Natural History Wanderings

Save the Date: Annual Fall Plant Sale Saturday, October 4

Mark your calendar for the Garden’s annual fall plant sale! Public sale hours are 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., with exclusive access for Friends members starting at 9:00 a.m. Friends memberships may be purchased at the Garden starting at 8:30 a.m. on the day of the sale, or in advance on the Garden website.

The sale will feature a wide array of California native plants propagated and grown from the Regional Parks Botanic Garden collection.

An early peek at some of the plants that will be available:

• Many ferns, including quite a few particularly good looking young coastal woodferns (Dryopteris arguta).

• Desert willow (Chilopsis linearis): many unusual cultivars, including ‘Warren Jones’, ‘Dark Storm’, ‘Bubba’, and others. These are great large shrubs or small multi-trunked trees for hot inland parts of our region.

• Red columbine (Aquilegia formosa) grown from seeds, and in gallon pots. A member of the buttercup family, its red and yellow flowers attract hummingbirds, and its seeds feed other bird species. In the garden, it needs regular water, partial shade, and well-draining soil. It will self-seed.

• Cobb Mountain lupine (Lupinus sericatus) grown from seeds, and in three-inch pots. An unusual mounding lupin with big, silvery, palmate leaves and spikes of beautiful pink-to-purple flowers.  It’s named for Cobb Mountain, the tallest mountain in the Mayacamas Mountains in Lake County.

• Liveforevers (Dudleyas):several species in two-inch pots, and grown from seeds:  D. cymosa, D. formosa, D. albiflora D. pulveruenta, D. pachyphytum, D. gnoma, D. virens ssp. hassei.

• Crassulaceae: these plants, in the stonecrop family, form rosettes with flowers rising on stalks above the succulent leaves.

• Monkey Flower (Diplacus): several cultivars will be offered. Monkeyflowers are small shrubs with colorful tubular flowers that range across the color spectrum.

The full list of plants for sale will be posted on the Garden website during the week before the sale.