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California Native Plant Sale
A fabulous array of California natives is lined up for this years CNPS spring sale, featuring plants from our local and wider central coast region, as well as some wonderful plants from elsewhere in California.
The sale benefits the Santa Cruz County chapter of the California Native Plant Society (CNPS).
CNPS members can shop from 10am to 11 am. You can join on arrival. General public hours are 11am - 2pm. (NOTE: sale hours have been corrected; earlier the listing showed the sale as beginning at 9am, which was wrong. Apologies!).
The site is next to the Arboretum's large visitor parking lot.
Our fall sale sold out fast, so we have added even more plants for the spring sale-over one hundred species and varieties. The full listing is available at: https://cruzcnps.org/plant-sales
Most of the plants in the sale were propagated by CNPS volunteers at Suncrest Nurseries in Watsonville. We are grateful to all the plant sale volunteers and to Suncrest for their ongoing support.
Native plants are not only beautiful; they support entire ecosystems, including pollinators such as native bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. Native plants are more resistant to many garden pests, yet support enough bug-life to help birds feed their hungry chicks.
Because they evolved here, native plants are adapted to local soils and a dry summer climate, making them generally easy to grow in California gardens with similar conditions, with less water and few additional needs.
There's a big selection of spring-flowering bulbs and annual wildflowers this year, providing instant garden color and diversity for pollinators. And an abundance of early-blooming perennials including various kinds of native iris and their diminutive relative, the blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium spp. ).
Spring-blooming shrubs include some Ceanothus species new to our sale, as well as ten kinds of flowering currants (Ribes spp.) and five different manzanitas (Arctostaphylos spp.), including the majestic upright "Dr. Hurd" cultivar. Many other shrubs in the sale bloom later in spring or summer and all provide attractive foliage.
From spring into summer, many shrubs and perennials are in bloom. The sale boasts twelve kinds of flowering sage (Salvia spp.), including hummingbird sage, which is a great groundcover for dry shade, five kinds of monkeyflower (Diplacus spp.), and three kinds of the tough and pretty yarrow (Achillea spp.), one of them a stunning dark pink variety from Santa Cruz Island.
For late summer into early fall, check out the flowering buckwheats (Eriogonum spp.), such as the raspberry-colored red buckwheat, and seven different kinds of California fuchsia (Epilobium), whose foliage varies from grey to bright green, with tubular flowers from red to white.
Volunteers at the sale can also introduce you to some less familiar plants, such as piggyback plant, marsh gum plant, stonecrop and bladderpod. Come to the sale and enjoy the tremendous variety of native plants on offer.
The chapter appreciates the support of the Arboretum. If you plan to also visit the gardens, please also support the Arboretum, by paying the visitors' fee.
Category: Community | Local / Community
