Forestville couple who left city life behind ‘obsessed’ with their native garden

When San Franciscans Stephanie Pau and James Williams decided to swap city life for a country home, there was one non-negotiable feature on their must-have list.

“I knew when we were looking for a house, we wanted a place where we could actually have a garden — specifically, a native garden,” Pau said.

Even as renters in the city, they maintained a compact native garden in pots. So when they came across a place for sale in Forestville with a few aesthetic issues but plenty of land, Pau said, “We saw the potential.” It required vision to see past the funky “pirate’s plank” wooden stairs leading up to the house, the not-so-charming patch of fake grass and above it a steep slope blanketed with black landscape fabric and what Pau describes as “Home Depot plants.”

But two years and lots of sweat equity later, they have the garden they dreamed of.

Steps edged by mounds of native yerba buena replaced old and treacherously steep stairs. Carefully situated with gentle turns, the steps now lead invitingly to the home’s second-story entrance and the upper reaches of the terraced garden. New paths make the slope more accessible, including to an upper deck area that had no easy or clear access point.

The artificial lawn was ripped out and that area is now an outdoor sitting area with light-color rock surface. And the whole slope is painted with colorful plants, many in autumnal bloom.

Creating pathways and logical entry points add definition to any landscape.

“There were a lot of U-turns that didn’t work for me,” said Williams, a graphic designer. “So we carved out this path directly to the deck and eased the turn into the house. Before we had the steps, we had so many people trying to enter the house from downstairs.”

The paths are all naturally surfaced with arbor mulch. And virtually all the plants are California natives with one “native-adjacent” plant: autumn sage (salvia greggii), which is native to Arizona. Its tubular flowers appear in fall and last into winter and often into spring. Hummingbirds and butterflies love it, which is the goal of a native garden —serving pollinators and wildlife. But deer do not like autumn sage, a plus for a garden like this one in a forest clearing.

Native plant sale this weekend

While so many gardens are dying back now, before winter, Pau and Williams’ landscape is ablaze with pink Epilobium, purple Penstemon and Mimulus, its deep red tinged with yellow-orange trumpet-shape flowers that are incandescent in the autumn light. Even the greenery appears deeper and electrified.

To create this garden from the ground up, the couple enlisted the help of April Owens, who specializes in habitat landscapes and heads the Habitat Corridor Project, dedicated to promoting landscapes that serve wildlife. Native plants are key to that.

Owens is also a member of the local Milo Baker chapter of the California Native Plant Society. Among its projects is an annual sale of native plants. Volunteers have propagated and potted up some 2,000 plants that will be for sale Saturday at the nursery space the chapter shares at the Laguna Foundation in Santa Rosa.

The sale is a chance for gardeners to select from a big variety of native plants while the prime fall planting season is in full swing. Many of these native plants and varieties aren’t commonly sold in nurseries.

Pau and Williams’ garden is a perfect example of how pretty a native garden can be, even in fall.

“This is the most blooming garden we have at this time of year,” said Owens, who believes part of the secret to its success is how much it’s loved. When a garden is loved, it’s treated well, and people want to be out in it, increasing the desire to keep it healthy and beautiful.

Pau confessed to babying her garden. “I will attest, I’m really obsessed with the garden. I walk around every morning and I look for weeds,” she said. After ripping out tons of ivy that had overtaken the space, she wants to ensure no other unwanted invasive plants or volunteers take root.

Among the native plants showing off their fall colors in this Forestville garden are California fuchsias, which come in a variety of shades, from apricot to red and orange to coral pink. Owens said the Native Plant Society will offer seven to eight different varieties at Saturday’s sale.

In addition to being a great example of how beautiful a native garden can be in fall, Pau and Williams’ landscape, spreading over a steep slope, shows how quickly native plants can adapt and thrive.

The garden was planted only last October. But given the fall, winter and spring to take hold, it really took off by summer and now looks lush and mature. You’d never guess it didn’t exist one year ago.

Because they are native to California’s dry summer climate, the plants will survive without much, if any, additional irrigation. But when they’re newly planted, a little extra water will help them get established. Pau and Williams put in a drip-irrigation system, which they turn on for only 20 minutes twice a week.

The microclimate here, out near the Russian River, is different from Sonoma County’s inland valleys and the Santa Rosa plain. Summers bring a lot of morning fog. Surrounded by big Douglas firs, the property can get bright sun but also hours of shade. So finding plants that do well does require trial and error.

Aside from buckwheat, which is a great native plant for many Sonoma County gardens but didn’t do well in this garden, most of the plants Pau selected have settled well into the environment.

“The garden has defied my expectations of what would actually grow. A lot of it for me was just to go for it. I like this plant. We can always replace it if it doesn’t work. But most everything works,” she said.

Pau said one of the more expensive parts of the garden project was the Sonoma field stones they brought in to define the space and create terraces. The stones, too, offer seasonal beauty when everything else turns gray.

“It’s nice because when everything dies back and goes dormant in winter, the rocks come alive,” she said. “The moss on the rocks is really vibrant, and it becomes almost like a winter garden.”

Reach staff writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com.