Designing Native Gardens for Color Throughout the Year

Join artistic landscape designer Pete Veilleux in a tour of three native plant gardens designed to provide color and beauty throughout the year. You’ll end the day at Pete’s own native plant nursery, East Bay Wilds. Tour the nursery with Pete; you may wish to take this opportunity to shop for some of the hard-to-find plants you have just seen.

The day will begin at Mary Cooper’s Castro Valley garden where the delicate pinkish-white blossoms of four varieties of manzanita attract butterflies, moths, and native bees. Accompanying them are reddish pink flowering currants, along with clusters of the gorgeous, fragrant blue California lilac flowers (dark star, maritumus ‘frosty blue’, and ‘Sierra point’), which are mobbed by bazillions of adoring bees.

At the exuberant Ashby/Beggs garden the nearly one hundred species of natives are a cheerful mix of purple penstemons and lupines and blue flax, coyote mint, and iris; pink and red clarkia and hummingbird sage; yellow tidy tips and lupine; orange monkeyflowers, and more. You’ll enjoy the many rare and unusual natives Pete has planted in containers.

The next stop, in Oakland, is a visual delight. If you have a small garden in the flats this one is a must-see. In this exuberant, lush California lilac and lupines bloom blue and purple amidst a variety of vibrant wildflowers. In summer the reds of penstemon, fuchsia, and yarrow contrast with bright yellow goldenrod and creamy and pink buckwheats.

Finally, you’ll visit East Bay Wilds, where you can purchase four hundred species of native plants.

A program of the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour.

Location: Castro Valley and Oakland, California. Additional details are provided upon registration.

Fee: $30