Shade is an important part of any garden, whether it is over a seating area, protecting understory plants from the sun or cooling the southwest side of the house. Yet many yards just aren’t large enough for a big tree. You are in luck, because Moosa Creek offers many native trees that won’t overwhelm your garden.

A lovely specimen tree that only grows to 15 feet, Manzanita’s red bark makes it a show stopper. Both the ‘Austin Griffiths’ and ‘Dr. Hurd’ varieties have lovely pink flowers and are evergreen.  A deciduous smaller tree is the Western Redbud, which has year-round interest with its small fuchsia-colored spring flowers, and heart-shaped summer leaves that turn yellow before dropping. In early spring you’ll see bursts of beautiful smoky blue or white flowers from the California lilacs along roadways. Big Pod Ceanothus is a taller variety that can be trained into a small tree or left as a bush, and will reward you and native pollinators with a late winter explosion of white flowers.

You can have that forest look in a small tree with Arizona Cypress. It can be used as a specimen plant, or as a maintenance-free windbreak or tall hedge, and it’s peeling red bark and wonderful fragrance will add more interest as well.

If you have a wet area then the Arroyo Willow can be easily shaped into a tree or left to grow as a large sprawling shrub. In spring it will be covered in white catkins laced with bright yellow pollen and the grey-green slightly fuzzy leaves, set off by the reddish bark, will turn yellow in the fall. This is an exceptional habitat plant for many species of bird and butterfly.

Desert olives are adapted to a wide variety of California plant communities, thus making it highly adaptable for the home garden. The small chartreuse flowers that appear in spring are fragrant. Male and female flowers are borne on separate plants. Male trees are fantastic patio and street trees as they do not bear fruit. Female trees are great habitat plants as they produce abundant amounts of blue-black berries that birds and many other small animals relish.

There is no reason why our treescape should disappear when there are many native trees to suit any property, so treat yourself and wildlife to one of these beautiful specimens.

Diane and Miranda Kennedy operate Finch Frolic Garden Permaulture at www.vegetariat.com.