The coastal marshes surrounding Monterey Bay once covered thousands of acres in a rich mosaic of fresh, brackish, and salt marsh habitats. These marshes provided numerous ecosystem services to a vibrant community of species that occupy some combination of marine, estuarine, and terrestrial environments. This talk will focus on coastal marsh plants which link vital bio-geo-physical processes with vegetation structures and functions that yield key habitat for marsh wildlife. Coastal marsh plants are surprisingly easy to get to know if you don’t mind getting muddy. We will focus on new restoration and recovery initiatives underway in northern Monterey. We’ll also touch on some lessons learned from the San Francisco Estuary which faces similar challenges to coastal marshes in northern Monterey.

As has become our custom, the September meeting will focus on the Horticulture of Native plants. In preparation for our October annual Plant sale we will discuss some of the plants that will be available. In looking over the list of plants that we sold in our sale last year… It is an impressive group of Latin words and colorful nicknames. For me a comforting accounting of old friends that conjure memories of places and fragrances and life events. But for many, it is just that, a list of difficult to pronounce words that require an interpreter and beg for descriptions and photographs to have any idea of what it looks like, much less know how it might grow. Sometimes, when looking for new ideas for your own garden, even with a good concise description and a picture, many of these plants remain a mystery and feel like a risk not worth taking. What we often need is a friend who has grown the plant in their garden and can recommend it from their experience, to give us the confidence to give it a try.

Well, we would like to offer a group of friends to do just that. Our September 9th General meeting will include a panel of CNPS members who have discovered the joys (and agonies) of Native Plant gardening. Each will present 5-10 plants that they particularly like and have grown in their own gardens.

Good photographs will be complemented with comments about why they like the plant, where they have grown it and extra tidbits that might include the origin, the natural history, good companions for that plant and any cautionary notes. (For example: don’t prune a Flannel bush and then rub your eyes to get the “dust” out) Our Panel of gardeners includes Peigi Duvall, Amy Essick, Pat Regan and Loren Walden who have all gardened in a variety of California microclimates and had a full spectrum of successes and failures that will benefit your plant selecting this fall.