Growing Natives Garden Tour 2017

Slatebrook Garden (5 photos from 2015)

Garden #81, Los Gatos

 

Showcase Features: This lovely established terraced hillside garden features colorful natives from a variety of plant communities, a living roof, a unique water feature, and original art.

Other Garden Attractions: Four different varieties of dwarf fruit trees espaliered on mirage trellises are under planted with native buckwheat, salvia, penstemon, and douglas iris. A view from the dining room has been improved by building a tall wall near the fence, with a green roof and complex original mosaic murals; one scene blends art with reality, as a pipe in the mosaic waterfall spills into a manmade creek below the mural. On both sides of the creek, softly undulating berms provide the appropriate slope for varieties of monkeyflower, native grasses, coyote mint, penstemon, salvia, buckwheat, woolly blue curls, and hummingbird fuchsia. In the shadier portion of the garden, dwarf conifers share space with hollyleaf cherry, vine maple, snowberry, coral bells, currants, gooseberries, coffeeberry, and other natives. Some plants are set closer together or closer to walls than their mature size would suggest, but the owner plans to espalier some and remove others as the garden matures to prevent crowding. This environmentally friendly, art-filled garden offers many places to sit and enjoy the view.

Gardening for Wildlife: Crows, jays, hummingbirds, juncos, hawks, sparrows, butterflies, spiders and lizards frequent this garden. Food, shelter and water are available with a large variety of plants, stone sink, active constructed creek and wall fountain.

Garden Talk: 11 AM: "Native Gardens and Urban Farms - An Ecological Approach" - a talk by Alrie Middlebrook.

Plants Available: On tour day, Middlebrook Gardens Nursery will conduct a plant sale at this garden. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Going Native Tour

Years of CA Native Gardening at this Location: 12

Garden Size: 5000 sq ft

Designer: Alrie Middlebrook, Middlebrook Gardens
Installer: Middlebrook Gardens

Plant list: In preparation, will be linked later...

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