid herbicides which will damage the ecosystem you are trying to build, and pose health risks for humans, too.