dirt / By Amy Stewart

Designing with Natives

How to put your Humboldt garden back in tune with the land

(March 6, 2008)  On Wednesday, March 12, 2008, native plant designer Alrie Middlebrook will give a talk on designing native gardens. She’s the co-author of Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens, just out from University of California Press. She runs a native plant design business in San Jose called Middlebrook Gardens, and she’s the founder of the California Native Garden Foundation (www.cngf.org).

Anyone who gardens with California natives knows that a plant native to southern California is practically exotic here in Humboldt. That’s what makes Middlebrook’s book so useful: She divides it into plant communities, devoting one chapter to redwood forests, another to coastal bluffs and so on.

‘Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens,’ by Alrie Middlebrook and Glenn Keator.

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Her talk, which is sponsored by the North Coast chapter of the California Native Plant Society, will be held Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Six Rivers Masonic Lodge at 251 Bayside Road in Arcata. Admission is free; for details, call 822-2015.

I caught up with Middlebrook last week and asked her about her approach to natives and design.

NCJ: What can people expect from your talk next Wednesday?

Middlebrook: I give these talks all over the state and I focus on the region that I’m speaking to. In this case, I’m going to be talking about the plant communities that are in the Humboldt County area. I’ll show photographs of gardens that we have created or other people have created using plants that naturally grow in Humboldt.

But once a garden is in, you also need to know how to manage it. I talk about how to conserve rainfall and other sustainable practices. For instance, I discourage the use of cement, because the manufacture of cement is a major contributor to global warming. So I’ll offer other suggestions for materials that are more sustainable for hardscape.

And sustainability is also about using solar in the garden for fountains and lighting, incorporating edibles, using local art in the garden and all kinds of alternative construction methods.

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