The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden’s famous Meadow when I visited in July, past its spring flowering. 

In this third and last post from my recent trip to California, I cover the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, the mind-blowing challenges of fire-safe landscaping, and some favorite images of Santa Barbara’s architecture and beach. (I covered Lotusland here, and residential gardens in a Los Angeles suburb here.) 

Santa Barbara, about 95 miles up the coast from Los Angeles, is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its Botanic Garden, which happens to be the first in the U.S. to use native plants exclusively.

I’m inspired by the garden’s mission – by aesthetic, educational and scientific means, to conserve native plants and habitats and showcase the state’s diversity on its 78 acres.  The garden’s 1,000+ species represent all 11 ecoregions of, to my surprise, not the State of California but the California Floristic Province, which stretches from southern Oregon to Baja California in Mexico. Areas of the garden are laid out by habitat.  (Kudos for avoiding the problematic practice of grouping plants solely by political boundaries.)

Its Iconic Entry Meadow

The Meadow in spring. Photo credit: Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.

I learned that one of its co-designers was the famous landscape architect Beatrix Farrand and it seems pretty prescient of them to recommend this plan for the large entry meadow, in 1939: “Eliminate bermuda grass meadow.  Replace temporarily with annual and perennial wildflowers. Should this experiment prove successful, it might be successful to turn it into a permanent feature.  Otherwise, the area could be planted with native strawberries.” Indeed it was covered in strawberries at some point in its history.

Then in the early 2000s the 1.5-acres were planted in large perennials like sages and grasses, with California poppies creating a superbloom. Here’s lots more about the Meadow – its history, plants and maintenance challenges.

More than a plant collection

The garden has a bigger mission than even the website touts. It’s working to “shape the region into a biodiversity hot spot by encouraging residents to plant native plants and working with local communities and governments to spread the gospel.”  Source. 

The garden includes its own nursery, where hundreds of species of California natives (especially those most threatened with extinction) are grown, then sold to visitors.

Research is conducted in the garden’s genetics lab to understand what plants need protection, and a vital research focus is studying fire-combustion to find the best California natives for fire defense.  

My Tour

My guide at the garden was an old friend from garden-writer meet-ups – Billy Goodnick, the landscape architect,  author, television garden educator and drummer in a rock ‘n roll band. 

In this photo he’s showing me a stunning patch of Matilaja Poppy (Romneya coulteri), an aggressive perennial.

I’m a sucker for cool benches like this one.

Real California redwoods. 

One of the garden’s  educational goals is pursued through its demonstration Water Wise Home Garden.

(But first, readers may know a pet peeve of mine is over-generalization in garden-writing, and this sign is a good example of correct and incorrect descriptions of native plants.  In the lower left it says “The beautiful, easy to grow and water thrifty native plants selected for this garden….”  On the right it omits any qualifier and simply declares that “Native plants need less water, have fewer pests, and require less upkeep.” Even in California, not all native plants need less water – it’s a myth debunked here.  You know who’s hurt by this kind of misinformation? Customers and people trying to make a living growing and selling natives. Okay, end of rant.)

Now about this demonstration garden, honestly as an Easterner it’s hard for me to imagine using plants with such a muted color palette. I assume I’d adjust if I actually lived and gardened there for a while, and maybe even learn to love it.

The region has always been fire-prone. It’s just getting worse.

Santa Barbara sits on a coastal shelf below the Santa Ynez Mountain range, which is dominated by a chaparral plant community that has evolved to burn naturally, so fires have occurred there basically forever.  It only became the catastrophic challenge it is today since humans started building homes there, especially using such flammable materials, right in the path of the inevitable wildfires.

Billy Goodnick has seen up-close 6 to 8 major wildfires since he moved there 40 years ago, and there have been hundreds more. 

The risk of wildfires is old news to Californians but last year’s horrific fires in the Los Angeles area brought 24-hour coverage of fires and the need for fire-safe homes and landscapes. It’s no surprise that insurance companies are working on adding fire-safe design requirements to their coverage.

(Some members of my family were evacuated for months; others came very close to being evacuated. So I can’t even imagine living there, even for low humidity and all-year gardening.)

What IS fire-safe landscaping (a/k/a firescaping) 

Like the life-long learner that he is (and keeping up his landscape architect certification), Billy has enrolled in classes about the latest in fire-safe landscaping, where he learned that the most effective fire-safety measures that homeowners can take are improving the home – it’s called home hardening.

But there’s lots to do in the garden to make it safer from wildfires. The basics of fire-safe landscaping are:

  • Create a defensible space near the house by keeping trees, shrubs and other sources of biofuel and garden furniture away from the house.  That includes wood mulch. (Use stone or gravel instead.) Taller plants should be installed farther from structures.  
  • Spacing matters. Stop fire in its tracks by creating spaces between plants and breaking up large swaths of plantings.
  • Manage the landscape – with adequate irrigation to keep plants hydrated, and keeping the garden free of dead plant material, weeds, etc. 

Images from UC Marin Master Gardeners video of traditional foundation plantings (top) and fire-safe gardens (below).

Big change for home garden design! Rethinking lawns, irrigation, tidiness and plant choices, too. 

I find this challenge SO fascinating, and found this video illustrating with images like the ones above how different fire-safe landscapes are from traditional gardens. What got my attention is the mention of a likely new requirement that only “fire-safe” plants be installed within five feet of the home or other structure and nothing at all within one foot. Though that’s not required yet, designers are smart to be learning alternative designs to traditional foundation plantings, as seen in the top image above.  

And I learned from the botanic garden’s website of another problem they’re facing: “Misperceptions of California’s native plants as fire-hazardous lead some gardeners to resist using native plants in defensible-space landscaping.” The garden’s classes for home gardeners are offered to dispel that notion and help residents be safer, and the research into fire combustibility of native plants should help steer gardeners’ choices.

I asked Billy if fire-safe and water-wise landscaping are compatible, and his response was ” In some ways, yes. Plants with long tap roots are both water-wise and fire-wise, but they may call for different design techniques.” It’s complicated!

I found a perfect example of how complicated it is in a video by WaterWise Santa Barbara about Fire-Wise Landscaping and Maintenance. It follows the narrator as she walks through the Botanic Garden’s demonstration Water Wise Home Garden, pointing out all the things that need to be fixed! Wrong plants in the wrong places, especially.

And just this week I saw a new story about a Sacramento resident getting a grant from the city to plant a native garden, then receiving a $900 fine from the very same city for creating a fire hazard by growing those plants. (It was mainly Stipa pulchra, the “official state grass.”)  

Not exactly wildlife gardening, is it?

Fire-safe practices, like having a “well-irrigated lawn,” sure clash with the wildlife-friendly practices we’re being taught.  But a green lawn IS an excellent buffer zone for fire. Brown lawns, not so much. 

(Billy’s a big proponent of having only the lawn you really need and instead of typical turfgrasses, using a low-water groundcover that can take some getting stepped on. His favorites are native grasses or sedges, which – fair warning – won’t look good in hot weather.  But hey, our Eastern turfgrasses don’t, either.)

Blue gramma grass in the demonstration Water Wise home at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.

More fire-safe practices that conflict with gardening for wildlife? Removing all plant debris and weeds, pruning regularly, creating spaces between plants, and keeping the garden tidy. Meadows, prairies and  savannahs are off the table.

Billy reminds me that fire-wise gardening advice is relevant well beyond Santa Barbara, to other fire-prone areas and those that may be fire-prone sooner than you think. 

A bit more Santa Barbara – architecture and the beach!

Santa Barbara’s most popular historic landmark is its County Courthouse. Completed in 1929, the Spanish-Moorish masterpiece features hand-painted ceilings, grand murals, and an 80-foot clock tower with panoramic city and ocean views. 
It’s worth listening to a docent inside. The murals depict the history of Santa Barbara.

From the Courthouse Tower there are great views in every direction. From these two you can see the dominance of Spanish Colonial architecture.
 
Not JUST Spanish Colonial
 
I walked to the Courthouse from my hotel in the heart of the old downtown, which is restored and super-lively. I skipped the nightlife but followed Billy’s recommendation to find examples of the work of architect Jeff Shelton, called the city’s “architectural wizard.”  Instead of taking the Walking Tour of his works, I hunted them down on a one-gear, foot-brake-only bike I borrowed from my hotel.

Above are two examples of Shelton’s work in downtown Santa Barbara. On the left is one that I couldn’t find – Cota Street Studios.  The Ablitt Tower on the right is his most famous work, but hard to photograph from the street. So here’s the photo credit for both of these. 

And here’s my photo of an amazing residence by Shelton, named Vera Cruz.

And finally, did I make it to the Pacific Ocean during my whirlwind trip to SoCal? Just barely, thanks to that clunker of a hotel bicycle, which took me down to the beach and along its wonderful pedestrian/bike paths. They reminded me of Santa Monica’s iconic path along the ocean. Both offer great beach access and views thanks to their prohibitions against building anything between the ocean and the highway. 

View of Santa Barbara’s beach from a pier.

Thank, Billy!

I’m afraid if I rave too much about what a great guide Billy was for my first visit to his fair city, readers will be hitting him up for similar help. But seriously, he went all out – helping me plan my visit, guiding me through two major gardens, treating me to breakfast (with wife Lin!), and arranging for a private tour of Lotusland.