Helpful Resources

Calscape

Calscape has been very useful for me in my garden journey, and is a fantastic resource for learning about and finding native plants. Calscape has many resources on different native plants to California, and each plant has information about what soil it likes, the sun it likes, and where to find it. Calscape is also great to get pictures from, to see the plants and to refine your search, with advanced search you can find plants that are in certain nurseries or have certain climates and needs. This website is fantastic for detailed information and to delve deep into native plants. Using the search feature can also help you find more information about plants you are looking at, but make sure your spelling is correct!

Calscape Garden Planner

Calscape Garden Planner is another fantastic website, also made by calscape. This is a more simple way to plan a garden, you answer the questions, such as about what kind of sun you have, or what attributes you want the plants to have, such as deer resistant or butterly friendly, and it will return ideas. The website is great for begining to get an idea for your garden, it can give you a list of plants, and a list of blueprints for sample garden and where to put the plants. It's a great resource if you're looking for inspiration and is very beginner friendly.

California Native Plant Society

California Native Plant Society is a great website for learning about California native plants. It has many resources on plants, garden innspiration, and preparing for a garden. This website has many links to articles and pages for what you may be interested in and gives great information. They also have virtual garden tours where you can walk through a native plant garden! You can get inspiration from these tours and experience what a native plant garden can look like. You can also learn from garden ambassadors and see their native gardens and stories. Learning from people can be helpful as they too have gone through challenges, and can share their wisdom with you and provide different opinions.

Master Gardeners

Master Gardeners of the County is another great resource for gardening information. There are master gardeners for many different counties in California so be sure to check out the oens for your county. Master Gardeners provide lots of good information on growing plants, gardening, and typically hold training or workshop events. They are a great resource to learn about gardens in your community and to find community events and workshops to start learning hands on! One of my family friends is a master gardener and we always go to her for advice on plants and gardening. There also are master gardener gardens, which you can visit and see native plants in action!

California Native Plant Library

California Native Plant Library is another great resource for native plant information. This site is formatted like a wiki and has simple navigation to find native plants by letter, by plant type, by flower color, or by water needs. It is a very simple and easy to use website made by the Theodore Payne foundation. The Theodore Payne foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to California native plants! Another nice feature is their garden guides, where they have planting guides for native plants for all the different seasons. They give advice on when to plant, how to plant, how to water, annd how to prune in an easy general guide.

Theodore Payne Foundation

Theodore Payne Foundation is another great resource for native plant information. This site has a lot more options and features than their native plant wiki. It has information on growing plants, where to buy them, and how to visit their nursery. There are also many events and workshops you can learn from and register for at this site. They also have an online store where you can buy native seeds and gardening supplies to be shipped to you! I also think this foundation and website have a great mission in normalizing and encouraging more native plant gardens!

UCSC Arboretum

The UCSC Arboretum is another resource for gardening information, located on the UC Santa Cruz campus it is a great place to go and see a diversity of plant life. They have various sections of gardens for different areas such as California, Australia, New Zealand, and more. They have good information and galleries of the native plants you can see and explore. They also are very knnowledgeable in plants and gardening and are easy to contact by email. They also support conservation and education about native plants and it is a great resource for help in gardening. It is also a fantastic place to visit if you're near Santa Cruz!