There are no plants in the world comparable to them in romance. The plants the padres found when first they set foot on California soil. The plants nature herself, the first of all gardeners, placed here. Plants from the fragrant chaparral belt, from the mountains, from the valleys, from the seacoast, growing luxuriantly in your yard.
- Theodore Payne, 1872-1963

Did you know, more than 5,000 different species of plants are native to California, and about a third of them occur naturally nowhere else? Imagine the rich diversity of flora here in the Los Angeles area hundreds of years ago. Those who have experienced some of what remains in wild spots and protected gardens can feel the beauty, importance and, yes, the romance of our Californian plants.

The more I learn about our indigenous flora, the less interesting I find manicured green lawns dotted with imported flowering shrubs. As spring begins, imagine how beautiful and uplifting it would be to walk up or down Janss Steps, accompanied on either side by orange poppies and purple and blue lupines (instead of grass, ivy and lantana). Without benefit of a calendar, you would understand it is spring.

As a close neighbor, Extension student, faculty spouse, volunteer and then staff member at the Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden, my view of the UCLA landscape has evolved.

First, I just appreciated the greenery and beauty of the plantings. Then I began to look at the diversity of flora, particularly the trees. Now when I walk on campus, I look for native plants and places where more could be added. Have you enjoyed the stately, leaning, light-barked California sycamores north of Schoenberg Music Hall? Although the trees are native, the shrubs beneath them are not. Why not plant some berried native shrubs, like toyon or creeping barberry, to feed birds? How about replacing small patches of grass with native bunchgrasses, milkweeds for the butterflies, blue-eyed grass and California buttercup? Native plantings promote habitat for native birds and insects.

I wish that public institutions would realize the important role they could play in restoring our California landscape, recreating natural habitat, protecting threatened flora and fauna and harmonizing with natural cycles of rain and drought. UCLA has the potential to dramatize the beauty and benefits of native plantings, perhaps inspiring people to create California gardens of their own.

A show of support by staff, faculty and students should be sufficient to energize the administration to experiment with going native.

Where might you go to learn about native plants? Start at UCLA with a walk through the native and Mediterranean sections of the botanical garden, enjoying the fragrance of the salvias (sage) as you brush by. Take a day trip to local mountains or deserts to see carpets of blooming wildflowers. Visiting gardens or nurseries specializing in indigenous plants is another way to enjoy and learn.

Elizabeth Schwartz is executive director of the Theodore Payne Foundation for Native Plants and Wildflowers, a nonprofit nursery in Sun Valley. Go to www.theodorepayne.org.