Through the Garden Gate

Garden invasives & oregano
I have just returned from a two-week trip to the northern part of Michigan…hot and humid, but so lake-filled, green and peaceful. The Leelanau Peninsula is a small chunk of sandy land in the very northwest section of the state, which includes the amazing national park, Sleeping Bear Dunes.
I did not choose to ascend the huge tall bare dunes, as folks do (especially kids) and slide and run back down (fear of broken bones and joints!) but spent the visit driving the lovely country roads through large meadows and dark woods. This is dairy country and cherry land, endless orchards of delicious dark red cherries, for which the Peninsula is known.
Noticing big, billowy clumps of an airy, open shrubby-looking plant, I pulled off a branch and discovered little white flowers all over it, giving the whole plant a ghostly, ashy appearance.
It looked so similar to baby’s breath grown in many gardens and used in floral bouquets that I wondered if the ubiquitous plants could really be Gysophila paniculata.
 I took the little twig in to the visitor’s center and found out that, yes, it is baby’s breath, which has become a dreadful invasive plant around the Great Lakes. It’s from central Europe and Asia. Attempts at eradication have been rather futile, as the roots of each plant dig down a good 15 feet! These rather beautiful plants are covering the sandy dunes and of course outcompeting any native plant.
I was shocked that this harsh environment would harbor invasive plants (and such pretty ones), and I thought of the invasive plants we contend with in Sonoma County. Any trips to our coast beaches and shoreline point out how difficult it is to eradicate the pampas grasses and non-native, succulent ice plants. Where they have been removed, you will find the buckwheats full of bees and blooms, the pretty, delicate, lavender seaside daisies (Erigeron glaucus) and bright sea thrift (Armeria maritima) and other wildflowers.
Upon my return, I found that the oregano in the cottage garden, which is spreading to become quite a groundcover, is in full purple bloom and attracting what looked like a hive of honeybees. This is the Origanum vulgare, plain old common oregano, also called wild marjoram. Apparently, some plants’ leaves are scentless, so when you choose one to use as a pollinator plant, check the leaves for fragrance so they will be useful in your cooking. Another form planted on a dry hillside is rampant and blooming with paler creamy blooms – ‘bee-full’ but not as popular as the deeper purple flowers.
There is no California Native Plant Society meeting in August but they will return in full in September with a program by Peter Veilleux, who will talk about gardening with California native plants. He designs and builds hardscape for use with native plants and is the owner of East Bay Wilds Native Plant Nursery in Oakland.
The meeting is on Sept. 17 at 7:30 p.m.; meetings are free and are held at the Luther Burbank Art & Garden Center, 2050 Yulupa Ave. in Santa Rosa. Call 578-0595 for more information.
Don’t forget our Native Plant Sale on Saturday, October 12, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Santa Rosa Vet’s Building.
Set aside time on one of two weekends to visit Occidental Arts & Ecology for their annual fall/winter plant sales. They run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on August 17 and 18, and again on August 24 and 25. If you have never attended one of their sales or visited their gardens, you will be awestruck at the incredible variety of plants. There will be hundreds of open-pollinated, heirloom and rare varieties, all organically grown, with fall and winter vegetable starts as the focus.
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