Deer-Resistant Picks

An exceptionally showy grass-like rush, with striking copper-colored ‘pom-pom’ flowers and seedheads. Daggerleaf rush is one of the plants that is...

Possibly the largest and showiest of our native onions, as the name suggests, this is a species of damp spaces. All parts of this 3-foot-tall plant...

Defiant and otherworldly. Crimson and silver. This western thistle is a plant of some certain magnificence. And, it most certainly is not a weed. ...

Also known as alpine coltsfoot, this large leafy plant (roughly reminiscent of rhubarb) is an inhabitant of moist, full sun to partially shaded gro...

Silky lupine shows up where the soil is thin, the sun relentless, and ancient stories are written upon the landscape. Its silver-soft leaves catch ...

Ornate and improbable…a wild lupine with flowers that can be purple, pink, cream, and yellow all at the same time… Endemic to disjunct, dry, slopin...

Not a grass, but rather a small iris-relative wearing a grassy disguise.  California blue-eyed grass occupies a more limited southerly range than o...

While we aren’t yet ready to call this a landrace variety, this chives population has does quite well for us in the maritime rain shadow region of ...

A prolific re-seeding annual, a small plant that turns hillsides ocean blue in spring, and a plant that can often persist among invasives…those are...

Yes, it looks like a dandelion, but, no, it isn’t a dandelion. Larger (up to almost 2-feet tall!), and quite ridiculously popular with many flower ...

Distantly related to the European horehound (used in candy flavoring), American water horehound is a native mint with interestingly toothed leaves,...

Some people look across a grassy canopy, and see a sort of green blur or tangle of semi-uniformity. This isn’t necessarily an inaccurate impression...

An excellently bunchy, leafy, long-lived western forb of dry, low fertility soils.  Roundleaf alumroot lives life on cliffs, rocky outcrops, and ta...

The Great Central Plain of California…was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to th...

The most vibrant population of Menzies’ larkspur we’ve ever encountered was in a low, sandy coastal back dune, a stone’s throw from a small acrid-s...

The essence of coastal vegetation, American dunegrass (called sea lyme in old speak), is a circumpolar perennial grass, occurring both across the N...

Among lupines, this is one of the great annual workhorse species of the west – notably from northern California, southward into Arizona. It’s a pla...

A sprawling green and golden ground cover. That might be the best way to describe this shorter, clumping relative of taller, more upright gumweed s...

Named for enormous underground tubers that can grow to the size of an adult human, this exceptional native cucumber relative is a perennial vine. ...

Kamchatka lily is one of the more enigmatic wildflowers of the northern Pacific coast – a plant of foggy mornings, damp coastal grounds, bears, anc...

California buckwheat pulses with life along dry hillsides. Native from Southern Oregon, throughout California, and expanses of the Southwest, this ...

One of the earliest emerging western milkweeds, woolly pod is possibly uniquely important to the western monarch butterfly population – likely prov...

Our western answer to the more well known Pycnanthemum species of eastern prairies – a supreme pollinator magnet – deeply, lushly fragrant and soft...

Oregon geranium is a soft-leaved spring perennial, a woodland edge and oak savanna species that is luminous in filtered light. Pollinated by small ...