Redbud’s 2026 Fall Plant Sale: Create Your Homegrown Habitat
by Monica Finn, Redbud Horticulture Chair
Interested in re-creating native habitat and/or supporting the local food web? If you are, you’ll want to focus on plants that provide habitat by attracting pollinators and herbivorous insects. Here’s why.
Homegrown habitat is the practice of creating and maintaining native plant gardens. It emphasizes the use of native plants that have co-evolved with the local environment, the removal of non-natives, especially invasives, and reducing ornamental plants.
Homegrown Habitat aims to create sustainable habitats that support a variety of species from pollinators to native insects and promotes and protects biodiversity. Lastly, it involves a change in perspective or attitude toward local natives and the acknowledgement of individual responsibility.
Above: Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus) loves woodlands & forests
Below: Deerbrush (Ceanothus integerrimus) is a chaparral plant
(Photos by Chrissy Freeman)
Let’s Invite Native Habitat into Our Gardens
This change in perspective asks us to see native habitat as something important to us and to our home gardens, not something occurring only beyond our property or out in the wild. It asks us to reevaluate our lawns and our ornamental plants, to include beneficial native plants that support the local food chain.
We need to accept our local natives as they are, even if those that look tired at the end of the summer. Instead, value all they do to support insects, birds, and other wildlife; watering and pruning can go a long way to extending the season and keeping these plants tidy.
Make a Difference in Our Own Gardens for Pollinators, Birds, and More
Lastly, what we do in our yard affects other yards and the food web. By removing invasives, we curtail their spread. By planting local natives, we provide pockets of habitat or connections between native preserves where currently none exist.
We now understand a lot more about how dependent local plants and local insects are on each other. Many bees can use the pollen or nectar of only a single species; many moths and butterflies can lay their eggs only on specific plant species, because their caterpillars can eat the leaves of only those specific plant species.
Entomologist and author Douglas Tallamy estimates that 90 percent of herbivorous insects can eat only the native plants they share an evolutionary history with. NINETY PERCENT! Without such local native plants, these insects and other invertebrates will not reproduce.
Because of our tendency to grow lawns or beds of ornamental or non-local flowering plants, many of the plants our local insects need are not present. Without these plants, the insects are not able to complete their life cycle or to contribute to the food web (as in providing caterpillars for nesting birds). This explains why insects and nesting bird populations have declined so significantly.
Lose the plant, lose the pollinator; lose the pollinator, lose the plant. Plant species essential for providing these habitat values are keystone species. In almost all cases, keystone plant species are locally native plants that support a disproportionately high number of insects and other wildlife, forming the foundation of a heathy local food web.
Get Plants to Best Help You Create Your Homegrown Habitat
The CNPS Redbud Chapter Fall Plant Sale will offer many keystone species available to select from. Oaks are some of the best keystone species. We will have a few different species of oaks, including Leather oak (Quercus durata), a slow-growing local native that reaches only about 12 feet in height, so it fits in small landscape areas.
The sale will have many different keystone shrubs: Western redbud (Cercis occidentalis), California hazelnut (Corylus cornuta), hoary coffeeberry (Frangula californica ssp. tomentella), buckbrush (Ceanothus cuneatus), deer brush (Ceanothus intergerrimus), hollyleaf redberry (Rhamnus ilicifolia), and common snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus).
Many of these plants have attractive blooms, present from early spring to late fall; they are alive with pollinators. We’re excited that our sale will include creeping sage (Salvia sonomensis), a spreading groundcover, with great white to blue flowers. This drought-adapted plant supports an estimated 239 insects and other wildlife. It is a fantastic addition to any garden.
The fall plant sale will have favorite perennials that are also keystone species: California goldenrod (Solidago velutina ssp. californica), common yarrow (Achilla millefolium) and common California aster (Symphyotrichum chilense). All of these will spread but can be easily controlled. We will also have a variety of native bunchgrasses that add interest and are good for wildlife.
For More Info on Locally Native Plants
If you want more information, please see Calscape.org. Calscape will show you the estimated geographic range of the plant you’re interested in. Under the heading of Wildlife Supported, you’ll see the number of confirmed and the number of likely butterflies and moths that are supported by the plant you’re interested in.
Thank you! When you plant local native plants, you save everything else!
California goldenrod (Solidago velutina var. californica) blooms in fall. Photo by Chrissy Freeman