August 2025 Newsletter: August Seedheads in the Garden

Greetings, friends –

We can’t peek into your garden, but in our gardens, we have really been noticing seedheads this late summer. See below for the monthly garden photo feature.

Seedheads are Mother Nature’s way of getting ready for the rainy season, and of course, a way to feed the birds. There is a satisfying sort of beauty with this cyclical nature of the seasons, and the green season is certainly winding down.

In summer-dry climates as gardens slow down, settling into summer dormancy, we begin to appreciate beauty in ways very different from lush, green summer gardens elsewhere in the world.

By taking our cues from nature, we see the beauty of summer dormancy in brown hills and dry stream beds, dried flowers, and seeds. We hope you find a beauty in nature this time of year; and we also hope you’re preparing your own home for the fire season (see the blog post below).

~ Saxon Holt and Nora Harlow

August Blog Post:
Zone Zero Landscape Code

Following years of devastating fires, in 2020 California modified its wildfire defensible space law by passing Assembly Bill 3074. This is when we first heard the term Zone Zero, the 5-foot zone immediately next to a house that is supposed to be free of any flammable materials, including vegetation.

Almost every gardener I know began to panic.

Read On

Instagram Memories

August 12, 2021

“Don’t be in a rush to tidy up your late-summer garden. An acceptably neat appearance can be achieved by cutting back a few of the most prominent plants and leaving the rest for wildlife…”

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A Seedhead Aesthetic

Seedheads found at the ends of their flower’s dried pedicel do not just announce food to the birds: they provide architecture and drama to the late summer garden. Many garden styles benefit from allowing seedheads to show off within the design while being integrated into habitat.

Salvia leucophylla (California native purple sage) is one of the many California Salvia whose seedheads are just as attractive as the flower. Placed at the edge of a border by a path (where you can brush into the fragrance) the seedheads will reach out and be noticed.

Allium ampeloprasum (Elephant Garlic) has solitary seedheads on tall scapes, and as seen here bunched in a bioswale garden at UC Davis, they create a vertical element design statement with a series of upside down exclamation points.

Eriogonum umbellatum v. aureum ‘Kannah Creek’, from western Colorado, with fading flowers in Phil van Soelen’s native plant garden.

Get More Ideas in our Book

Links We Like

Cal Fire website has lots of information about current codes and practices, and their info page for Community Wildfire Preparedness is a hub of data and official links.

We would love to hear about any resources you’d 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.