Nurseries and Organizations for California native plants

The organizations below all sell plants (sometimes only at sales) and some have other missions related to California flora. 

1. •The Theodore Payne Foundation (www.theodorepayne.org) in Sun Valley, CA is another good resource and has native plants, seeds, and bulbs available for sale year-round.  We regularly buy plants here.
   

2. •Matilija Nursery (www.matilijanursery.com) in Moorepark, CA has thousands of native plants for sale. We also buy many plants here.
   

3. •Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden (www.rsabg.org) in Claremont, CA has acres of native plants, educational programs, and resources for gardening with native plants.  They also have plant sales in the spring and fall (prime time for planting natives), which we go to.
   

4. •Las Pilitas Nursery (www.laspilitas.com) has locations in Escondido, CA and Santa Margarita, CA, as well as a website with lots of photos and information.  We haven’t been there yet but others have recommended them, they have a big inventory, and we often get information from their website.
   

Botany

1. • tchester.org - Tom Chester, a relentless botanizer, has a wealth of information on his website, including his trail guides listing plants encountered along trails in Southern California.
   

2. • www.calflora.net - Michael L. Charters runs this awesome site with a prodigious number of photos and profiles of California plants.  His index of photographs is a great resource.
   

Exploring California

California has great opportunities for exploring public lands in stock 4WD passenger vehicles (as opposed to, say, four-wheeling just for the sake of four-wheeling).  We’ve used the following books to plan our trips and highly recommend them if you want to explore California a little further off the beaten path:

1. •Sierra Nevada Byways by Tony Huegel (available on amazon.com).  This compact book has 50 trips throughout the Sierras and neighboring ranges. There are other books in this series which we haven’t gotten yet, but based on our good experiences with this book, we’ll be buying them in the future.
   

2. •Backcountry Adventures Southern California by Peter Massey and Jeanne Wilson (available on amazon.com).  This large book has many trips throughout Southern California and has highly detailed driving directions (including GPS coordinates and mileage for all cross-roads an d trails).  It includes a guide to plants and animals likely to be encountered. 
   

California History

California has a mythical history of Native Americans pioneers, miners, ranchers missions, and Native Americans.  The real history is much darker, grittier, informative, and more interesting.

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