dormancy

Many of the native plants are in their summer dormancy now, but the garden is still a quilt of greens in every shade, along with native roses and non-natives like lavender and lion’s tail for splashes of color.

Margaret embraces her garden’s dormancy.

That goal has come to pass: Something is always blooming in her yard, even during summer dormancy when many native plants go brown or die back to protect themselves from the heat.

De Anda said he was relieved by Anaya’s reaction to summer dormancy, which is kind of Southern California’s twist on winter dormancy, when many plants lose their leaves and go brown in colder parts of the world.

“I’m hoping we can get past that. A lot of people mistake dormancy for dead; they need to understand that if they just leave those plants, they’ll come back after the rains come. If everybody jumped in with Aurora’s enthusiasm, we would definitely have a very different landscape across Southern California.”