Learn about California native plants for wildlife

Sure, bees and butterflies visit a wide variety of flowers, but some plants are definitely more important for their individual species than others, providing habitat as well as meals.

Those vital habitat builders are known as “keystone plants” – and your garden should have more.

Learn more at a free workshop at 10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 20, when the Placer County master gardeners present “California Native Plants for Habitat Gardening.”

Open to the public, this 90-minute workshop will be held at the Roseville Utility Exploration Center and use the center’s native landscape as examples.

“In this workshop, you will learn about the importance of native keystone plants which are unique components of local food webs, providing habitat for birds, butterflies, bees and other wild creatures,” say the organizers. “View a colorful selection of native plants that will provide beauty as well as habitat in your home garden.”

Some keystones are well known such as valley oaks and native willows; those plants support a wide variety of wildlife. Others are more narrow in appeal. Butterflies, for example, have specific keystones for their species such as monarchs and milkweed or gulf fritillaries and passionvine.

Keystones can support a wider variety of wildlife. Native lupines, for example, provide nectar and pollen for bees (bumblebees in particular) and butterflies, seeds and foliage for birds and mammals and nesting habitat for some native bees.

And they benefit people, too, as part of a colorful, water-wise, sustainable landscape.

The Roseville Utility Exploration Center is located at 1501 Pleasant Grove Blvd., Roseville.

For details: https://ucanr.edu/site/uc-master-gardeners-placer-county/event/california-native-plants-habitat-gardening-uec