 Welcome friends. We see you coming in. If someone could let me know in the chat box that they can see me and hear me fine. And today, welcome YouTube friends. We appreciate you being there as well. Welcome. Thank you. Appreciate that. We'll get started in just one moment. Let's let some more folks come in. And there's going to be time for a Q&A. Please use the question and answer function. And actually we have Bob Hall helping us out today with questions and answers so you can get them answered right now before the Q&A in. And we'll remind you as we keep on going. And the Q&A, we'll also have Q&A at the end where Susan will answer some questions. Alright, I see more people coming in. Thank you for joining us on a Saturday and acknowledging that we should all be home anyway. Okay, I'm going to get started here with library announcements. And please use that Q&A function for the questions today. This event will be recorded on our YouTube and available for future viewing as have been all of the California Native Plant Society events, the Yerba Buena chapter are on the SFEL YouTube channel. And I will share all of these great links and more links with you in the chat box, as well as Susan's very thoughtful database of resources. So, welcome. Today we would like to welcome you to the unceded land of the Ohlone tribal people and SFEL would like to acknowledge the many raw Mutush Ohlone tribal groups and families as the rightful stewards of the lands on which we reside. SFEL encourages you to learn more about Native culture and land rights and committed to hosting events and providing educational resources on the topics of land rights, bay area tribal communities and first person culture. SFEL would like to also stand and let you know that we're not a neutral institution and that we stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and are actively working in our own library and within our city to working on collective action in systemic racism within our institutions and work towards equity in our city and country. And again, we do this all by providing lots of factual reading lists information. The city is, has been during the shelter in place has been forward rapidly with their new racial equity plan and I will share a link to the library's racial equity plan. Very interesting work, and much needed. So please stay tuned for all of that. And if you know what native land you're occupying today why don't you put that in the chat. Like I said we're on Ohlone lands. So briefly through some announcements that the library is doing. Yes, we are still here. We miss you and we love you there are library to go locations. Many of my library family is deployed as disaster service workers for a fine city working in all kinds of things such as contact tracing food banks, hotels, vacation tent cities. So all of that stuff. Please wear your mask. When you're out there protect my library family and all of our families out there. We are acknowledging our 16 one city one book 16 years of celebrating and reading the same book. So this year we have selected Chanel Miller for know my name. This is a really powerful study of Chanel's sexual assault on the Stanford campus, as well as her dealings with the judicial and court systems. So it's very heavy, but she is just an amazing woman and such an approachable writer. She also has an exhibit right now at the Asian Art Museum and you can see her ginormous triptych mural from High Street. Please go check that out. We'll also have an accompanying mini gallery on the library outside of the library walls. I don't know if you it's been so long since I've been there. I don't know if you remember those little glass windows so you'll be able to see some of Chanel's art there. And there's going to be also so many events surrounding this you know so it's a big our biggest literary campaign of the year. We do programming around it. Have, we have the gorilla girls, we're going to have a panel of artists female artists, and every Monday, March and April, you can come gather with me and amazing people that I have lined up to host a very safe. And, you know, gathering space where we'll talk about art and healing and resources for sexual survivors. Yes, and we also have on the same page which is our bimonthly try to get the city to read the same book we're celebrating the old drift by Namwally Surpell. And this is a set in Zambia, and has a little bit of a science fiction spin in it. And very weird and good. So check it out. This month we're celebrating borderland books and Marcus books. Hashtag we love bookstores. Please shop local do not shop from that guy. Do not buy your books from that guy. Shop local, save our bookstores. We cannot be a city without our bookstores. Okay. And we are celebrating more than a month black history culture and heritage and run our black history celebrations all year round but highlight particularly in January and February. And coming up this next week we have the 3.9 art collective and they're going to talk about how research and particularly like bringing it back to even the library and the History Center. They're going to roll in their work. Black joy and resistance. I hope you all come out for this because it is at a weird time and I really you know we try to get folks out but 3pm, February 10 photographer and poet black joy and resistance, put it on your calendar. So on June, February 12. We have Maya, our Cummings, and James Dale will be discussing the book by late Elijah Cummings, and I see I have a typo. I'm really excited about this young author, Melissa Valentine will be in combo with Amber butts. She is formerly Oakland raised native and her brother was killed. So it's about family violence and grief and Oakland. So please come check this out and yeah support history of African Americans in San Francisco by Jan Baptiste, Baptiste had kids. All right, and without further ado, further ado, we have colorful year round gardening with San Francisco native plant society, specifically Susan Karasoff. Susan gardens in San Francisco's clay soil. She is a member of the California native plant society Europe of when a chapter. She has an only the easiest plants survive approach to gardening and grows a buffet of colorful native edible and pollinator plants, specifically gardening to feed caterpillars and bees. Let's give a nice warm welcome for Susan and Bob, please put your questions and questions in the Q amp a function. Susan Karasoff with the California native plant society, you're going to chapter in San Francisco, and the some a lot is monitoring the zoo, the YouTube chat, and Bob hall from the California native plant society is monitoring the, the zoom Q amp a so please put your questions in the question and answer box. Bob will answer some of them during the presentation and then at the end will take questions I'm going to talk for about 45 minutes. There will be time for questions at the end. I'm so glad you're here on a Saturday afternoon we are going to talk about colorful year round plants in San Francisco and you're going to focus on native plants. We'll talk about why to plant native winter color, spring color, summer and fall color, colorful foliage bark and berries, colorful container plants year round colorful buffets gardening with native plants and colorful native garden resources. So why plant native plants. We're having insect declines across the planet. And when we, when we don't have insects, we don't have the rest of our ecosystem functioning very well. Insects co evolved with plants plants don't want to be eaten, but insects grew up eating those particular leaves and co evolving with them, and they can't eat most of the leaves of most introduced plants. So if we don't have insects, we don't have birds and if we don't have birds we don't have birds spreading the variety of different seeds that we have plants are depending on birds to go spread those seeds far from where the mother plants are. So we need insects and birds in our ecosystem to have functioning ecosystems. So we, we need insects in our lives. It can depend on parks to have all of these native plants and to maintain my ecosystem. There have been some recent studies that have been published both in places as diverse as Germany and Puerto Rico, where they looked at insects in nature preserves and have seen over time that the insects the variety and just the total amount of insects have declined precipitously so it is important that we plant native plants in our landscapes and our home landscapes and our business landscapes and our institutional landscapes, like colleges and cities and states and federal areas. Less than 4% of US land is national parks, state parks and protected areas so the parks alone, they can't save our ecosystems. So does. You're wondering, but I don't know what to do. So the San Francisco Estuary Institute wrote this wonderful report called making nature city it is available for free on their website. It's both in English and in Spanish, and they talked about what makes urban biodiversity possible, and successful, and the top thing is to plant your local native plants, and then to have green corridors so that wildlife has got a chance to move from place to place. So you have a variety of things and meet potential mates. Your backyard your patio, your balcony, your north facing balcony can be one of those little green stepping stones, even native plants and containers can help keep wildlife alive and give them up a fay of delicious things to eat. So 68% of San Francisco is paved so every plant we choose to add to our to our homes and our institutions and our businesses, and our city and our state, every one of those plants is an opportunity to enhance our ecosystem, or not. So you have to choose to enhance them. Native plants also evolved here in San Francisco and our varied soils and our varied weather. In case you wonder why it's why it's challenging to plant in San Francisco. Look at that map for seven miles by seven miles look at the variety of different soil types that we have. We have three north south fog and wind, wind banks, and we have a wide variation in our rainfall, both from year to year month to month and within months. San Francisco has had as little as seven inches of rain, since we started to record that, and as much as 50 inches when we got multiple atmospheric rivers. So look at look at the error bars on that chart, there is just so much variation in rainfall in each month so we, we need to plant the plants that evolved here. And those are going to be the plants that can survive in our varied soil and our varied weather, and in climate change if you take a look and think about the effects of climate change where we will see larger variations in rainfall and and wind and fog. These are the plants that are adapted to to deal with a wide variation and the wide variation that is here. Native plants are the base of our food web. It turns out that little baby birds have very soft throats like little baby humans, and they need something soft to eat. And they want to eat insects because those have got a lot of protein like tofu or hot dogs, but most insects have got a crunchy exterior so they can't eat them with their little soft throats. So they need caterpillars to be able to fledge nests of baby birds we need caterpillars in our landscape and caterpillars are the are the insects that evolved with specific plants. Most caterpillars can only eat between one and a few plant leaves and plants from somewhere else introduced plants. Those leaves just aren't something that our caterpillars evolved with. So if we want the rest of our ecosystem to function, then we need to have our native plants in the landscape. So that we have those caterpillars. Dr. Doug Talamy at the University of Delaware discovered that, oh, wait a minute, each plant supports a different number of caterpillar species. And the US Department of Agriculture paid him back in 2016 to at least collect all of the existing data for every county in the United States that data is now in the National Wildlife Federation database. So we're able to look and see how much each how many caterpillar species each one of these plants could produce. And for San Francisco, our willows, which are in our damper areas, the creek site areas, support over 300 caterpillars and our oaks support over 200 caterpillars. And our local cherry supports over 200 caterpillars. So each one of these plants supports different species and different numbers of species. So these are the plants that make the most difference in our landscape when we add them. Introduce plants feed between zero and two caterpillar species. So please be very please use them just as little as possible and please use natives instead. So native plants are not only colorful but we have all of this colorful wildlife that we can introduce to our garden. And this is how we get these these colors and this movement in our garden is by planting the native plants we have all of these beautiful insects. All of these beautiful butterflies and all of those beautiful birds that depend on those beautiful insects. So when we plant for color in our gardens. Please remember, we can also plant for colorful wildlife and it will end up even more gorgeous than we currently have a little bit of a guide before we get into the details. Each one of these plants is going to have an identifier telling you how many butterfly and moth caterpillar species are fed by those plant leaves. We've also got that little clock there that will tell you if we've got a long blooming plant. It turns out we have a lot of long blooming colorful plants that you can contain that you can add to your landscape which just makes it so much easier to just have that color there from month to month. Native plants and wildlife shine in so many colors and I'm looking forward to introducing you to all of them. We're going to talk about winter color and spring color summer and fall color colorful foliage bark and berries colorful containers and our year round colorful buffets. So keep in mind we are painting not only with color but texture and form and landscape and wildlife and the natives are what gives us give us that ability to paint with wildlife in addition to all of those other creative approaches. Let's look at winter color first. We have hummingbirds that live in our landscape all year round or at least they want to. They're generalist feeders so they're able to continue to live here because they've been able to get nectar from a variety of plants. But they want to also be able to eat tiny insects. So when we plant natives were planting for those tiny insects in addition to the caterpillars and that gives that our hummingbirds that more robust diet. We have got some wonderful plants that bloom during the winter we've got our pink flowering current that can take some shade we've got manzanitas. Each manzanita is adapted to a very specific soil type so regardless of which type of soil you've got there is a manzanita adapted to it, including manzanitas that are on serpentine rock manzanitas that are on sandstone rock. We've got those plants and they're wonderful and the manzanita shapes are gorgeous. We've got flat ones we've got these wonderful twisted forms that are bushes and some twisted forms that are trees fantastic. In San Francisco seaside Daisy blooms as early as January it's a wonderful flat plant, great for for insects as they come out of hibernation. And it only blooms in the summer in San Jose so you're going to see it twice in this presentation once in summer and here in winter for us. Coastbar varies wonderful long blooming at our beach primrose that only only grows on sand, but it's a wonderful plant. Keep in mind that this is probably the only presentation where I'm going to focus on bloom time, bloom period and color but I'm not focusing on how what the shape of the plant is or how low it is or if it's a hedge or a tree. The one to make sure when you look into any plant that you're interested in that you check the soil the sun and shape needs the water needs and and how tall that is you don't want to decide that that pretty head should be a ground cover that will take a lot of extra maintenance and that's not fun. Let's talk about spring color. We've got real blue plants here in California, and our California lilac is spectacular. Our local California lilac here in San Francisco is seen at this Thrasal flores. It is just the most spectacular blue and that is our species, it is beautiful. We've got short plants that do very well in in containers, and we will see that again in the container plants but I wanted to introduce you just just to this variety of blue plants that we have. The gillia the blue eyed grass the Chias age the Great Valley facility and the baby blue eyes. Those are all annuals or bulbs. That means they have short root systems and they do great in containers. The houndstong is absolutely gorgeous. It wants full shade and it wants quite a bit of water so if you are irrigating your garden that's a great plant to have. We've got beautiful purple plants. The lupine is an amazing plant we're going to discuss that a little bit more in the next slide just because there's such a variety of them it supports and fabulous, fabulous butterflies we've got violets we've got iris and violets and iris you may have heard of because those are some European plants that are well known but we've got some unusual plants the Chinese houses and Cecilia and the blue Dicks that are unique to California and are just gorgeous in the landscape and beloved of our insects and caterpillars and butterflies. So here is just some of the variety of lupines. The lupines are just gorgeous. Some of them are bushes. Most of them are annuals which means they have the short root systems and do well in containers, a lot of them do well in sand there are a couple of the do well in clay soil. Be very, very careful when you choose your lupine that you're not only looking at color but you're looking at soil, but look at the variety of that and our mission blue butterfly which is rare. Loves to use the lupine the caterpillars love to use that lupine as it's caterpillar plants so please consider adding lupines to your landscape they are drop dead gorgeous. We have got pink plants so pink plants are my favorite. And we have a variety we've got that one leaf onion is a bulb it's fantastic and containers shooting star needs some shade and some moisture that pink honey suckle is a vine hummingbird sage is the only sage I know of that can take some shade and that Malvore Rosa is a hedge. That's gorgeous checker bloom that's a ground cover they're beautiful and they support a lot of important wildlife and that Malvore Rosa it's long blooming hummingbird sage pink honey suckle long blooming plants so some gorgeous pink plants for your landscape. Red lights are really interesting in California we have a lot of the reddish orange plants and if you take a look at the butterfly in the upper left that is our red admiral butterfly and she's got a orangy red stripe that is the same color as these reddish orange plants. She co evolved with these so not only does she use some of them for caterpillar plants but she uses the same reddish orange plants as camouflage I have had a red admiral in my garden near one of my summer blooming plants. The California future which is that same reddish orange and the little tips of her wings were were fluttering as if she were laughing thinking that I couldn't see her because she was camouflaged by my plant it was really fun you can laugh with your wildlife. We've got orange plants so the California poppies I don't have them marked as long looming because any particular California plant poppy plant is not going to be long looming but a patch of California poppies seems to be long looming we start in spring they're mostly summer but we can get some early California poppies. And they are spectacular with our blue plants are really great with the California lilac they need the same sun and in dry summers so they're they're wonderful that orange bush monkey flower it's just this creamy orange color so if you've got a more muted palette with the pale blues and the pale pinks it's beautiful with those Coastal net can be a little challenging to grow but it's wonderful for insects they love it. We have so many yellow plants so this is just a selection of them that Harlequin lotus is absolutely gorgeous it's low growing sandy soil so I can't grow it but it is spectacular with that pink and yellow. Yellow violets they are gorgeous they need a lot of shade they're wonderful they're a deciduous ground cover which means they'll go away when it stops raining, but they're a wonderful plant. And if you love the daisy shapes we have got daisy shapes for you we've got mule ears and golden aster and California buttercups they're just gorgeous and great for wildlife and very long blooming. Let's look at summer and fall colors. So a lot of the long blooming plants that we saw in spring are continuing to bloom into the summer. Here are some of the plants that start blooming in the summer we've got California aster which is gorgeous coyote mint. Beautiful once full sun self heal is a ground cover farewell to spring is fun we're going to see a lot of these. It comes in a lot of colors and it's one of the warmer colored purple plants. We're going to see seaside daisy again because it's just such a great plant blooms in the summer and in San Jose and warmer places blooms much longer for us here in San Francisco. California sand aster does remarkably well not only in sand but also in heavier soils and starts blooming in the summer and blooms all the way through fall. Chabral mellow is one of my favorite plants it is a it's a hedge it's huge it wants to be big. Don't even think you you're going to get a tiny plant out of that it's fast growing and it is covered with those gorgeous pink flowers all summer long. Farewell to spring is a wonderful plant look that again in the containers. It comes in a variety of different kinds. It's mostly the pinks that in Guiculata comes in pink purple and red. We have got all kinds of great orange and red plants in the summer California poppies that we talked about earlier that California fuchsia is a wonderful plant. Full sun, all kinds of different soils really bulletproof drought tolerant monkey flower savory, beloved of hummingbirds. It's a great plant. Leopard Lily I would never have known about if I weren't preparing for this presentation. It turns out we have this gorgeous native Lily that I didn't even know about. And then we've got twin berry honeysuckle which sort of is a both a bush and a vine with dark red flowers that the hummingbirds absolutely adore. All kinds of yellow flowers. This is just a subset of some of the yellow flowers that we have that bloom in the summertime. Our sunflower is particularly important if you've got serpentine soil so it's a rocky green and black rock. That sunflower is only adapted to that but it supports 60 different caterpillar species and it's absolutely gorgeous. Coyote bush blooms for months starts blooming in the summer blooms all the way through the end of December. It's a pale yellow, very, very attractive to all kinds of insects and including the tiny insects. Really some flowers gorgeous gum weeds gorgeous golden rod is beautiful golden rod has got a bad reputation for being an allergen and it's not it blooms at the same time as ragweed, it has it is insect pollinated. So it doesn't have wind pollinated pollen so you're you will not have allergic problems with golden rot. And it is it supports a lot of different insects and it's just gorgeous in the landscape. We have got a variety of different succulents here in San Francisco stone crop is one of them. It's, it likes rocky soil and it likes sandy soil. It is an important caterpillar plant for the rare San Bruno elfin butterflies so consider putting that in your landscape or your containers if you love second if you love succulents. We have got colorful foliage bark and berries so if you come from the East Coast and you really want to see your fall foliage colors or if you are native California and you love your fall foliage colors we have got fall foliage colors for you. We have a native maple called the big leaf maple it's gorgeous it's huge it's 30 feet tall you know want to make sure you've got space for that in your landscape, but it's a wonderful plant. And we saw it earlier in terms of the spring red flowers California hazelnuts got gorgeous fall foliage elderberry has got gorgeous fall foliage Dutchman's pipe finds got gorgeous gorgeous fall foliage so you can get the fall foliage you've been looking for with all of those in terms of red foliage Rogers red grapevine is the reddest of our red fall foliage. I do have to warn you that's why it's got a red note there, it has got a ton of maintenance associated with it because it is a California grapevine and it's. If you want a chain link fence covered in two years, that's your plant, but but don't put it anywhere else it's it's not it's not well behaved it's going to grow and grow and grow every year. We've got great foliage plants, which are really convenient. I know when my first garden when I planted a lot of pink plants together, and then they kind of clashed one of my friends recommended that I plant something gray and the California sagebrush is just great at sort of making all of that easier to look at. It's got lovely soft scented foliage, the sagebrush species is about four foot by four foot very soft lovely to have in the landscape. There are a couple of ground cover versions the Canyon Gray in the Montara. They go well with different kinds of soil, and they are wonderful to have the landscape very soft very scented very drought tolerant and great on hillside the doon sagebrush is in that same family. Beautiful gray it only like sand and then we've got the coast buckwheat prefers sand. Gorgeous gray foliage and it is the larval plant the caterpillar plant for our coast of Greenhairstry butterfly. We've got colorful bark here in California if you've wondered what those beautiful twisted forms are in the landscape with the gorgeous red peeling bark those are manzanitas. They come in all kinds of forms and they support over 60 butterflies and mods so they are set up interestingly enough if they get a lot of caterpillar activity. Although they're evergreen, they can grow their leaves back and they can photosynthesize just on the bark which is really interesting and rare for most plants. The drone is not native here in San Francisco it is native to the peninsula though. Please if you're considering planting a strawberry tree the Arbutus in UNEDO, which is the classic strawberry tree. It comes from Europe and I just don't see our birds eating the berries and the caterpillars don't eat the leaves. So please consider planting the Pacific madrone instead it's a tree it's got that gorgeous red peeling bark and it's got berries and leaves that are left by birds and insects. The red twig dogwood has got another red caution sign. It is just beautiful beautiful red bark it is deciduous so you get to see the red bark during the winter. I have one it wants to be 20 feet by 20 feet and it will do that every year. So if you've got the space for it great, otherwise just appreciate it in someone else's landscape. We've got a ton of colorful berries and this is just a subset of them. We've got strawberry, salmonberry, there's a woodland and a beach strawberry. The beach strawberries genetics are in our supermarket strawberries. So we've got some important and wonderful edible plants here. We've got the holly leaf cherry which is incredibly great for our caterpillar species ever 200 caterpillar species that it supports it can also handle our sandy windy foggy dunes and the western part of San Francisco it's a great plant. Huckleberry is wonderful blue elderberries a great plant it does well on a variety of soils. I honestly only plant on this particular slide that isn't edible for people, but it's, it's beloved of birds and you get those great red berries during Christmas time. And so it was, it was used when they talk about Hollywood it's got those little serrated leaves it was one of the things that Hollywood was named after back in the day. It does grow all the way down to Southern California as does does blue elderberry. So if you're a super super concerned about climate change and you think you want to plant something that can handle much warmer temperatures, blue elderberry and toy on grow all the way down to San Diego so those are great plants. Let's talk about containers. So if what you have is a balcony or a patio we still have gorgeous plants for you. Again, annuals bulbs, rhizomes are looking for something with just really short underground parts that you can put in a pot or a window box. So here are the blues that we have this is one of our lupines the sky lupine is just gorgeous. Shea sage, the gillias that the facility is the blue eyed grass, baby blue eyes all just beautiful and containers and they are gorgeous with our purple plants. Ethereal spear, blue decks, protea. We've got question marks on those in terms of caterpillars because we haven't seen that research done. These are plants that only grow in California so unusual just for us and they're beautiful and they're gorgeous in the landscape and the great in containers. All kinds of great pink plants to go with all of the rest of your colorful container plants I love that onion it's just beautiful red maids are so bright. We've got all of the farewell the springs and Mariposa lilies are absolutely gorgeous they come in all kinds of colors. You have to be warned though. People start buying Mariposa lilies and then they have to collect them all because they're so beautiful. It's been just a minute on the Clark. Yeah, the way we did with the lupines. These are only available as annuals. They only bloom during the summer. Most of them are pink that unguiculata is when you buy a package of unguiculata seeds you're going to get the pinks and the purples and the reds and the oranges and some creams. So just pull out the colors that you don't like, but your package is going to have all of those colors in it if you want to be absolutely sure what you are going to get get the Amalena or the Rubicunda. Those are going to give you just the pinks but they're so beautiful and those those unguiculatas those are the warmer reds and oranges and purples and pinks and so they're great azalea colors so if you've got azaleas in your landscape but you want something to be full sun and just super fun all summer. Those are the plants for you. And we've got yellows including that yellow Mariposa lily another just completely addictive bulb, tidy tips or an annual stone crop and bluff lettuce or two of our succulents, both wonderful for wildlife and gold fields bloom for a really long time beautiful plant to have in containers. And we find that when we plant with natives, we get to we get to have color and form and texture and depth in our landscape and wildlife. And so we can not only plant for all of those but we can, we can paint with time. I'm interested in edible, edible plants for people or edible plants for adult butterflies because all of these are good caterpillar plants, edible plants for hummingbirds edible plants for bees. I'm going to walk you through what those can look like at least a subset of the plants, because we have so many of those plants that meet all of those categories. Every one of these native plant buffets is also going to feed caterpillars and that's why we are putting them in our gardens. So here is just here just some of the edible plants that we have for people. We've got sages and Yerba Buena and mitre's lettuce in the winter so we've got those for greens and for herbs. In the spring we start to have our strawberries and onions and our chia sage and bulbs like the brodilla. Those have got edible flowers. The red maids have got edible leaves and then summer gives us all of that delicious fruit. Thimbleberry, salmonberry, huckleberry, blue elderberry, and the hazelnuts bloom start to produce in late summer. The cherries produce in early fall, the occurrence in late fall. So we have, we've got all of these different plants that we can eat in addition to feeding our caterpillars and our bees and our hummingbirds and our butterflies. If we want to talk specifically about adult butterflies, they really like those flatter plants that are easy to land on, drink a little nectar and continue moving on. Many of our introduced plants also feed adult butterflies but our introduced plants don't also feed caterpillars. That's why we're looking for these plants in our landscape so that they feed the caterpillar and the adult butterflies. And we just have all of these gorgeous colors throughout the year. Hummingbirds, generalist feeders, keep in mind that we're adding these native plants in our landscape so that we can feed our caterpillars as well as our hummingbirds. And our bees, we have 1500 species of native bees here in California and we want to make sure that they are here to help pollinate our flowers as well as pollinate our crops. There are a lot of new world crops that can only be pollinated by our bumblebees. Chili's, tomatoes, they're not native here but they have native bumblebees that are associated with them. Our huckleberries, our bumblebee pollinated, their buzz pollinated, all of these are buzz pollinated plants. So on the east coast that would be blueberries and cranberries are in the huckleberry family. So it's important to plant for bees in our landscape and a lot of experienced gardeners will specifically plant for bees. And so this is just some of the variety of bee plants that are adored in our landscape. So let's talk about how to garden with native plants. I didn't pay much attention to size and shape here. So be sure to know your soil, your sun and shade conditions, your water conditions and your plant sizes. We do have mostly drought tolerant plants in California, but we do have some that are adapted to damp conditions. They're called riparian plants, which means it's a fancy word for creekside. So if you have an irrigated garden and you want some plants that can deal with the irrigation, we do have plants that are adapted to those conditions. We're going to talk about when to plant in San Francisco, we'll talk about looking at your soil type, and we'll ask you to do things like leave your plants in place for wildlife. Please plant during the raining season. If you're listening to this live, it is January, we've been getting some rainfall. The rainy season is when native plants work on their root systems. They are trying to grow their root systems so that they can gather enough moisture and enough nutrients to live through our very dry summers and falls. They need to, they need help and some water during their first couple of summers to make sure that they are big enough and have big enough root systems to survive. Now our annuals and our bulbs don't have to worry about that. But the rest of our plants do. So please consider discovering the plants you want to plant right now and plant them. January, February, early March, and then at least for new native gardeners consider holding off and then not planting again until we start to get rain in December. You need to know your soil type. I've got a description here about how to learn what your soil type is. But if this is still a little challenging, just take a gallon container and put a couple of scoops of your soil in it and take it with you to a native nursery and say, okay, so this is my soil type, help me choose the right plants. Native nurseries are wonderful at helping you choose plants. A lot of the other nurseries don't tend to have enough of a selection and they don't know their native plants well enough so I strongly recommend that you choose a native plant nursery to help you choose the best plants for your garden. So here are a few requests. Your native plants are going to feed wildlife at all of the plant and wildlife stages, including when the flowers go to seeds and the plants go dormant. So please accept the fact that there's going to be chewed leaves. That means you've got a healthy ecosystem caterpillars lead to happy birds which is a sign of a healthy ecosystem caterpillars provide adult butterflies which is the sign of the healthy ecosystem. And please leave your leaves on the ground because that's where butterfly caterpillars hide while they're transforming into adult butterflies. Birds are going to use those dried flower parts for nest materials. They also need a lot of eat the native plant seeds. In fact, they prefer to eat the native plant seeds in addition to eating insects. They especially like the native grass seeds. We didn't discuss native grasses here, but we have information on the Calscape website that will help you choose native grasses. Consider adding some native grasses in your landscape and let those grow to full size and go to seed because the birds absolutely adore them. If you want that gorgeous violet green swallow in your landscape, that bird prefers native seeds. In fact, really only eats native seeds and some native insects. Also some of our bees, such as mason bees and sweat bees, sometimes nest in some of the hollow stems like the blue elderberries. So please just leave those plants alone. And plant in layers and for all four seasons and your eyes are going to focus on what's colorful and they're just not really going to focus on the chewed leaves and the leaves on the ground. If anyone decides to tell you that you should be a little neater with that, please tell them that the people at the California Native Plant Society please ask you to leave your leaves on the ground and accept your chewed leaves. You can always refer them to us. We'll be happy to chat with them. We have a bunch of plant lists on our website. We're the California Native Plant Society. We're the Yerba Buena chapter. And we've got a colorful plant list on a long gluing plant list and a shade plant list for butterfly caterpillars and hummingbirds and bees, edible plants. So even more information about the plants that you can eat. Plant communities. So if you want to plant in a plant community so that you get even more wildlife. That's a lot of fun. Sidewalk information and container information. So that's available on our website under biodiversity resources. More resources. We've got the Calscape Plant Selection Tool. We've got sources for native plants and native plant nurseries also available on our Calscape site. The Calflora has got a great bloom period tool. So if you want to make sure that you've got a specific color plant or type of plant blooming for a special time like your birthday or anniversary, Calflora can help you with that. San Francisco Public Library has got some wonderful books on color theory and ecosystems in Fnobotni because the joy of the library is they've got a lot of different kinds of books. So my naturalist is a citizen science tool that we use to explore and capture information on local colorful plants in wildlife. Calscape. This is a great tool. So keep in mind you're going to need to check your soil type. Calscape's got a 10 mile radius. We're seven miles by seven miles with a variety of soils here in San Francisco. So even when Calscape recommends a plant to you, triple check that soil because you want to make sure that you're buying for the kind of soil you've already got. They've got a tab just for butterflies if you want to go back and forth between plants and butterflies so that you get the colorful wildlife you're looking for in your landscape. And they've got a tab for nurseries to help you find the nurseries that are close to you who will help you find the best native plants for your landscape. Calthor is wonderful. I love being able to find out how long plants going to bloom. I specifically want long blooming plants because I'm a very lazy gardener and I don't want to have to add more color to my garden. It's also a small garden so every plant counts. And I can also make sure that I've got colors blooming when I want them. San Francisco Public Library has got a lot of great books about color theories. So if you want to learn more about that, there are not only books but also some videos available through canopy. One is the researcher who discovered that rat row, different plants feed different species of caterpillars and introduced plants don't feed very many. And it could be why we are losing so many insects and birds. He had a researcher discovered that it takes between 6000 and 9000 caterpillars to fledge one nest of chickadee babies. So that's why we need more caterpillars on our landscape. That's why chewed leaves are good. He's from University of Delaware. There are three California specific lectures that are on YouTube. Two of them are through the California Native Plant Society Santa Clara Valley chapter. They're on their YouTube channels. And one of them is for Southern California for the California Native Plant Society State, which is a larger organization. Doug's got his own website, Bringing Nature Home, and all of that data was collected for every U.S. County at the, what's called the general level, it's a little bit higher level than species. So it's not just the sage or the salvia, salvia spathica, which is the species for hummingbird sage. It's just at the sage or the salvia level. That's on the National Wildlife Federation website. And it's very useful, especially if you're outside of California in California. We've got all that information on CalScape outside of California. You can discover that for your state. Daniel Moorman wrote a book called Native American Ethnobotany. He was collecting all of the existing published information on how indigenous people use plants and which plants are edible. It is the best source for discovering which plants are edible and which plant parts are edible. I Naturalist is a citizen science application. I love to use it to discover if I want to go look at what a plant looks like in a landscape so that I get a better idea of what the form is or what kind of situation it likes to grow in. I Naturalist is a wonderful way to do that and it's fabulous to go spend March and April and May looking at all the different California lilacs in the landscape. I absolutely adore that plant. It's just got this vibrant blue color that's just beautiful to look at. You can not only look at the plants, you can also search for butterflies. You want to go take a look at which butterflies are in which part of our landscape. I want to say thank you to all of the people. I Naturalist who took all of those wonderful photos that we used and all of the professionals and businesses that provided photos and Tim Wyatt who's got that fantastic butterfly cartoon. It is my favorite. All of the reviewers who have reviewed my presentations all mistakes are mine. This is part of a series of native plant gardening webinars for the San Francisco Library, all of them have been recorded and are on YouTube we've talked about edible native plants. This is our gardening for San Francisco butterflies and pollinators, shade gardening, gardening for biodiversity. This is our garden color presentation. And our next presentation is February 27th at one o'clock and it will be about children's gardens using San Francisco native plants. This is California Native Plant Society. We have free lectures we have free hikes when it's not covered. We've got restoration fun and associated with the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department and we advocate with the city and the state to put native plants in our landscapes that we can have all of our gorgeous wildlife. We've got those free lectures available information is available on our calendar. We've got all those plant lists on our biodiversity resources. So thank you so much for planting native plants. It's time to take questions. What kind of questions do we have. So Kelly's asking is this soil map of the way soils are today or is this a historical soil map that is such a good question that is the historical soil map there has been a lot of soil movement. And I haven't been able to find a way to get a current soil map so there's a lot of soil movement. A lot of the marina has been has had soil added, and a lot of the mission has had soil added to highly leave cherry work in a container. So I have tried to do things like grow trees and containers and grow I tried to grow a great vine in a container. I haven't tried a highly cherry in a container if anybody else has please please answer, I tend to go for the shorter rooted things. It is a, it's a tree, and it can survive very high winds. So I would think not but perhaps someone else has got a better answer to that. They're placing their front yard with water rice ground covers yay edibles even better oh my gosh my goodness yes. So I like to do a combination of different. It depends on whether or not you've got a shady area where you want something flat or if you want something that needs full sun there are flat sages there are flat. As you know this there's flat manzanitas. Those all do really well in sun. And there are some great flat plants that do really well in shade there's your but wayna, which is a delicious. There is their strawberries can handle a lot of shade those violets can handle a lot of shade. I think California's got a website called be water wise they have got a how to replace your lawn so I'm not sure where you're located but if you're up here in in San Francisco, please take a look at our biodiversity resources. We have got some information on what's edible and what's flat, and they're, they're really fun it's a lot of fun to mix these and see how that's done so I've got. Oh, and also for full sun. We've got Artemisia the sagebrush that Canyon Gray in the Montara are both great and gorgeous for for our garden we've got Artemisia Canyon Gray in the sunny spot, and I've got your but wayna and violets and strawberries in the shady spots. Oh yeah, me. So this is being recorded and the how to determine your soil type let me go ahead and go back to it, but I strongly recommend you check it afterwards on YouTube that's it there's a lot of detail there. organizations to help with gardening and parks around the city. Oh yes, we are the California native plant society. We both work with the city directly to to work in their parks. And there are different neighborhood organizations that also work so if you near North Beach neighbors or Russian neighbors telegraph hill neighbors. neighborhood organizations that do but California native plant society absolutely does contact us through our website, and we'll connect you with your needed the nearest park and tell us what park you're interested in. In helping with we we do have permission to work with the parks and it's wonderful to do that. There are a lot of green spaces they're actually not managed by San Francisco Rec and Park some of them are managed by the Department of Public Works and so it helps to coordinate with your neighborhood neighborhood organizations to plant in those. So if you didn't check your soil before planting a native garden and plants are going to languish and perish. Yeah, so I'm not a very good gardener and I really wanted lupines and the only lupines I bought were the sandy lupines and I've got clay soil, I killed a lot of lupines. So yeah, they'll they'll die. If you really super want to have a sand plant and you've got clay soil or you've got serpentine consider doing that in a container. That's going to work out better for you, but they they really a lot of them really will die. If they're if they didn't get the right soil type. SF Botanics got a native plant section I have not looked there thank you. Oh Allison you've got ants in your garden. No, as long as they're not in your house they're fine. You've got a lot of birds that are depending on eating your ants, you may discover go go look up what a dark eye junko looks like. When a dark eye junko discovers the ants in your garden, the dark eye junk will be in your garden every day eating your ants and happily in your ants and happily eating your ants so ants are good. So they're a part of our ecosystem. They, we've got actually got a few plants that are pollinated by ants are Western wild ginger, which is, you've got to have damp soil every day and super super dark, but that's an edible plant that is a ground cover and it is ant pollinated so ants are good. Yeah, go ahead and, and celebrate having them in your landscape. And maybe can cultivate in a container Ashley good luck with that again it. It's a. It's an evergreen hedge it gets pretty big I haven't tried it in the container. Bob if you happen to know that I haven't tried it it's, it's such a wonderful plant might absolutely adore it. I haven't tried it in a container I have it my art it grows super slowly so. Yeah, I'm wondering, maybe that would make it okay for a container. It was the first few years that it does grow really slowly good idea. There's a whole presentation edible plants including edible plants and containers. So let me refer you to that when there's a lot of great edible plants for that. Oh yellow jackets yellow jackets are not native. Those are, those are not fun. Oh, she's a good she's equal. You've got questions about what's the best place to see. Yeah, it's San Francisco and yeah the Botanic Gardens wonderful. They specifically have the men's use California garden. It is on the south side. I'm getting that right of the park. And. Yeah, I can suggest a few more spots to please do. If you go to the entrance of Fort Mason, they took out the dying cherry trees that were non native cherry trees or plum trees that were there and put in a huge native garden. It looks absolutely amazing. You can go to Lake Merced as you walk around there there are big native sections, you can go to the parking lot at the cliff house. The overlook there. There's a bunch of great native plantings there. The entire section of the apartments in the Presidio above Bakers Beach are garden with native plants and they look amazing. You can go to JP Murphy Park and inner sunset that park is almost all garden with native plants. There are some amazing amazing places out there we just put in a new native garden on sunset Boulevard between Santiago and Terrible so it doesn't look so great right now but in two years it's going to look amazing. So how can a park in a neighborhood become recognized by California Native Plant Society Kelly go ahead and reach out to us through our website and and let's have a conversation about this because we want to make sure that your neighborhood park has got access to whatever you think it needs. Is that our native plants go for resistant unfortunately not. I, there's a particular poisonous plant, poisonous native plant called the California Buckeye. It's a tree it's very poisonous every part of it is poisonous. And I heard from another California Native Plant Society member that they watched a gopher eat it from her roots down. So unfortunately we're not the best thing we can manage our is is that gopher wire underground I'm sorry you've got gopher's they've where they're not resistant to them. Well I just heard an interesting thing I don't know how true it is but I was at one of the native plant sites at 15th and Noriega yesterday that was being worked on by nature in the city and one of their volunteers said that the gopher's eat monkey flower roots and I don't know why that would be really. Never heard it before. Yeah, I haven't either and the monkey flowers just beautiful. Yes, I just planted some native plant seeds to and they do they they start to come up as soon as there's rain and it's just wonderful. Okay, so you've got a question on pruning and deadheading natives, I wait as long as I can, because, because the birds want to eat those seeds, and they want to use the plant parts the dead plant parts for their nests. If you really really need to prune a deadhead if you want to do that towards the front of your garden, but leave the back of the garden as it is that'll help the birds the most I appreciate you asking. I personally don't do it it's it's why I like to have color year around because my eye and when we can have visitors again visitors are pulled towards the colorful plants. And so nobody, nobody's ever mentioned my she leaves my the the dormant plants the dead plant parts. Maybe it's because they know I wouldn't be really pleasant to them. So this is your 10 step program Susan. Yes, oh gosh and that's Doug tell me is 10 step program. So there's a 10 step program associated with cheat chewed leaves back up 10 steps, and you won't be able to see the chewed leaves anymore. Without pruning though there is, sometimes you need to, you need to prune so you should wait till after the flowers bloom. And usually that's when the summer starts coming around, and they can sit there the pruned sections can sit there and recover during their dormant period in the summer and avoid getting mildew and mildew during the rainy season so wait till after they flower like see you notice that's what we have to do because it goes into the path so we we wait until after the flowering is done. Absolutely. Shut up what grows well and damp clay in a north facing yard. Oh my gosh, congratulations on having damp clay damp is wonderful. All kinds of things. So riparian plants do really well in all kinds of different soils as long as they've got continuous dampness. We've got our huckleberries or hazelnuts or thimbleberry or salmon berry. Our, our native Pacific blackberry which has got thorns but it's, it's not the Himalayan blackberry don't plant that thing that's that's nasty. We've got the Western wild ginger Yerba Buena. Our pink flowering currents are transition plants. So they are drought tolerant but they'll appreciate transition from riparian to oak woodland and to and to dunes grub. And so they'll do fine with the additional moisture blue elderberry does well with the additional moisture. It is drought tolerant but it can deal with the extra moisture and Yerba Buena and the violets. Oh my gosh, the violets they are so wonderful in damp soil. I've got one and actually two in damp soil and another one in droughty soil, it is a decision it's deciduous in the summer so it's, it will be deciduous as soon as it gets dry, but it will continue to leaf out and then bloom for a really long time as long as it gets moisture. Oh you're so lucky it's so nice. Joanne Whitney is mentioning Mira Loma Park Improvement Garden as a great place to see natives to and that's the one that California Native Plants Society help install on O'Shaughnessy Drive near Glen Park. And you can see native plants there and they're about to get better because they want a community challenge grant that is going to actually enhance and revive that garden I can't wait to see where that goes. There's the eco patch in the Petrero area to that's just put in a bunch of new native plants. That's going to be lovely. Bob, do you have the address on that. Of which the eco patch. I know it's over by Vermont Street and near the overpass area on 101 but I don't know the exact address 18th Street or 16th Street something like that. And Ina Colbert Park, which has got absolutely stunning views. So if you haven't seen it before come to Russian Hill it's just gorgeous. It's very steep, great view of the Bay Bridge and the Bay Bridge lights at night and they have done a lot of plantings of native plants they had a bunch before but they've just added a bunch more and it is going to be spectacular between March and May just unbelievable George Sterling Park also which is a SFPUC. It's an interesting area there's a chunk of it that's managed by Department of Public Works, a chunk of it that's managed by the San Francisco Public Utility Commission in the Water District, and a chunk of it that is managed by San Francisco Rec and Park I don't know how they keep up with it but they've got a bunch of native plants there and they're absolutely lovely so another great place to see native plants and also see some views. That park is Catty Corner from Lombard Street so if you haven't been over the Lombard Street area in a while there's beautiful views there and beautiful plants. It's organic mulch okay for a native garden. I got to tell you I don't use mulch. Have I mentioned how lazy a gardener I am? I'm a very lazy gardener. When I plant a plant I make sure to, I dig the hole, I add water to it to make sure that there's going to be enough water to help that baby plant I don't use mulch for it after I plant it but I don't tend to add mulch. Bob do you have any comments on mulch? Yeah you know it's a big topic we're investigating more and more. In wild lands I certainly would not put any mulch there. In your home garden I put mine on the walking path area and where we sit at the benches and things like that because I have time to weed the other areas. If I were doing a garden that was just buried in weeds I would probably use mulch to hold off some sections I couldn't get to. But they don't need the extra nutrients usually unless the soil has been extremely damaged by construction or something like that. You know it's a suppressant tactic to use to give yourself more time to be able to get to the weeds. And I know that I know the horticulturists like to use it they call it like a necklace you put on your garden to make it look beautiful. And some of the non-native exotic plants do need the extra nutrients but our plants like sterile soil sometimes even so. Yeah especially the fire following plants have more questions. Kelly it's a freeway easement covered in weeds. Yeah in that case I might think about it unless you can get people out there to constantly pull weeds. And then I would use some powerhouse weed suppressant plants that can fight them off I would be careful about if you're planting them directly into weeds. To not plant the little tiny beautiful plants like Emeria Maritima the one they call see through it the little tiny delicate beautiful beautiful plant that that's used by the Green Hair Street for nectar. So you'd have to get more thuggish native plants like you know shrubs like coffee berry or sage brush coyote brush things like that they can handle handle the weeds themselves. Thank you Bob. Yeah it's that's the Emeria Maritima that that little pink flower with the gorgeous coastal Green Hair Street. It is absolutely gorgeous but and I like a lot of shorter flowers in public spaces it lets you be able to still see the landscape but yeah those extremely weedy areas that's they just get lost. So the San Francisco native gardens, we have a garden tour that we have done in. We, we did it in May of 2020 virtually, and we'll do it in May of 2021 virtually again. This is the California native plant society here but way now although I think most of the plant that the chapters did virtual tours and we've included a lot of the public native gardens. And so if you go to our website and look for the garden tour, you'll be able to see where our local public native gardens are, because it really helps to be able to see this and to be able to see the plants working together and see the colors working together in the forms. Okay, is that all of our questions. I was asking about, I don't know if you got to this yet about the name of the Native American book about edibles. Oh, yeah I did not get to that one. Yeah, it's this is, there are many books that are specific to tribes but this is a great book it doesn't have maps it doesn't have color photos, you will need some additional resources, including I use calscape to get an idea of what size the plant is what kind of insects what kind of sun and shade and moisture. And in terms of addability or medicinal use. This is the book. It is a $50 book it is probably the best $50 I've ever spent. The library has got a version of it that's just dedicated to edible plants but the full ethnobotany book includes edible medicinal and tool use. It's, it's a wonderful book. Okay, any other questions. Thank you so much for joining us today. It is lovely to meet you all. You can always get ahold of the California Native Plant Society. Through each one of the chapter websites. If you're not with in the San Francisco or Northern San Mateo area, one of the other chapters is probably your, your place but you're always welcome to reach out to us. We are, we're really appreciative of the fact that you're considering putting native plants in your landscape. And thank you so much for your time. And he said, and he said you're on mute. Of course I am. I just want to thank you Susan and thank you Bob for being here and taking the time to answer all those questions and library community. Thank you for being here. And I see all the time in the chat. Are these recorded. Are they recorded. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, they are recorded. They will be on the YouTube channel and put a link. I also put a link to all of the things that Susan talked about and her great database. So you will be able to find it and check our YouTube channel we've been recording all of this since we went and shelter in place. And Susan and Bob have been here five times now I believe so they'll be here in February again so thank you everybody library community we miss you we love you. Thank you. All right. Thanks.