April 2025 Newsletter: Wildflowers in the Garden

Greetings, friends – 

Our gardens are at their peak in April. The rush of excitement and the ephemeral wildflowers that are early spring have morphed into a green fulsomeness. The trees and shrubs have leafed out, but still feel fresh and eager for summer. And if you are in California and know where to look, there are carpets of wildflowers. Those in the more northern summer-dry climates will have to wait another month, but we are hoping you will enjoy this month’s newsletter feature of an April superbloom in Carrizo Plain.

~ Saxon Holt and Nora Harlow 

This Month’s Blog – Western Mugwort

With the common name of mugwort and a summertime floral display that can only be described as underwhelming, Artemisia douglasiana is on no published lists of the top perennials for a knockout spring or summer garden. Mugwort is humble and unassuming, yet handsome in its own distinctive way and a workhorse in revegetation projects, especially where subjected to both drought and seasonal flooding.

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Instagram Memories

From April 15, 2023 –
“It’s California native plant week, let’s celebrate wildflowers in gardens. Layia platyglossa, Tidy Tips in this Los Angeles garden by Urban Water Group.”

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April in Carrizo Plain

Carrizo Plain National Monument is a California native grassland preserve in San Luis Obispo County that is well known for spectacular carpets of annual wildflowers in a good year. A superbloom needs just the right winter rainfall and just the right early spring warm sunshine for a massive display and this year is not expected to be super.

The Plain itself is a wide valley between two mountain ranges, the Temblor and Caliente, which provide a great number of dips and gullies for a kaleidoscope of blooms and patterns. Here the improbable looking Desert Candle (Caulanthus inflatus) sprouting up in a mass of Monolopia lanceolata is framed in front of distant poppies and lupine.

Monolopia lanceolata, sometimes called Hillside Daisy, is the most common wildflower in Carrizo Plain, with literally acres of it in bloom across entire vistas. And here it is again providing a flowery base to one of the native grasses.

Nature has a way of spreading the various wildflowers around that somehow harmonizes and makes the natural beauty seem effortless. The observant gardener can adapt this in cultivation. Note the yellow, blue, and magenta color scheme in these next two photos.

The planting of the campus quad (managed by Professor Haven Kiers) used wildflowers readily available as seed and was planted years before the superbloom, but no doubt nature’s color combination informed the gardener.

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Links We Like

Sponsored by the California Native Plant Society, Calscape provides garden design inspiration and plant information.

We would love to hear about any resources you would like to pass along. We all get these snippets from our news feeds and inboxes. Let’s share the best and we will keep the running list so you can find them later on the Links We Like page.