Sensory Garden

Pigeon Pt Dwarf Coyote Brush

Baccharis pilularis 'Pigeon Point'

Pigeon Pt Dwarf Coyote Brush is a reliable slope stabilizer and ground cover. Once established it can get by with little summer water in coastal plantings and a monthly irrigation inland. Supports bees, caterpillars, and butterflies.

  • Plant Type: Evergreen shrub
  • Water Needs: Low
  • Mature Height: 1' to 2'
  • Mature Width: 8' to 10'
  • Sun Needed: Full Sun
  • USDA Zones: 8 to 10
  • Colors: Green
  • Bloom Color: Cream
  • Bloom Season: Summer, Fall, Winter
  • Native To: California

European Grey Sedge

Carex divulsa

European Grey Sedge has dark green, grass-like foliage. Roots form dense, broad arching clumps. Spikes of small flower heads emerge green and turn brown. It is a great clumping plant for use in solid stands or combined with other sedges, grasses and herbaceous plants for a natural meadow look.

  • Plant Type: Perennial
  • Water Needs: Moderate
  • Mature Height: 12" - 18"
  • Mature Width: 1' - 2'
  • Sun Needed: Full Sun to Partial Shade
  • USDA Zones: 4 to 10
  • Colors: Green
  • Bloom Color: Brown
  • Bloom Season: Spring
  • Native To: Europe and Northern Africa

Ray Hartman Wild Lilac

Ceanothus x 'Ray Hartman'

Ray Hartman Wild Lilac is a fast-growing evergreen shrub or small tree with large rounded dark green leaves and medium blue flowers in 3 to 5 inch-long spikes that appear in late winter through early spring.

  • Plant Type: Evergreen shrub
  • Water Needs: Low
  • Mature Height: 1' - 12"
  • Mature Width: 4' - 6'
  • Sun Needed: Full Sun to Partial Shade
  • USDA Zones: 8 to 10
  • Colors: Yellow to Chartreuse
  • Bloom Color: Blue
  • Bloom Season: Spring
  • Native To: California

Valley Violet California Lilac

Ceanothus maritimus 'Valley Violet'

Ceanothus maritimus 'Valley Violet' is native to coastal California. It is an evergreen shrub and produces fragrant, lavender flower clusters in the spring. Ceanothus maritimus 'Valley Violet' grows in mounds with small grey-green leaves, and is beneficial to pollinators.

  • Plant Type: Evergreen shrub
  • Water Needs: Low
  • Mature Height: 3' - 4'
  • Mature Width: 3' - 4'
  • Sun Needed: Full Sun
  • USDA Zones: 8 to 10
  • Colors: Grey, Green
  • Bloom Color: Purple
  • Bloom Season: Spring
  • Native To: California

Deodar Cedar

Cedrus deodara

The Deodar Cedar is a large evergreen conifer commonly used as a specimen tree for expansive lawns or pruned into screens and hedges. It is the most pendulous of the true cedars, characterized by drooping branchlets and gracefully nodding branch tips.

  • Plant Type: Evergreen tree
  • Water Needs: Medium
  • Mature Height: 40' to 50'
  • Mature Width: 39' to 40'
  • Sun Needed: Full Sun
  • USDA Zones: 7 to 8
  • Colors: Green needles
  • Bloom Color: Non-flowering
  • Bloom Season: Non-flowering
  • Native To: Himalayas

Mountain Mahogany

Cercocarpus betuloides

Mountain Mahogany is known for its long, fuzzy seeds that resemble curled feathers and shine in the sun. "Cercocarpus" means fruit with a tail. The evergreen birch-like leaves have edges that are smooth at the bottom and toothed at the top. Its small yellow flowers attract hummingbirds and butterflies. Mountain Mahogany is named for its dark bark color, but this plant is actually a member of the Rose family.

  • Plant Type: Evergreen shrub
  • Water Needs: Very low
  • Mature Height: 8' - 20'
  • Mature Width: 10' - 12'
  • Sun Needed: Full Sun to Partial Shade
  • USDA Zones: 7 to 9
  • Colors: Dark Green to Yellow-green
  • Bloom Color: Creamy-white
  • Bloom Season: Winter, Spring
  • Native To: Western United States, Baja California

Kashmir Cypress

Cupressus cashmeriana

Kashmir Cypress has a graceful weeping narrow pyramidal form featuring upright ascending main branches, from which droop long cascading pendulous sprays of aromatic blue-green branchlets.

  • Plant Type: Needled evergreen
  • Water Needs: Moderate
  • Sun Needed: Full Sun
  • USDA Zones: 9 to 10
  • Colors: Blue-green
  • Bloom Color: Non-flowering
  • Bloom Season: Non-flowering
  • Native To: Bhutan

Tecate Cypress

Cupressus forbesii

The Tecate Cypress is a relic species from a time when California was wetter and cooler. It survives in a few places in Southern California and Northern Mexico. It relies on intermittent fire for reproduction, and it is important for watershed rehabilitation.

  • Plant Type: Cypress tree
  • Water Needs: Low to very low
  • Mature Height: Usually 20' to 23', can grow up to 33'
  • Mature Width: 25'
  • Sun Needed: Full Sun
  • USDA Zones: 8b to 10b
  • Colors: Bright Green with Reddish bark
  • Bloom Color: Cones
  • Bloom Season: Non-flowering
  • Native To: Southern California and Mexico

Giant Chalk Dudleya

Dudleya brittonii

Giant Chalk Dudleya forms lotus-like rosettes of fleshy leaves which are coated in a fine chalky white powder. Stalks of yellow flowers appear in spring and summer, attracting hummingbirds. Avoid overhead watering.

  • Plant Type: Succulent
  • Water Needs: Low
  • Mature Height: 1' - 2'
  • Mature Width: 1' - 2'
  • Sun Needed: Full Sun to Partial Shade
  • USDA Zones: 9 to 11
  • Colors: Chalky White
  • Bloom Color: Yellow
  • Bloom Season: Spring, summer
  • Native To: Baja California

Santa Cruz Island Buckwheat

Eriogonum arborescens

A fast growing compact mounding evergreen shrub, the Santa Cruz Island Buckwheat is usually a bit wider than tall. It develops a trunk and stems that have red ribbony bark and bears narrow hairy green leaves at the ends of the branches.

  • Plant Type: Shrub
  • Water Needs: Low
  • Mature Height: 3' - 4'
  • Mature Width: 4' - 6'
  • Sun Needed: Full Sun
  • USDA Zones: 7 to 10
  • Colors: Blue-green leaves
  • Bloom Color: Pink
  • Bloom Season: Summer
  • Native To: California

Pine Muhly

Muhlenbergia dubia

A great looking smaller grass, Pine Muhly is similar in appearance but about half the size of California Deer Grass and is more usable in smaller gardens. A perennial grass that forms tidy, fountain-shaped clumps. Its leaf blades are stiff, finely textured, and green.

  • Plant Type: Perennial grass
  • Water Needs: Low
  • Mature Height: 2' - 3'
  • Mature Width: 2' - 3'
  • Sun Needed: Full Sun
  • USDA Zones: 7 to 9
  • Colors: Green
  • Bloom Color: Mauve to Creamy Tan
  • Bloom Season: Late Summer-fall
  • Native To: Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, northern Mexico

Canary Island Pine

Pinus canariensis

In the Canary Islands, this fast growing species is used mainly for shade or a windbreak. The fallen leaves are used for packaging bananas. The seeds are used in the preparation of some traditional meals and are often eaten salted, and the oil has been explored as a new source of seed oil for edible, nutritional, and cosmetic uses.

  • Plant Type: Tree
  • Water Needs: Moderate
  • Mature Height: 50' to 100'
  • Mature Width: 20' to 35'
  • Sun Needed: Partial Shade
  • USDA Zones: 9 to 12
  • Colors: Grey-green to Blue-green leaves and Red-brown bark
  • Bloom Color: Brown cones
  • Bloom Season: Non-flowering
  • Native To: Canary Islands

Japanese Pittosporum

Pittosporum tobira

Japanese Pittosporum makes an excellent specimen plant, providing some structure and dense evergreen color to a landscape. The showy fragrant blooms smell like sweet orange blossoms. Fruit is in the fall when its non-edible fruit capsules ripen.

  • Plant Type: Broadleaf evergreen
  • Water Needs: Low
  • Mature Height: 8' - 13'
  • Mature Width: 4' - 8'
  • Sun Needed: Full Sun to Partial Shade
  • USDA Zones: 8a to 10b
  • Colors: Green
  • Bloom Color: White
  • Bloom Season: April-May
  • Native To: China, Japan, Korea

Quercus tomentella

Island Oak
  • Sun Needed: Full Sun

Red Flowering Currant

Ribes sanguineum

Red Flowering Currant is a stunning fast-growing native shrub for shady areas. It grows upright with a vase shape. Its dangling tassel-like flowers are dark pink to red. With its broad bright green leaves, it is useful as a background plant under oaks or other trees. The fruit is a dark purple oval berry.

  • Plant Type: Shrub
  • Water Needs: Low
  • Mature Height: 8' - 10'
  • Mature Width: 6' - 10'
  • Sun Needed: Partial Shade
  • USDA Zones: 6
  • Colors: Green
  • Bloom Color: Dark pink, Red
  • Bloom Season: Winter-spring
  • Native To: British Columbia-California

Matilija Poppy

Romneya coulteri

Matilija Poppy is one of the largest and showiest California poppies. Large white petals with a crinkled texture surround yellow stamens, giving this poppy a bright cheerful appearance. Its flowers, which can be as large as 7 inches across, are attractive to bees and butterflies.

  • Plant Type: Perennial
  • Water Needs: Low
  • Mature Height: 6'- 10'
  • Mature Width: 20'
  • Sun Needed: Full Sun
  • USDA Zones: 6 to 10
  • Colors: Green
  • Bloom Color: White
  • Bloom Season: Spring/Summer
  • Native To: California

White Sage

Salvia apiana

White Sage is a fragrant shrub, deeply rooted in the cultures and lifeways of Indigenous communities of Southern California and northern Baja, the only region this sage naturally occurs in the world. This plant's limited wild populations are under threat from poaching, climate change, and development.

  • Plant Type: Semi-Deciduous Shrub
  • Water Needs: Low
  • Mature Height: 3' - 5'
  • Mature Width: 3' - 8'
  • Sun Needed: Full Sun
  • USDA Zones: 8 to 10
  • Colors: White, Silver
  • Bloom Color: White
  • Bloom Season: Winter, Summer
  • Native To: Southern California

White Texas Sage

Salvia greggii 'Alba'

Salvia greggii is naturally found at elevations from 5000-9000 feet in the mountains and rocky slopes of Mexico and southwest Texas. This is an attractive and tough drought tolerant plant that attracts hummingbirds and butterflies.

  • Plant Type: Evergreen Shrub
  • Water Needs: Low
  • Mature Height: 2' - 3'
  • Mature Width: 2' - 3'
  • Sun Needed: Full Sun
  • USDA Zones: 8 to 10
  • Colors: Green
  • Bloom Color: White
  • Bloom Season: Spring, Fall
  • Native To: Southwestern United States

Black Sage

Salvia mellifera

The Black Sage bush has textured dark green leaves and small blue, white, or lavender blooms. The leaves may appear almost black during dry periods, hence the name Black Sage. It is the most common type of sage in California and is a crucial source of nutrients for bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.

  • Plant Type: Shrub
  • Water Needs: Extremely Low to Very Low
  • Mature Height: 3' - 6'
  • Mature Width: 3' - 10'
  • Sun Needed: Full Sun
  • USDA Zones: 7 to 10
  • Colors: Green
  • Bloom Color: Blue, Purple, White
  • Bloom Season: Winter, Spring, Summer
  • Native To: California

Pozo Blue Sage

Salvia x 'Pozo Blue'

"Salvia X 'Pozo Blue' is an evergreen shrub that grows into a compact mound. Its leaves are grey-green, toothed, and fragrant. Its blooms are purple, and they attract many pollinators. Its heaviest blooms are in spring and fall.

  • Plant Type: Evergreen Shrub
  • Water Needs: Low, Medium
  • Mature Height: 3' - 4'
  • Mature Width: 3' - 4'
  • Sun Needed: Full Sun
  • USDA Zones: 8 to 11
  • Colors: Gray-green
  • Bloom Color: Purple
  • Bloom Season: Spring, Fall
  • Native To: California
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