Sleep, Creep, & Leap: What to Expect in the First Three Years from your Native Garden

A native garden is a living work of art, its canvas stretching across the landscape and unfurling through time. While common ornamentals are bred to bloom fast and often fade just as quickly, establishing a thriving native garden requires a bit more patience. In return, California native plants offer deep-rooted resilience, habitat for wildlife, and an enduring beauty that evolves season after season.

The transformation of a native garden from bare soil to flourishing ecosystem year over year over year involves three phases: sleep, creep, and leap. Here's what that means, and what to expect in each stage.

Year 1: Sleep

In the first year, your garden might look... a little sleepy. While the ongoing changes to your landscape may not appear dramatic above ground, your new native plants, evolved to make the most of moisture tapped from deep below the seasonally dry surface, are expending a lot of energy to build a substantial root system. This is especially true for perennials, shrubs, and trees adapted to California’s long dry seasons and increasingly frequent periods of drought. Watering deeply but infrequently during the first year helps train your garden's roots to grow downward, providing valuable returns in the form of erosion control and long-term drought tolerance.

To ensure a beautiful garden in your first year, we typically sow an array of annuals from seed between the foundational plants within your landscape, providing lots of visual appeal and attracting the attention of pollinators and birds.

Year 2: Creep

The second year brings more obvious visible change. Native plants begin to stretch outward and fill in. You’ll see more consistent blooms, fuller foliage, and the early makings of structure across your landscape.

This is the year when wildlife really begins to notice the new habitat, too. Bees and butterflies will find their way to your garden early, followed by birds, then reptiles and amphibians. You may need to weed and do some light pruning to guide the garden's shape, but by now, the natives are beginning to outcompete invasives and settle into their roles.

Think of year two as the "teenage" phase—growing, adapting, finding balance.

Year 3 and beyond: Leap

The third year is magic.

By the third year, your garden takes off. Plants hit their stride, blooming with confidence, spreading joyfully, and attracting all sorts of pollinators and beneficial insects. If you’ve planted with layers—groundcovers, flowering perennials, structural shrubs or trees—you’ll now see a tapestry of color and form across the seasons.

This is the year where the rewards come daily. You may spot goldfinches picking seeds from tidy tips, hummingbirds sipping from California fuchsia, and salamanders laying eggs under a log placed just right. The habitat you've created is now alive, dynamic, and largely self-sustaining. From here on, wildflowers will reseed, and your native plant root systems are so deeply established that you will need no or very little irrigation to sustain constant blooms that shift in color and form throughout and over the years.

Nurturing Your New Landscape

A successful native garden doesn't need constant maintenance, but it does benefit from thoughtful care, especially in the early years:

• Watering: Deep and infrequent during establishment. Taper off in year 2-3. After year 2, our landscapes typically require no supplemental irrigation.

• Mulching: Helps suppress weeds and conserve soil moisture. There are lots of options in how to mulch, and we're happy to work with you to design the right approach for your needs and taste.

• Weeding: Critical in year 1 and 2 to give natives the upper hand. Focus on removing fast-growing clover, non-native grasses, and "escaped" ornamentals.

• Observation: Watch what thrives, where the pollinators go, and how the landscape evolves. Provide us with feedback and we can help you refine your garden design over time.

Why the Wait Is Worth It

In a culture of instant results, waiting three years might sound like a big ask. But what you get in return for a little patience is a landscape that works with nature, a garden that supports biodiversity, conserves water, and connects you to the rhythms of the land.