Susan's garden

A six acres mountain garden full with special native shrubs and wild flowers. East of Redding off 299.

SLIDE SHOW WITH ALL PHOTOS

My husband and I live on six acres, sitting on top of a hill, at l,000 feet, looking across at the Lassen Mountain Range. We moved here in 1994. Our property had great possibilities with a Manzanita/pine forest. First, we pruned the Manzanita stand of trees, many of them over 20 feet tall. Then, we thinned the Ponderosa pine forest with trees ranging from 140 years to 1 year old seedlings. That took us ten years.  Since then, we maintain it by annually pruning the trees and burning the grasses in the fall.  Every spring we are treated to watching the Indian Paint Brush and Mariposa Tulips return, along with many other native plants including the Lonicera honeysuckle and the Achillea millefolium.
Much to our good fortune, we learned about the annual Native Plant Societies fall sale, where we purchase many fabulous plants every year. We made large rock flower beds, a gazebo along with an arbor from Manzanita for shade along the length of our home. I learned early on that I needed to write down the names of plants I purchased, if I was ever going to remember what they were.  Consequently, I started a garden journal that I have continued to maintain, with hundreds of different species listed, and many notations of when, where and how I planted them.
Some of my favorite plants are my sixteen year old Ceonothus, “Joyce Coulter”, a Trichostema “Wooly Blue Curls”, and a Carpenteria Californica, “Tree Anenome.”  
What I’ve learned most as a gardener, is like life itself, there are no guarantees.  The rewards of gardening are the moments I find myself in awe of the life in a garden. PLANT ON!