Growing outdoors

Gardening.

Everything we publish for growing outdoors: California natives, vegetables in containers, the pests and helpful insects you'll meet in the yard, the pollinators doing the work, how to read a leaf or a flower, and tools we've tested. Bay Area first, and every guide is cited.

California chaparral and oak-woodland landscape: golden grasslands with coast live oaks, California fuchsia in coral bloom, and California buckwheat in the foreground, hazy ridges in distance

California Natives

Plants native to the Bay Area, and how to grow them in a real yard.

15 plants

Bright-window interior scene: weathered wooden window box planted with basil, parsley, chives, trailing nasturtium and cherry tomato vine on a sunny urban apartment windowsill

The Window Box

Growing on a sill, a balcony or a fire escape.

Just started

Six common plant pests in a row, illustrated in vintage natural history register on cream paper: a thrips, a two-spotted spider mite, a fungus gnat, a seven-spotted lady beetle, an aphid and a mealybug

The Field Manual

Name the pest or problem on your plant, then deal with it.

6 entries

Specimen-tray of six substrate ingredients (perlite, pumice, pine bark fines, charcoal, coco coir, and calcined clay) in wooden trays on kraft paper

The Substrate Library

Which potting mix or garden soil to use and why, including the recipes we use ourselves.

15 guides

Seven Bay Area pollinators on a spray of California buckwheat (a hover fly, wool carder bee, bumble bee, carpenter bee, anise swallowtail and white-lined sphinx moth, with an Anna's hummingbird at California fuchsia), illustrated in vintage natural history register on cream paper

The Pollinator Library

The Bay Area pollinators doing the work in your garden, and how to tell them apart.

Just started

Specimen-tray of six gardening hand tools (bypass pruner, brass hand lens, pump sprayer, moisture meter, folding pruning saw, and pH meter probe) on kraft paper

The Workshop

Tools, tested the way we'd test a recipe.

Just started

A hand-colored engraved plate of leaves laid in a sweep across aged cream paper: horse chestnut, ash, a heart-shaped leaf, an arrowhead leaf, two rounded leaves, a toothed autumn-colored leaf, clover, maple, a feathery mimosa leaf and a slender willow leaf

The Leaf Library

Learn to read a leaf, one shape at a time.

Just started

A hand-colored engraved plate of flowering stems gathered into one arc on aged cream paper: tulip, lavender spike, foxglove raceme, lilac panicle, yarrow corymb, an onion-family umbel, Queen Anne's lace, a daisy-type head, a calla lily with its spadix, and hanging birch catkins

The Flower Library

Learn to read a flower, one form at a time.

6 forms

Browse every shelf in the Library →

Seasonal feature

Planting in fall

Why Fall Planting Works for Natives, Shrubs, and Trees 15 min What the Soil Is Actually Doing in Autumn 8 min Prepping Beds Before the Rains: What the Evidence Actually Supports 12 min The Santa Clara County Planting Calendar — when to sow all of it Tool

Where to begin

Start here.

California Fuchsia (Epilobium canum) in full late-summer bloom, dense patch of scarlet-orange tubular flowers on slender stems in warm golden light

California Natives · No. 01

California Fuchsia: The Native That Saves Late Summer

The drought-tolerant native that hits its scarlet-orange stride in August, right when the rest of the native garden has gone quiet. The kickoff entry of the inaugural Natives season, and the one to read if you're new to California gardening.

10 min read For Apprentices & Growers May 2026