EARTHLY DELIGHTS
GOINGNATIVE TIVE GROW LOCAL FLORA WITH PLANTS FROM OTHER MEDITERRANEAN CLIMATES FOR A FRAGRANT GARDEN THAT BLOOMS THROUGHOUT THE YEAR. BY ILSA SETZIOL | PHOTOS BY SEAN MACGILLIVRAY
WHEN ELISA AND ERIC CALLOW PURCHASED GAINSBURGH HOUSE IN LA CAÑADA FLINTRIDGE EIGHT YEARS AGO, THE GARDEN WASN’T PART OF THE ALLURE. THE HOUSE — DESIGNED BY LLOYD WRIGHT, THE SON OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT — WOWED THEM, BUT THE YARD WAS AN UNAPPEALING MIX OF IVY AND DISEASED SHRUBS. SO ERIC CALLOW, A FINANCIAL ADVISOR AND OUTDOORSMAN, DECIDED TO TRY HIS HAND AT REDESIGNING THE GROUNDS. HE WANTED TO USE PLANTS INDIGENOUS TO CALIFORNIA “BECAUSE THEY REPRESENT, LITERALLY, A LANDSCAPE THAT IS BEAUTIFUL, UNDER ATTACK AND WHICH I KNOW FROM MY CHILDHOOD.” “People are starting to appreciate gardens for more than beauty,” says horticulturist Lili Singer, who organizes the annual Native Garden Tour. “Gardens are also about the environment and ecology. And the misconceptions about native gardens are falling away. You can do any style of garden, even formal if you don’t want a wild look.” In the Callows’ garden, Elisa points out a few of her favorites: native irises (Iris douglasiana) and coral bells (Heuchera), a delicate plant with bell-shaped flowers that dangle from long, thin stalks. “For something that’s so constructed and organized, it still has a feeling of naturalness, which I like,” she says. She’s also pleased with the many birds and bees the plants attract. Most of the Callows’ plants are indigenous to Southern California’s two dominant hillside habitats: chaparral and coastal sage scrub. Chaparral plants are usually large evergreens and include such crowd-pleasers as Ceonothus — which sports clusters of blue or white blossoms reminiscent of lilacs — and manzanita, prized for its red bark, tiny, urn-shaped flowers and berries that resemble little apples. Aromatic sages, dominant in a sage-scrub habitat, unfurl tiered whorls of petite flowers that hummingbirds adore. In the wild, most of this plant community has been lost to bulldozers.
The new garden is dominated by clusters of leafy shrubs, pockets of perennial herbaceous flowers and a meadow of wildflowers. Native gardens are commonly assumed to be brown and full of succulents, but desert-friendly plants are actually uncommon in local ecosystems. After all, most of California is not a desert; it has a Mediterranean climate — hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters. Most native plants are less thirsty than common garden plants, but they still create verdant, colorful gardens — even more so when they mingle with others from a similar climate. For the past five years, the Callows’ yard has been a popular stop on the Theodore Payne Native Plant Garden Tour. The Sun Valley–based Theodore Payne Foundation has been dedicated to the understanding and preservation of California flora since 1960, but its nursery has only recently begun attracting significant numbers of homeowners and landscapers who snatch up its plants as fast as the foundation can grow them.
IN THE PINK: Purple Three-Awn grass, Elijah Blue Fescue and red verbena thrive in Elisa and Eric Callow’s La Cañada Flintridge garden.
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38 ~ MAY 2009 ~ ARROYO
ARROYO ~ MAY 2009 ~ 39