F6 LATIMES.COM
If you’ve ever walked into a na-
tive plant nursery and felt defeated
because — admit it — all the offer-
ings looked like 4-inch pots of
weeds, do we have the shopping/
planning guide for you: a set of easy-
to-carry flashcards that explain in
That’s why in 2016, staffers at the
Theodore Payne Foundation for
Wild Flowers & Native Plants began
tossing around the idea of creating
some good entry information into
the world of native plants, said Exe-
cutive Director Kitty Connolly.
“It was the height of the
drought-lawn rebate programs,
and lots of people were transform-
ing their yards,” Connolly said.
“Everybody needs to learn about
natives if we’re going to have them
in our future, but it’s difficult to get
information to everyone at once. We
wanted something that would be
useful to recreational gardeners
and professional landscapers,
aimed more at designing and plan-
ning than maintaining.”
The foundation got a grant from
the National Park Service to work
with other native plant promoters
in Southern California: the Tree of
Life Nursery in San Juan Capi-
strano, Rancho Santa Ana Botanic
Garden in Claremont and the
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.
The grant provided a facilitator,
Patrick Johnston, “who was the
soul of patience,” said Lili Singer, di-
rector of special projects at Theo-
dore Payne. “Getting everybody to
agree on a list of plants was a game-
stopper for me, but he helped us
step by step through the process.
We hoped it would take 18 months,but from the time of our first confer-
ence call to the time the finished
cards arrived, it took three years.”
Ultimately the group decided to
create a series of flash cards, said
Mike Evans, founder of the Tree of
Life Nursery. “You can take them
apart and spread them out on a ta-
ble to see what plants go with other
plants. They don’t replace a website
or great books on the shelf; they’re
just easier to carry around and use
for planning.”
Singer wrote most of the text,
with editing and contributions by
Evans. And Carlos Flores, a Theo-
dore Payne volunteer and National
Park Service employee, created the
design and made all the trans-
lations into Spanish.
The organizers “had quite a
lively discussion about whether the
text should also be in Spanish,”
Connolly said. “There was push-
back from people who wanted more
info about each plant in English,
but the landscape industry in
Southern California is largely
staffed with people who speak
Spanish. We wanted to create a way
for everyone to be able to talk about
these native plants.”
This way, she said, the cards pro-
vide a bridge for Spanish-speaking
gardeners and their English-speak-
ing clients.
While the cards are relativelysmall, they pack a lot of informa-
tion. You can tell at a glance how tall
and wide a particular plant will
grow, when it blooms, how quickly it
grows, what birds and animals it at-
tracts, and how much water and
sun it needs to thrive.
The cards aren’t a definitive list
of Southern California native
plants. They don’t include milk-
weed, for instance. But the decision
was to create an entry-level guide
that features some of the showiest
plants in the native palette. “Milk-
weed is a very important habitat
plant but it’s not much of a looker,”
Connolly said.
The cards were designed to stay
affordable, Connolly said, with a
suggested retail price of $17. They
are available online through the
Theodore Payne website and in the
stores at Tree of Life Nursery, Ran-
cho Santa Ana Botanic Garden and
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.
And finally, Connolly says, the
cards are part of a stealth plan to
make native plants available at all
Southern California nurseries. If
people have the cards, they can
more easily request the plants they
want.
“If there’s no demand, local
nurseries won’t stock the natives,
but they will respond to demand,”
she said. “That’s one of my secret
uses for the cards.”CARDS
are in English
and Spanish.Ricardo DeAratanha
Los Angeles TimesA low-tech guide to selecting native plants
By Jeanette Marantosbrilliant color what those nonde-
script little plants will look like
when they’re all grown up.
Native plants just aren’t that
easy to understand for traditional
gardeners, many of whom who may
not realize, for instance, that a small
pot of quailbush (Atriplex lenti-
formisssp. breweri) can quickly
grow into a 10-foot-wide, 8-foot-
tall monster, great for shelter-
ing birds and stabilizing
slopes but perhaps not
what you hoped
for outside your
bedroom
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HOME & DESIGN
thinking this person will be in your
life for a specific and short amount
of time, and there’s something nice
about that.”
But as a frequent rider, Gobo
has strong opinions about pooling
etiquette. “After a long day of work a
few weeks ago, I was tired as all hell.
I ordered a Lyft shared ride, got in,
and there were already two other
passengers,” he said. “The passen-
ger in the front did not shut up the
whole time. And the other passen-
ger in the back seat was eating a full
meal out of some Tupperware. It
had a really strong odor that was
pretty nauseating.”
Elizabeth Denton, 35, is a free-
lance beauty writer who relocated
to downtown L.A. in 2018. Having
lived in New York City for 10 years,
she never needed a driver’s license
and still isn’t convinced she needs
one now. She takes UberPool multi-
ple times per week to get from her
apartment to various work events
and appointments across the city,
and her experiences have been
mixed. “One time this girl flipped
out because I opened the door and
she had the entire back seat set up
like a vanity,” said Denton. “Her
products were out, and she was
putting on a full face of makeup. I
politely asked if she could move her
stuff, and she got so mad and
screamed at me to sit in the front. I
was like, ‘I’m not sitting in the front;
it’s weird to sit in the front.’
“People are so entitled for taking
like a $4 Pool ride,” she continued.
“Then there’s always the people
talking on their phone in the Pool or
asking to be dropped off first. I’m
like, ‘If you want to behave that way,
just order a regular Uber.’”
While Denton says most of her
Pool coriders are never seen or
heard from again, on rare occa-
sions, they have kept in touch.
“Once in a while there is good ener-
gy. Recently the driver was a wom-
an and super nice, and it was all girls
in the car. The driver was a musi-
cian, everyone had cool jobs and we
all really connected and decided to
exchange Instagrams. They still
‘like’ my pictures every now and
again.” Travel publicist Tatia Pacey,
24, uses Uber Pool to commute to
work every day. Having grown up in
Singapore, Korea and Taiwan, she
“never really had the opportunity to
learn how to drive,” so she relies on
ride-hailing apps to get from her
apartment in West Hollywood to
her office in Santa Monica.
During one encounter this
spring, she shared a ride with an up-
and-coming musician, a young
woman about her age, and the two
hit it off. “We connected on Insta-
gram,” says Pacey. “She let me
know about an upcoming gig she
had in Silver Lake. I passed the in-
vite along to a few friends, and we all
ended up going, and it was a great
night. I haven’t seen her since, but
every now and again we like each
other’s stuff on Instagram.”
A similar encounter happenedto Los Feliz resident Aparna Bal-
akumar, 23, who originally hails
from Sydney. She is licensed to
drive in Australia but is so accus-
tomed to driving on the opposite
side of the road that she has yet to
commit to a car of her own in Cali-
fornia. She too relies on ride-hailing
apps to get around the city.
While shared rides often begin
as awkward, silent affairs, said Bal-
akumar, the conversation tends to
start rolling when fellow passengers
hear her Australian accent. On one
occasion, it wasn’t until several
minutes into the ride that Balaku-
mar broke the ice and started to
make small talk, at which time both
women realized they were the same
age and both recent transplants toLos Angeles from Australia. “We
really hit it off,” said Balakumar.
“We exchanged numbers and kept
in touch, then a few weeks later met
up for a drink and had a fun night
out. It can be so hard to meet people
in L.A. because everyone is in their
car, alone all the time, so who knows
if we would have met otherwise.”
On some occasions Angelenos
have found romantic connections
through ride-hailing.
On a different instance this
spring, Balakumar shared a ride
with a man about her age. “We got to
talking about whereabouts in the
city we worked, and it turns out our
offices are in buildings opposite
each other. We probably pass by
each other every day but had never
met.”
The conversation then turned
toward what the two liked to do in
their free time and then toward
comedy, “something he was pursu-
ing.” Balakumar could sense her
destination was coming up and that
their time together would soon
come to an end if she didn’t speak
up — so she did.
“I was like, ‘There’s so much cool
performing arts stuff to see in L.A.,
we should go to something some-
time,’ and he agreed, then we ex-
changed numbers. It was so smooth
and really unlike me. We went to a
comedy show a few nights later and
got a drink and it was really pleas-
ant. I don’t think either of us was
feeling anything romantic, but it
was a fun night.”The aspiring comedian texted
her again after their initial date, but
Balakumar did not write back. “I
wasn’t that into it; I was mostly just
proud of myself for making a move,”
she said. “So many times you jump
out of the car before you get a
chance to exchange details with
someone, and you might never see
them again.”
Candor, it turns out, can have its
rewards. Such was the case for fash-
ion stylist Tiffani Newkirk, who took
an UberPool from her home in Hol-
lywood in December 2017. “I never
use Uber, but Lyft was surging
really bad,” said Newkirk. “Lance
was sitting in the back seat when I
got in, and I’m a talker. My mom
taught me that you can always
judge a man by his shoes, whether
they’re clean or dirty, and Lance
had nice shoes on. So I started talk-
ing to him about his shoes, and we
got to talking and exchanged num-
bers. The next day he hit me up and
asked me to the movies.”
“I brought her to see ‘Star Wars,’
then after the movies we went out
dancing to this West African place
in South Central,” said Lance Bry-
ant, an entertainer.
One month later Newkirk’s and
Bryant’s mothers suffered health
conditions that required surgery, at
which time Newkirk realized her
connection with Bryant was deeper
than a casual fling. “We were placed
together for a reason,” she said.
Ten months after their initial
ride, the two were married.LANCE BRYANT, an entertainer, and Tiffani Newkirk-Bryant, a fashion stylist, met while taking an UberPool ride in 2017 and got married less than a year later.
Dania MaxwellLos Angeles TimesBuckle up and find a friend
[Ride,from F1]
‘We really hit it off.
We exchanged
numbers and kept
in touch, then a few
weeks later met up
for a drink and had
a fun night out.’
—APARNABALAKUMAR,
who met a fellow Australian
transplant while sharing a ride