I’m moving to California to be with my doubleextrasuperawesome Doper boyfriend (hi MaxTheVool!) in 44 sleeps, and he’s generously offered me free rein in the garden. I thought I’d start with a list of my favourite plants, and go on from there. Are these happy to grow in the Bay area, and in pots? In no particular order:
Kangaroo paw
Bromeliads
Lime
Birdsnest fern
Grevillea
Papaya
Cycads (I like Cycas armstrongii but am prepared to be flexible)
Ginkgo
Treefern (Cyathea australis)
Callistemon
Pomegranate
Any other suggestions? Do any of these have any tricky requirements I should know about? I’m an enthusiastic novice, having had veggie and herb patches in the past, but nothing very substantial. (Oh, apart from three years of botany at university! Not very practical stuff though!)
The climate in the Bay Area varies quite a bit. Will you be in San Francisco, East Bay, Peninsula, Silicon Valley, …? San Francisco is almost never really warm; some parts of the East and South Bay are almost never really cold.
Santa Clara seems to be in the San Jose area, so I searched for those plants on the San Jose Mercury News website.
Kangaroo Paw seems to be OK, and seems to have the added bonus of attracting hummingbirds:
I couldn’t find anything useful on any of the others, but I thought I might at least bring that to your attention. As for hummingbirds, AIUI they tend to stick around a lot in California. (It may be different here than up there; I think there’s a certain kind that hangs around the US-Mexico border all year, and Santa Clara (a good 400 miles north) probably doesn’t count.)
Bromeliads, easy.
Lime, and citrus in general, easy.
Birdnest fern, easy.
Grevillea, never heard of it.
Papaya, should be okay.
Cycads, they grow all over.
Ginkgo, grows all over.
Treefern grows all over.
Callistemon, Bottlebrush? Grows all over.
Pomegranate, I’ve only seen this in southern California, but is probably okay.
I haven’t lived in Santa Clara, but you’re probably looking at pretty nice weather most of the year but some cold fogginess sometimes and during the worst part of winter possibly dropping down to a light frost maybe. As long as everything is acclimated, I don’t see anything dying on you. You might get a little cold weather damage, but not death.
I’ve lived on the Monterey Peninsula for years where it’s generally colder than San Francisco and definitely colder than Santa clara and I’m pretty sure I could grow everything you’ve got, although some of your stuff might languish a bit. If you can bring your more sensitive tropicals indoors temporarily during the worst of winter, you should be fine.
Santa Clara is a lot like San Jose; it doesn’t get too cold and it’s quite warm in summer. In winter you’ll get frost every so often, but not much.
You can almost certainly grow a pomegranate. My mom has one up here (north of Sacramento) and it isn’t all that much hotter in summer, it isn’t colder in winter. Citrus will be fine, but something like an avacado would need a lot of protection.
You’ll be living in an area that was mostly orchards before it exploded 20 years ago. It’s great for gardening. There is very little that won’t grow in the breadbasket areas of California; mostly things that want more cold than we’ve got. (Tulips, for example, don’t get cold enough to do well without help, and gophers eat them, so everyone grows daffodils and iris.)
Oh, and there are plenty of hummingbirds in the area. When I lived in San Jose they were all over the apartment complex.
Santa Clara is a reasonably warm clime, somewhere in the middle of the Bay Area scale. It is closer to the Bay (the big moderator of temperatures) than most of San Jose. 80’s and sunny all summer, 40s-50’s all winter, or thereabouts. Be aware that it rains pretty much not at all during the summer, you will need to irrigate. But maybe your native climate was similar?
ETA: yeah, lots (well a reasonable number) of hummingbirds. Once you attract one with plants, they stick around for a good while to my recollection.
Go get the Sunset Western Garden Book. You’ll be happy that you did. It has more zones and plants and information than you can believe. My mom, the professional gardener for many years, still uses it as her main reference book.
You might also like the magazine, Sunset. I don’t do much gardening myself these days, living in a rental, but I still get and enjoy the magazine. It’s not all gardening; there’s lots of cooking and decorating and regional stuff in it too.
Actually, Papaya won’t grow in the Bay Area… and avocado definitely will… not that I’d actually recommend growing one - our next door neighbor had one - it was about two and a half stories high and dropped rotting avocados constantly - the tree was so large you couldn’t get to most of the fruit, so it just rotted and fell off…
For hummingbirds, plant bougainvillea - I can pretty much guarantee hummingbirds all year round… they love it…
Yeah, my yard as well. We did some big grading a couple of years back, and had to hydro-seed after. I dumped a couple of pounds of CA poppy seeds into the mix (which is like a half-million poppy seeds or some incredible number), and got a few measly poppies for my trouble. And they grow wild all along the road side nearby in fairly huge numbers. Drat.
