By Lee Gordon Native Garden CommitteeThis is part of a short series on some of our local native plants that are superb for our native gardens, but which are largely overlooked.One of my favorite places to walk is along the ridge leading to the Ramona Overlook in southeast Poway. This is a lesser-traveled fork of the Iron Mountain Trail, and it traverses some of the most beautiful chaparral you will ever see. It is what I wish my garden could look like. The plants here are diverse, robust, floriferous, and perfectly spaced. And nobody fertilizes them. Obviously, these plants need nutrients just like any other plant, but they get what they need from the native soil. This is the underlying point when we hear that native plants don’t need fertilizer, and it is certainly true.

By Tom OberbauerThe Caliente Wilderness Study Area appears as an L shape on its back, appearing like a leftover piece of land among a Tribal Reservation, a State Park, Bureau of Land Management land and other forest service lands. It is located north of Warner Springs, west of the Los Coyotes Reservation, south of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and east of the forest service lands near Indian Flats. It appears to be uninspiring when examining it on a map; however, it contains a mountainous series of ridges and valleys that range between 4,000 feet and 5,000 feet. It supports one other very important feature: a significant and isolated stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail.