Environmental Landscaping Ideas for the California Foothills

Ground Cover

• Pachysandra, common yarrow, the carpet bugle (ajuga), star jasmine and creeping mahonia are good choices for ground cover. These plants offer a variety of color and seasonal blooms. Exclude English Ivy and Algerian Ivy from your landscape plan. They can attach to and kill trees native to the foothills and mountains. Periwinkle also is bad for the local environment since it can spread rapidly outside of where someone plants it planted and kill local plant life.

Grasses

• When adding grasses to a landscaping project in the foothills, pick species that are not fire hazards or that do not easily take over areas outside your landscaping. The best grasses are California fescue, blue oat grass, giant wild rye, deer grass, or New Zealand flax. Don't plant giant reed or giant cane as it can overgrow along streams and block the natural flow of water. Especially don't plant jubatagrass or pampasgrass. These grasses have seeds that travel very easily in strong winds and can invade other areas of the foothills. These grasses also are a fire hazard.

Shrubs

• The sticky monkey flower, the potentilla, strawberry tree, forsythia, and the Christmas or holly berry are admirable shrub choices for an environmentally healthy landscape. Avoid numerous shrub species to because they will invade the natural environment by overgrowing or killing other local plants. Some of the plants are also fire hazards, always a consideration in California. The invasive shrubs include foxglove, Himalayan blackberry, perennial pepperweed, tall whitetop, oblong spurge, Dalmatian toadflax, yellow toadflax, scarlet wisteria, bridal broom, French broom, Portuguese broom, Scotch broom or Spanish broom.

Trees

• Choosing trees for your landscaping project can be the most expensive choices you make. To keep the foothills safe from fire hazard or tree species that can invade and kill other plants, avoid the tree of heaven, the black locust, the salt cedar and the Chinese tallow tree. Trees good for the local environment of the foothills are the hybrid crape myrtle, the European white birch, and the Greene's mountain ash or mountain ash.