Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Tuesday, Aug. 30. I’m Jeanette Marantos, a features writer for The Times’ Lifestyle section, and I write mostly about plants, landscapes and gardening.
أمسكت بالشعر الشعري حول نشأتي في الإمبراطورية الداخلية - ريفرسايد ، على وجه الدقة - حيث عمل والداي بلا كلل لإنشاء واحة من العشب المورق والنباتات المتعطشة للماء أكثر ملاءمة للمناخات الرطبة في المناطق الاستوائية أو إنكلترا العجوز
We get rain in Riverside in the winters — or we used to, anyway. I especially remember the week my mother died in February 2011 because we were gathered around her at home while the rain fell outside in torrents, a perfect mirror of our grief. It rained so long and hard that it created shallow ponds in their hard-packed backyard, where their repeated efforts to grow dichondra — a tender groundcover — ultimately failed.
Some people talk about Southern California as desert living, but I’ve learned that, actually, most SoCal residents live in one of the world’s five Mediterranean climates, marked by long, hot, dry summers and wet, cool winters, and I have come to love the diversity and tenacity of the plants that have evolved to grow in these conditions. They adapted to long periods of searing heat by pushing their roots deep into the soil to find water far below. Some even go brown and dormant during the hottest periods to wait for rain.
These are not the water-hungry tropical or English garden plants we have long tried to cultivate in Southern California landscapes. Many of these so-called drought-tolerant plants come from the Mediterranean Basin (think rosemary, thyme and lavender), Australia and South Africa (gorgeous examples are found at Taft Gardens near Ojai), and Chile (check out Ventura Botanic Garden’s Chilean and South African collections). These are wild and wonderful plants with shockingly bright colors and forms reminiscent of Dr. Seuss creations.
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