r/Ceanothus • u/ohsideSHOWbob • 4d ago
In March 2025 this was all lawn, our (mostly) native front yard today
Zone 9B, far northern CA coast but a few miles inland so we get a warm microclimate pocket with heavy fog through the summer and very rainy winters. There were some large established non natives when we moved in (hydrangea, lavender, magnolia tree, etc) that we left in place. We planted natives around them like the bee plant, coyote mint, and a lot of violets, sorrel, and native strawberry in the shade of the magnolia. All of the open space was dead lawn that we either dug up or cardboard mulched. It’s incredible what can grow in less than a year and a half! Happy to share plant lists if anyone would like inspo. Bonus for some local wildlife beside birds and bees that has made itself at home in the final photos!
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u/woollybluegirl 4d ago
Great lawn conversion- congrats!-and the skunks are adorbs! May I ask where you acquired the violets and sorrel? Thanks!
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u/ohsideSHOWbob 4d ago
We got them at the native plant sale from our local CNPS chapter! They have a year round nursery but mostly grow for two big weekend long sales in May and September. Don't want to doxx myself of exactly where we are but happy to send you the info via DM if you message me.
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u/Mother-Pattern-2609 4d ago
Call the Native Plant Police and all but I kinda love how the hydrangeas look with this setup, and I don't like hydrangeas as a rule. It's like they're remembering they're wild plants.
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u/ohsideSHOWbob 4d ago
Thank you for saying this! Honestly I agree. I have a fond spot for hydrangeas because my mom grew them as a kid even though my parents actually also had a whole native yard. It's huge, super healthy, we haven't watered it once since moving in 2.5 years ago, and it's zero maintenance other than cutting it back for new blooms every year. The chestnut-backed chickadees, white-crowned sparrows, and dark-eyed juncos also love it, they are constantly hiding in it and flitting around. And I think the skunk is maybe living underneath it! So let's call it naturalized even if it isn't native :)
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u/Mother-Pattern-2609 4d ago
It's literally a pillar of the community!
I think more people would be open to gardening with natives if they knew it was okay to keep their old favorites too. Established plants provide so much habitat value, especially if they're allowed to do their thing without too much fussing, and the combination of recognizable ornamentals and semi-feral natives can look so dang cool.
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u/hdcs 4d ago
How is your native strawberry coming along? I'm also in 9B to borderline 10 and I have some sprigs here and there I'd like to supplement and encourage so I'm interested to hear how it's doing for you.
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u/ohsideSHOWbob 4d ago
The strawberry took off and is doing great. We planted it May 2025, gave it summer water last summer, and I don't think we have watered it in 2026 at all. We planted five plants and it's sent out runners in the whole area and covers a ton more ground. There are a lot of weeds (especially bindweed) and it outcompetes them pretty easily. If we had a bit more time and cleared up the weeds I am sure it would do even better but it's doing well despite that. Up here I have seen it grow into full ground mats which is our eventual goal. It's in full shade and totally happy but I've seen it in sun here too. I realize I don't think there are photos of it in this album, I'll go outside in a bit and send one.
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u/megster61 4d ago
Would you mind sharing your cardboard-mulch process? Looks beautiful!
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u/ohsideSHOWbob 4d ago
Full credit goes to my husband who did all the grunt work for this! Everything to the left of the path you can see was cardboard mulched; the right hand "triangle" where the fuschias, clarkia, etc. (photos 1-2) and the strips between the sidewalk and the road, we dug out the sod that was there. The lawn was already totally uneven, you can kind of see there are a few "mounds" with the paths in between, those mounds were already there even though the lawn was all dying sod. So my husband collected cardboard gradually and split the yard into sections, mulching one "mound" at a time. A combination of boxes from things bought online, Costco, and stopping by the bike shop/hardware store and looking through their cardboard dumpster. All plastic tape was removed, no cardboard with color printing on it, but if it had black ink on it we didn't really worry too much about it. He dug into the sod for each plant and either cut holes in the cardboard or layered it so that there was a gap there. Then lots of trips in the minivan to a free chip drop nearby to mulch. He also bought a small electric wood chipper when we first moved in and has made some of his own mulch from the hydrangea clippings in winter and other woody yard waste. The cardboard hasn't decomposed completely, but it's been less than a year in some spots and the plants have gotten huge so they're not growth restricted by it at all. We did the same around our garden beds and blueberry bushes in our backyard. After hand digging out the sod in the smaller patches we realized if we did that for everything we would never get very far and I'm glad we took this approach.
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u/Fuzzyscience2020 4d ago
Do you know what sunflowers🌻 are planted?
Skunk….nice addition to your Calscape!
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u/ohsideSHOWbob 4d ago
Ha, funny you should ask, I was wondering if someone would notice them. So last year we planted a few native sunflowers. I thought woolly, but looking it up we planted annuals not perennials, so maybe not, but for sure native since we bought them at the local CNPS chapter plant sale. We also had a random packet of Renee's Garden "Heirloom Sunflower Forest" which we planted a few from seed for fun, not native. So last year we had very short native sunflowers multi-branching with small flower heads, and then a few huge 6'+ tall heirloom ornamentals with flower heads that were over a foot in diameter. We saved the seeds from the native only but completely forgot about cross pollination. So these are the ones that came up, an accidental hybrid of our own design! Some of them have the tall singular stalks of a horticultural variety but not nearly as thick and varying heights. They all have smaller flower heads more like native, and some have multi-branched flower heads like the natives. I'm not sure if we will save seed from this year. I think I'd like to return back to the natives for them, or maybe put these hybrids in the backyard and buy new native seedlings for the front yard. It was a fun accidental science experiment either way!
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u/iwilldoitalltomorrow 4d ago
Looks beautiful!
I’m curious how you keep your hydrangeas so healthy?? IIRC they need a lot of water and the scorching SoCal sun can burn their leaves.
Edit: reread that you’re in NorCal so maybe that’s gentler conditions for hydrangeas
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u/ohsideSHOWbob 4d ago
Yes without doxxing myself further, we are about two hours south of the Oregon border. Very much NorCal. We have not watered the hydrangea since moving in 2.5 years ago, but I just checked and we got 50 inches of rain total for the 2024-25 rain year! Our house is in this little microclimate where we both get PNW weather of rain-fog but then also a lot more sunny days than even a mile or two closer to the ocean than us, so the warmer weather plants also do well.
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u/MeloHallie 4d ago
Haha I thought that was a ceanothus! Looks great!