The Coastal Gardener:

Avid gardeners like to visit great gardens, wherever they may be. Many local petal pushers occasionally set down their shovels and make the drive up to Huntington Gardens in San Marino, the L.A. Arboretum in Arcadia or even Descanso Gardens in La Cañada. We all like to visit these great botanic gardens, finding something new on every visit.

Unfortunately, many gardeners overlook the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Gardens, in Claremont, less than an hour away.

For uncertain reasons, Rancho Santa Ana is often overlooked by gardeners. It seems to be the stepchild of Southern California’s big botanic gardens.

That’s a shame, because this is one of the best places to discover and appreciate plants and to get a sense of what Southern California was like before suburbia took over.

The beauty of Rancho Santa Ana is understated and unpretentious. It is a relaxed place, with plants, people and wildlife all in harmony. No clipped hedges or contrived designs.

The Huntington and the L.A. Arboretum separate their gardens into plant collections, organized either by a region of the world or by a plant type.

At these gardens you’ll find the Chinese garden, the Japanese Garden, the Australian collection, the tropical collection, the desert collection and so on.

But at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden you’ll only find one collection: the California collection. This garden is exclusively a celebration of California’s immense plant diversity and heritage. Near the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, this huge garden is devoted entirely and exclusively to California’s native plants.

A walk through the gardens at Rancho Santa Ana is almost like a walk back in time. A time when California was really California, not pretending to be someplace else. There you will discover thousands of local native plants, most of which will be far less familiar to you than distant plants like foxgloves, boxwoods and agapanthus.

On the garden’s 86 rambling acres is the most extensive collection of California native plants assembled anywhere in the world.

The garden is also alive with wildlife. While walking through the garden last week I saw California quail, a great horned owl, squirrels, jays, monarch butterflies and much more.

Now through May is an ideal time to visit Rancho Santa Ana. The temperatures are cool and the plants are at their peak.

Last week the garden’s huge selection of manzanitas were at their floral peak, as were the coast silk-tassel bushes (Garrya). Flowers were already adorning the bush island poppies (Dendromecon), wooly blue curls (Trichostema), wild currents (Ribes), monkeyflowers (Mimulus), coast sunflowers (Encelia) and several ceanothus.

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Gardens is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.

Docent-led garden walks and numerous seminars and workshops are available on most weekends. For directions, a seminar and event schedule, and more information, visit www.rsabg.org.

Ask Ron

Question: I have an avocado tree that became diseased a few years ago and has never fully recovered. I want to replace it but would like to know when is the best time to do so, what kind of soil do they like, and are there certain varieties that do better in our coastal climate?

Jacob

Newport Beach

Answer: The optimum planting time for avocados is from about March through summer. Being sub-tropical plants they want to be planted when the soil is warm and days are long. Most important is that avocados need extremely good drainage.

As for the variety, that really is best answered with a dialogue; there are too many variables. Certainly Haas (black pebbly skin) and Fuerte (green smooth skin) are the most popular and are excellent as home garden trees. But different people have different taste preferences. If you are looking for a smaller tree, I would suggest holiday, a new introduction. Again, there are many varieties and the selection can be as complicated or as simple as one chooses. For me, I would be happy with any of these three varieties.

ASK RON your toughest gardening questions, and the expert nursery staff at Roger’s Gardens will come up with an answer. Please include your name, phone number and city, and limit queries to 30 words or fewer. E-mail stumpthegardener@rogersgardens.com, or write to Plant Talk at Roger’s Gardens, 2301 San Joaquin Hills Road, Corona del Mar, CA 92625.

RON VANDERHOFF is the Nursery Manager at Roger’s Gardens, Corona del Mar.