Couple creates a ‘magical landscape’ in Fairfax with natives

Morgan Cantrell grew up in the Fairfax Cascades, four blocks from the home that he and his wife, Alex Perry, now share.

Both had garden-loving mothers. Perry grew up in Orange County and was inspired by beautiful gardens in the Philippines, but her mom’s focus was on desert plants.

It is native plants that intrigue Cantrell’s mother, a volunteer at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in the Native Plant Nursery.

“My mom got me involved early,” he says. “We always had lots of flowers in our garden and we have big native trees all around such as valley oak, bay and coast live oak.  I loved to watch the squirrels and birds in the trees.”

When Cantrell and Perry first saw their new house three years ago, they knew the gardens on the 6,500-square-foot lot were ready for a makeover. Garden spaces took up almost half of the lot, but they were full of old, uprooted concrete, remnants of old lawns, exotic and invasive plants, and some hardy plant volunteers.

Undaunted, Cantrell and Perry set to work immediately.  They removed the invasive plants, liquid amber and mulberry trees, and, following tips from the Marin Municipal Water District’s website, removed the lawn, too.

This gave them what Cantrell calls “a permeable blank canvas” to re-imagine the various spaces surrounding the house, which include a sunny front yard and sidewalk strip, a sunny side yard and a shaded one, and the back yard.

“We wanted to create a magical landscape for ourselves and our kids that bolstered the local ecosystem,” he says.

They took inspiration from their walks in the Fairfax hills where, he says, “springtime brings seas of blooming wildflowers,” and used the iNaturalist and Calscape apps to determine which species are most common and best adapted to their area.

Taller native plants such as common manzanita, yerba santa, deerweed, ceanothus, California fuchsia, orange monkeyflower, naked buckwheat, coyote mint and California fescue now embrace a field of tinier plants, including sky lupine, California goldfields, tidy tips, yellow mariposa lilies, California poppy, globe gilia and red fescue.

“The grasses and wildflowers are only watered by the rain,” he says. “The shrubs on the border get monthly hand water in the summer and fall while they’re getting established, but the goal is for everything to be naturalized without additional water after a couple more years.”

In the nearby dry and sunny sidewalk strip, a spot regularly browsed by deer, they planted tough species — purple needlegrass, California sagebrush, soap root and yarrow — that can handle heavy pruning.

Along the sunny side of the house, the couple planted a small orchard, intermingling the fruit trees with Mt. Tamalpais manzanitas and narrow leaf milkweeds.

There’s also a small exotic edible garden here, and a long bed of plants — leather oak, common manzanita, chamise, western blue-eyed grass, and Douglas iris — are representative of those found on Pam’s Blue Ridge Trail above their house.

The shady side yard reflects the wetter parts of Fairfax, and in the wettest corners, western azaleas, juncus, checkered lilies and hazelnuts thrive. An evergreen hedge of Pacific wax myrtles and huckleberries separates their home from their neighbor’s.

In the north-facing backyard, the couple created a garden wonderland for their children, planting a little forest of madrone, elderberry and toyon, with some shrubs and a native grass meadow with a playhouse for their children, he says.

While they sourced the plants as locally as possible, buying the meadow seeds from Larner Seeds in Bolinas, lily bulbs from Linda Vista Native Plants in Saratoga, manzanitas from East Bay Wilds in Oakland, and most of the shrubs from Watershed Nursery in Point Richmond, they also received plants, cuttings and seeds from Fairfax neighbors.

One gave them a mature hazelnut tree and another gave them a California Dutchman’s pipevine that “attracts lots of pipevine swallowtail butterflies and has outrageously cool flowers,” he says.

The two reminders of the original garden, once a walnut orchard in the early 1900s, are two ancient walnut trees. The family has hung a swing from one, and use benches, tables and chairs to create a destination that they can use throughout the day.

When they couldn’t find the plants they wanted either from nurseries or neighbors, the couple propagated their own. This process led to their own backyard nursery, the Fairfax Native Plant Nursery, dedicated to propagating and selling local plants, including Mariposa lilies, checkered lilies, manzanitas and hazelnuts. And, they post educational information and photographs to their instagram account, @fairfax_plants.

The garden tends to be low maintenance. The nectarine, fig, avocado, apricot, cherry, lemon and lime trees are irrigated as are the berry plants, artichokes, asparagus and annual vegetables.

“The orchard gets pruned heavily after the growing season to keep the trees small enough that we can reach the fruit and to keep the branches spread for maximum sun exposure,” he says.

Native grasses, shrubs and trees get pruned back to keep them healthy, too.

“Native grasses are a cost effective choice to add texture and repetition to your yard,” he says. “Many will stay green all year without water and kids love playing with the tall ones.”

Now, that the garden has gone through a few seasons, the family watches as late winter and spring bring a profusion of insects, flowers and foliage to the yard. “Birds are eating insects and feeding lots of caterpillars to their babies,” Cantrell says.

Summer brings hummingbirds “to zoom around the California fuchsia flowers, getting nectar from every single one,” he says. “Fruits and vegetables are going from farm to table every day. And, bats are eating bugs in the evenings.”

In autumn, “the red colors of the California grape leaves pop on the fences and the evergreens become the stars while other annuals and perennials go dormant and brown,” he says. “People, squirrels and birds are collecting seeds and nuts and the final fruit and vegetable harvest happens with Halloween pumpkins.”

This is the time when nitrogen-fixing beans and peas are planted for the winter and native seeds and cuttings are planted in the nursery.

Soon, he hopes to implement rainwater and gray water capture for irrigation and install trellised arches “to add intriguing gateways from one section to the next,” he says.

They couple is also working with neighbors to create a habitat corridor by planting continuous gardens of local native plants. “It’s ambitious and will take time but it’s catching on!”

For now, though, the best part of their garden, he says, is “just seeing our daughters learning to respect the things that live around us by spending time in our yard and watching plants thrive, establish and evolve over time.”

Here are Cantrell’s tips for other local gardeners.

•  “Prioritize locally native (one that grow naturally in your neighborhood) species that thrive and attract local wildlife.”

• “Create zones that match plants’ needs to your microclimates.”

• “Seek out plants that are grown from locally sourced seeds so they’re genetically diverse and adapted to your area.”

• “Label bulbs and seeds so you know what should stay and what should be pulled out when they emerge.”

Show off

If you have a beautiful or interesting Marin garden or a newly designed Marin home, I’d love to know about it.

Please send an email describing either one (or both), what you love most about it, and a photograph or two.  I will post the very best ones in upcoming columns.  Your name will be published and you must be over 18 years old and a Marin resident.

PJ Bremier writes on home, garden, design and entertaining topics every Saturday. She may be contacted at P.O. Box 412, Kentfield 94914, or at pj@pjbremier.com.