A Feast for All at Oaktown Native Plant Nursery

By Claire Bradley

 

In the East Bay’s mild climate, our edible gardens provide us with year-round nourishment. But as gardeners, we can also pay it forward by incorporating native plants that nourish the ecosystem we depend on.

It’s common knowledge that adding flowers to a vegetable garden attracts pollinators and beneficial insects, boosting productivity and controlling pests. Popular non-native standbys like marigolds, nasturtiums, and lavender serve this purpose adequately. However, there are many beautiful native options that provide the food and habitat required by local species of bees, birds, and butterflies.

Looking for guidance on which native plants would do best in a local garden, I went down to Oaktown Native Plant Nursery at 702 Channing Way in Berkeley to talk to owner and horticulturalist Suzanne Howard-Carter.

 

 

“Manzanitas and ceanothus are really important because they provide early forage for our bumblebee friends when they’re just coming out of hibernation and need food right away,” Howard-Carter explains. “And then later in the season—in the hottest part of the year when everything else looks kind of dry—there’s California buckwheat. It will go straight through the fall. Those three are really the cornerstones.”

With these plants noted on my list, we move to a nursery table stocked with small starts of native wildflowers: meadowfoam, baby blue-eyes, and lady’s tobacco. Howard-Carter gestures to a California poppy called maritima. “[It’s] excellent for a fruit tree garden because they stay a little neater than the southern California one. They grow all over the East Bay hills. The idea is you start with a couple of each, and then the next year they’ll reseed and populate your area.” They’ll also grow happily in the cracks around raised beds.

“Some of these wildflowers are from meadow-type areas where they have sun and water,” she says, and that means they’ll thrive in a vegetable garden. It’s lovely to imagine herbs like yerba buena, coyote mint, and monardella spilling out around a veggie bed. Other drought-tolerant species like California phacelia, gumweed, and woolly bluecurls prefer drier conditions and serve as butterfly-friendly alternatives to Mediterranean herbs like rosemary and sage.

 

 

“Eating edible native plants is a whole other fascinating subject. There are a lot of things grown by the Ohlone and other area tribes here,” confirms Howard-Carter, who in addition to the aromatics that can be used in cooking and teas, stocks several types of local huckleberries, salmonberries, elderberries, and raspberries at her nursery.

When I ask about healthy greens, Howard-Carter points to some nettles, which she calls “a really cool little crop.” “We’re one of the only places that will grow nettles, and they’re local nettles,” she proudly says as we admire the lush green plants. “You pick them with gloves on, dunk them in boiling water, and they’re incredibly nutritious.”

Sourcing native plants can be challenging, especially finding varieties suited to a specific region and growing conditions, which is why Howard-Carter reaches out to the regional parks and privately-owned properties for seeds, cuttings, and starts to use in the propagation process. She notes that they try to keep a variety of plants that you can fit in almost anywhere, including the hyper-local species.

Fall and winter tend to be the best seasons to plant native perennials and shrubs, as that coincides with our rainy season. If you are eager to add natives to your garden in the spring and summer, Howard-Carter says the trick is to pre-water the area. She suggests starting with a buckwheat, since they’re so tough.

“The red [buckwheat] is especially pretty; it’s from the Channel Islands. The white one is our local one, and then you get the beneficial wasps coming to feed on the blooms, and they’ll parasitize the aphids and help you keep your aphid population under control.”

Heading home with my plants, I also came away with a deeper understanding of the many ways in which native plants play a critical role in a healthy ecosystem. The benefit is mutual.

 

Claire Bradley gardens on her Oakland balcony and shares her experience with fellow small-space container gardeners in a blog called “Botany on the Balcony.” She is a lifelong student of Italian culture, food, and language, learning daily from her Italian husband and in-laws.