Book Review

Worthwhile book feeds hunger for more local, native plants

Ron Sullivan, Joe Eaton
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
San Francisco Chronicle

When you've sampled native gardens in the Santa Clara Valley and on the Peninsula, like the ones featured on the Going Native Garden Tour coming up Sunday, or in the East Bay on the Bringing Back the Natives tour May 6 (or Bringing Back the Native's $30 expert-guided select tour on Saturday); when you've taken a stroll through the blossoming wildlands around Point Reyes or Bear Valley or driven along Mines Road east of Livermore; when you've taken in the wildflower shows in Boonville on Saturday or at the Oakland Museum of California on May 12; when you've succumbed to temptation and brought home a live treasure from one of the many native plant sales -- in short, when you've had a taste of California native plants and want more, you'll want the new book by Glenn Keator and Alrie Middlebrook.

We should note that we usually don't bother reviewing a book unless it's one worth having.

"Designing California Native Gardens" is one more of the University of California Press' recent string of hits. This one comes under Phyllis Faber's own imprint, always a very good sign. You may remember Faber as the compiler-editor of the gorgeous, large-format book "California's Wild Gardens: A Guide to Favorite Botanical Sites."

Keator is a well-known Bay Area botanist and garden maven. He's been conducting plant-oriented tours of spectacular natural places for years, and those tours have become ever more popular. We found this out the hard way, when Ron put us on a waiting list for one of his Channel Islands trips, in alphabetical order, and only one place became available.

Keator has a number of books on California plants to his credit already, ranging from those handy pocket-size berry, fern and Sierra flower "Finder" keys through UC Press' field guide "Trees of the San Francisco Bay Region," to the detailed and heady "The Life of an Oak: An Intimate Portrait."

Middlebrook has been designing and building gardens since 1976, at first just indoors. After 10 years, she moved her focus to outdoor gardens.

Middlebrook and Keator met on one of his field trips, in the White Mountains, and Middlebrook fell in love with our native flora. Sound romantic? Well, it does of you're one of us plant fiends. They went on to collaborate on a series of classes at the Strybing Arboretum, and the new book emerged from those.

So, if you missed those, here's your chance, and it costs a lot less. If you didn't miss them, you already know you want this book.

Its subtitle is "The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens." Ron first encountered this approach in her Merritt College classes with Stew Winchester, who also leads juicy field trips. Anyone who has spent time sitting in the presence of wild plants as they exist in nature has certainly seen the harmony and gorgeous logic they display.

The idea is that plants that grow together in nature -- redwoods and their understory companions like vine maple, huckleberry, sword fern, columbine and wild ginger, for example -- work together aesthetically as well as culturally. They want the same living conditions, and complement each other, too. Nature is a designer we can all learn from.

Within limits, a gardener can combine some of these ecosystems to match the conditions of a yard: grassy meadow, riparian along a stream, rock-garden bluffs on a steep slope or even in a container. But a sense of place, of suitability, is key. You can get the basics of this sense from studying the book -- and studying your place.

Some of the gardens in the book's photographs are familiar; you can see them in the local native-garden tours. Some just look familiar at first to anyone who has spent time in our wildlands. They range from acres to small suburban lots. Some exist only in the imagination: The redesign of Los Angeles is a speculative delight.

Middlebrook's schematic illustrations of her gardens have a naive charm; some ambitious quilter ought to exploit them. Appendices give handy lists of suppliers, terms, books and a seasonal garden care calendar. Our only quibbles: The index refers only to plant species, and the lists of exemplary natural places, a great idea itself, is sparse on timing and on approximate dates of peak bloom. These quibbles are minor. We're glad to have the book.

"Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens"
Glenn Keator and Alrie Middlebrook; University of California Press; 352 pages; hardcover $65; trade paperback $27.50; to be released in June

Joe Eaton and Ron Sullivan are freelance nature and garden writers in Berkeley. E-mail them at home@sfchronicle.com.

Copyright 2007 SF Chronicle