How to Design a Chaparral Garden

Intent

• Before moving forward with a chaparral garden on your property, determine the intent of the landscape project. If habitat restoration is the goal, it's more vital to include only California-native chaparral plant species that provide food and shelter for native animal and insect life. If the garden is to merely mock the look of an authentic chaparral, more leeway is given to the number or types of plant species. Because chaparral plants are rugged and drought tolerant, a landscape with them doesn't require irrigation systems or lots of maintenance. However, the evergreen leaves of many chaparral shrubs are flammable and should be used cautiously in regions where fires are known to occur in the dry season. Think twice about planting a chaparral garden close to buildings.

Site Conditions

• Choose an appropriate site to create a chaparral garden. For the plants to flourish, the site must receive a minimum of six hours of uninterrupted sunlight daily. A well-drained soil, usually alkaline to barely acidic in pH, is ideal. The soil does not need to be overly rich in nutrients. Often, a rather uneven, irregularly hilly or rocky part of a property makes a good choice to establish a chaparral garden. Avoid shady locations and where the soil naturally remains soggy after a seasonal rain or irrigation cycle.

Style

• The chaparral garden is a mix of a few trees with lots of evergreen shrubs and herbaceous wildflowers. The drier the habitat, the fewer the trees and shrubs naturally present. Choose a wide variety of shrubs and wildflowers to intermix across the garden. Based on personal taste, you may randomly plant to create a naturalistic garden or group plants in sweeps or masses to develop a more stylized chaparral design. Some shrubs and wildflowers in the chaparral need some shade in the heat of the afternoon, so a tree may be needed. If rocks already exist at the site, place plants in a manner that highlights the rock outcroppings or the interesting changes in elevation or slope.

Plant Materials

• Among the few tree species to use include holly-leaved cherry (Prunus ilicifolia) and the California coastal live oak (Quercus agrifolia). For shrubs, try manzanita (Arctostaphylos spp.), bush anemone (Carpenteria californica), toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia), monkeyflower (Mimulus aurantiacus), California lilac (Ceanothus spp.) and sage (Salvia clevelandii). In the bare-soil pockets around the shrubs, plant shooting star (Dodecatheon clevelandii), California poppy (Eschscholzia californica), lupine (Lupinus nanus) and California fuchsia (Zauschneria californica). Contact a California plant nursery that specializes in native plants for a broader selection of plants appropriate for your chaparral garden and to suit your aesthetic needs. Habitat restoration gardens need more specific combinations of plants to be accurate and to sustain native wildlife.