May 2025 Plant Availability | | |
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and with all that’s going on in the world, we’re definitely feeling well aware.
Good news, though–gardening, being in nature, and the sounds of birds are very beneficial for mental health. Even better if you spend your garden or outdoors time with a friend or community group! We hope your visits to the nursery provide a bit of a “brain break” and some enrichment, and want to share some other options if you’re looking for more to enrich your spring days.
There’s lots of local volunteer restoration groups if you’re looking for more:
Skyline Gardens
CNPS SCV list
Friends of Five Creeks
Berkeley Pocket Parks/Traffic Circles
Or inquire at your local park!
Of course, the spring Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour is this weekend, May 3-4th! You can learn more, register, and plan your route through their website. The Tour is a wonderful way to meet other native garden enthusiasts, get some inspiration, and get to know your neighbors.
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Around the nursery, we’re finding peace with the spring wildflowers that are blooming, especially the petite wonders (and habitat powerhouses) of California Native clovers! Trifolium species are beloved by native bees, and larval host to many butterfly and moth species.
Let’s talk about pollination mechanics for a bit–Trifolium are members of Fabaceae, or the legume family, and subfamily Faboideae. As such, they have a floral structure with wings, keel, and banner petals. When a bee applies pressure to the keel petals, the stamens are “tripped”, and poke up at the bee, applying pollen! You can try it out for yourself quite easily with a lupine flower, seen here.
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In the garden, native clovers are best used in full sun, planted or seeded en masse, where their tender foliage can weave a living carpet, and poke up petite cheery blooms in spring. Get up close to appreciate the delicate complexity of these blooms (perhaps with a hand lens).
Clovers also fix nitrogen in the soil through a symbiotic relationship at the plant’s roots with Rhizobium bacteria. Using native clovers as a groundcover thus circumvents the use of industrially produced nitrogen fertilizers, which harm our waterways. By adding native clovers to your garden as ground cover, you can naturally fertilize your garden without risking these unintended consequences.
Most native clovers we grow are annuals, so be sure to balance your planting with perennial species like Deerweed or Monkeyflowers for year round interest. Along a sunny path, or in between flagstones, or as the verdant lawn of a cottage-style garden, clovers will shine. We’ve listed a few of our favorites below, as well as some other annuals we’re loving. Enjoy!
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Pinpoint Clover
Trifolium gracilentum
Available in 4″ pots for $7.70 each!
- Annual herb growing prostrate to erect in form. Delightful flowers put on a show with vibrant shades of pink to deep magenta from April to June.
- This species is the perfect addition to pollinator gardens as it is a likely larval host of several species of butterflies, (Gray Hairstreak, Orange Sulphur, Southern Dogface, Shasta Blue, Greenish Blue, and Persius Duskywing butterflies), and bees delight in its pollen and nectar.
- Plant in full sun around pond features or under bird baths so it gets plenty of water!
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Bull Clover
Trifolium fucatum
Available in 4″ pots for $7.70 each!
- Bull Clover, also called sour clover, is a showy annual herb with white or yellowish flowers that have deep purple tips and bloom from April to June. (Think pink lemonade spiky shaped puffballs!)
- This species has a somewhat mounding habit and grows less than 1 ft. tall.
- This species is an excellent choice for bee and butterfly gardens as well as container gardens!
- It is also a favored edible green (both the leaves and the flowers) of the Mendocino and Pomo peoples. The sour taste is due to the high content of Vitamin C!
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Foothill Clover
Trifolium ciliolatum
Available in 4″ pots for $7.70 each!
- Foothill clover is an erect, annual clover found widely throughout California in open, grassy areas and slopes.
- Its small white to pink to purple array of flowers bloom atop 1 – 1.5 ft. spikes in the spring to the delight of bees!
- Perhaps the most “typical” clover in bloom, Foothill clover makes a great spring groundcover, forming a dense mat of lush foliage.
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Maiden Clover
Trifolium microcephalum
Available in 4″ pots for $7.70 each!
- Maiden Clover is an annual herb with pinkish to purplish flowers that are visited by a variety of bees and butterflies.
- This easy-to-grow clover occurs in a variety of habitats across western North America. It has become a casual roadside weed, growing abundantly in disturbed habitats in some regions.
- Excellent choice for bee gardens, butterfly gardens, and as a soft luxuriant seasonal ground cover (even in coarse, rocky, or degraded soils!)
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Tomcat Clover
Trifolium willdenovii
Available in 4″ pots for $7.70 each!
- Growing between 6-24″ tall, Tomcat Clover looks like a typical clover, but with extra long (2″) leaves. The scientific name willdenovii refers to the German botanist Carl Ludwig Willdenow (1765-1812). While the common name for this dainty annual may have been inspired by an imaginative gaze at the tiny feline faces within rose and white bloom.
- This common plant blooms in open grasslands, and makes a sweet addition to any sunny garden.
- Trifolium Clover is great for a bird garden and a butterfly garden. Tomcat clover in particular attracts Orange Sulphur, Bay Checkerspot butterflies.
- Blooms in the spring through summer
| | | And now, for a few more annuals (including a few new-to-The Watershed-Nursery species!) | | |
Woolly Lotus
Acmispon heermanii
Available in 4″ pots for $7.70 each!
- Woolly lotus is a native legume also known by the common name Heermann’s bird’s-foot trefoil.
- It is a mat-forming perennial groundcover herb that spreads with straight stems along the ground and grows 1 – 5 ft in length.
- It is referred to as ‘woolly’ because it is covered in fuzzy little leaflets. The flower clusters bloom throughout spring and summer with petals that are a sunny shade of yellow and often have dark pink, orange, or reddish lobes, giving it a flame-like appearance.
- This species goes dormant in late summer/fall, so it would be a lovely choice for a vine-like ground cover in an informal setting where it can come and go with the seasons.
- New to TWN this year!
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American Bird’s-foot Trefoil
Acmispon americanus
Available in 4″ pots for $7.70 each!
- American Bird’s-foot Trefoil, also known as Spanish clover, is an annual herb in the Legume family that grows 1 ft. tall and wide.
- Its flowers have pink to white petals with pink veining and a yellow center. They bloom through the spring and summer.
- This species is not common in gardens, but is a useful plant for restoration projects in a variety of habitats throughout California. It is a larval host plant of several species of Blue and Skipper butterflies as well as the Presius Duskywing. Its pollen and nectar is a valued food source for bees as well, making this species the perfect addition to pollinator gardens.
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Common Tarweed
Centromadia pungens
Available in 4″ pots for $7.70 each!
- Common tarweed/spikeweed is an annual herb in the sunflower family that can grow up to 4 ft. tall.
- It produces showy arrays of yellow flower heads throughout the entire summer, and is one of the few species in its habitat that flowers so late in the season.
- This species naturally grows in grassy, wet, marshy places, so it’s a good option for an area with slow draining soil, standing water, or container gardening. It pairs well with Grindelia and Hemizonia species.
- Common tarweed is a host plant of the Spotted Straw Sun Moth and is commonly used in Bee gardens.
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Toothed Calicoflower
Downingia cuspidata
Available in RP pots for $3.80 each!
- Toothed Calicoflower is an adorable, petite but showy annual wildflower that grows on a branching erect stem up to ~4 in. tall. Its white, yellow, and purple blotched tubular flowers put on a dazzling show in late spring, almost like petite pansies!
- This is a great option to plant en masse near a pond, water feature, or wet meadow.
- Downingia must cross-pollinate to produce seeds. They are pollinated by solitary native bees, who collect their pollen to feed their offspring
- New to TWN this year!
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Collared Annual Lupine
Lupinus truncatus
Available in 4″ pots for $7.70 each!
- An upright annual wildflower, reaching 1-2 ft tall and 1 foot wide, Collared Annual Lupine is native to the coastal mountain ranges and canyons of California, from Baja to the Bay Area.
- Collared Annual Lupine can tolerate serpentine soils, and is adaptable to many soil types.
- Pleasant smelling flowers are loosely spaced along the stem, blooming in a deep magenta to purple hue.
- Collared annual lupine grows on slopes, in habitats such as chaparral and woodland, and pops up often in areas that have recently burned.
- Be sure protect the young tender leaves from birds and slugs!
- New to TWN this year!
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California Poppy Mystery Mix
Eschscholzia californica
Available in D-16 pots for $7.60 each!
- These plants were grown from seed gathered from our cultivar poppies of last spring! Cultivars included: Mahogany Red, Purple Gleam, Moonglow, Carmine King. The mystery is being unveiled as they bloom!
- Seed may be crosses between cultivars, may present true to the cultivar, or identical to the straight species! Enjoy the mystery, and let us know how it goes.
- Space 2 feet apart. All California poppies are drought-tolerant, self-seeding, and easy to grow in gardens. To avoid the self-seeding, simply remove the old flowers.
- Blooms March to October. In the landscape, use in borders, bulb cover, in containers, massing, bedding, and in rock gardens.
- New to TWN this year!
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‘Bee’ Well and Happy Spring from all of us at
The Watershed Nursery Cooperative!
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- Call, email, or visit us for all of your California native plant needs 🙂
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(510) 234-2222 | sales@thewatershednursery.com
Open Tuesday – Sunday 10am – 4pm
Closed Mondays & holidays
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