The CNPS Yerba Buena Chapter is proud to announce a new gardening-for-wildlife project called Back Yard Natives. San Francisco is unusual in its back yard […]

Readers of this newsletter know that we pay attention to the wildlife value of garden plants. Another aspect that I stress is discipline and foresight […]

Look at urban backyards—I use the term “backyard” because most of them don’t deserve to be called gardens. The usual sight in the Bay Area […]

If you are unable to travel to southern California to enjoy the early season, what might you see in December and January right here in […]

The native plant gardener’s journey often starts with a great vision of ecological fulfillment. The vision suggests a garden saturated with succulent wild plants and […]

“So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea…and when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter; […]

Scientists have launched a systematic study of the last great unexplored territory of the globe: the few centimeters of soil beneath our feet. With a […]

(Originally posted to San Francisco Fauna, a Yahoo discussion group; reprinted with permission) A few weeks ago I spent a few hours pruning and “editing” […]

A Brief Consideration of Seedlings The winter rains have started and seedlings are peeking out of the soil in our local plant communities. What gets […]

For the past eight years, with neither a degree in botany nor in education, I have found myself volunteering with public school kids in the […]

We have been misled. Many people, nature phobics and plant lovers alike, respond to insect visitation with alarm, suspicion, and sometimes physical aggression and often-unjustified […]

The author is a noted British plantsman, lecturer, writer, and broadcaster. This article is reprinted from the December 2001 issue of The Garden: Journal of […]

We want to encourage you to plant our local plants in your garden, so at our annual fall plant sale we try to keep our […]

Pink flowering currant is one of the easiest of all our native plants to grow. It tolerates a broad range of conditions-sand, clay, wet, dry, […]

Parents rarely if ever consider what type of effect the garden they are planting will have on their children. Certainly other influences will have their […]

“I remember Mimi asking me as a child to make a lens by curling my fingers around to my thumb. I closed one eye and, […]

Like human beings and other animals, a plant has a budget. In order to exist, its income must equal or exceed its outgo. If you […]

This year we give added emphasis to our advocacy of inviting wildlife to the garden. With the launching of our BackYard Natives project we are […]

I can’t say exactly when I fell in love with bees. Perhaps it was the time I saw perfectly round, dime-sized holes cut into dozens […]

My yard is beginning its third spring as a native plant restoration experiment. A few years ago I moved to a house in the Sunset […]