Michael Eurs’ garden would be a lovely place to get lost. Tucked next to Soquel Creek, three miles upstream from Capitola Beach, the garden is a mystical expanse of native plants and roses, meandering paths, woodpile hideouts for lizards and snakes and the occasional bench for sitting and talking.
“I think the garden should be a place of renewal, with winding paths that make you slow down and different areas to stop in. I’ve designed it almost like rooms in a house,” says Eurs, standing in his favorite “room,” where native blue wire grass and other creek natives surround a pond fashioned from an old hot tub he sank into the ground years ago.
Eurs’ garden, which thrives on very little water and no fertilizer other than the composted waste from his kitchen, garden trimmings and chickens, is one of 12 native gardens slotted to open their gates to the public this Sunday for the First Annual California Native Garden Tour. The tour is a collaborative effort scraped together by local volunteers, the Ecological Landscaping Association, the UCSC Arboretum, Central Coast Wilds, California Native Plants Society, California Native Garden Foundation and Native Revival Nursery.
“I think most people think of natives as really scraggly and unattractive, but there are many beautiful ones, and once they are established they take care of themselves,” says Lindsay Goldberg, tour organizer.
There is another reason for planting natives, though: the water savings. The well-manicured grass lawn is about as “green” as planting plastic bags; it takes an enormous amount of our dwindling supply of water, and the fertilizers and weedkillers required to maintain it are toxic to birds.
Local native gardens feature alternative native grasses like festuca rubra, which goes dormant in the summer, or the impressively tall Dr. Seuss-esque tufts of stipa, or blue wire grass—a pretty knee-length mesh of blue-grey and rust-colored tubes.
“Even if you just tear out part of your lawn and plant natives, you are going to save so much water,” says Goldberg. “But the most important thing about planting natives is that it creates a habitat, little corridors throughout the neighborhood for butterflies and birds. If you plant, they will come,” says Goldberg.
Sure enough, standing in a native is like standing in the middle of an aviary.
“In the five years we’ve been here we’ve listed all of the birds we’ve seen—some are just seasonal, they come to eat something and then they leave, and some stay all year—and we must be at 42 species,” says Ann Andrews, whose native garden sits serenely at the edge of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. Her blooming monkey flowers are a favorite of hummingbirds.
“When people came to California they brought their plants with them. But what grew in Europe and on the East Coast doesn’t really work here,” says Eurs, who began his garden 17 years ago in land so overgrown with invasive plants you couldn’t even walk through it. Cape Ivy, native to South Africa, does not provide food for anything in our natural ecosystem and so it grows unhindered, smothering everything—including trees—in its path. So how did it get from South Africa to Soquel Creek? “Someone planted it in their garden,” says Eurs.
CALIFORNIA NATIVE GARDEN TOUR
Sunday, 10am-5pm
For directions, register at
www.californianativegardentour.org
