Mike

I live in North West Nevada almost in California. Our Ecoregion is: Cold Desert, Central Basins and range, Sierra Nevada influenced semi arid hills and basin. Quite a mouth full. In short: cold in the winter hot and dry in the summer, with little moisture. I believe we get about 8 inches of rain on average per year.  I have clay soil with pockets of sand. I have grown vegetables for a long time with some success. Last summer we had very bad smoke from the California fires, so even the vegi's didn't get enough sun light. This has become a summer problem. O' and we only have 4 months between frosts to grow. I have counted birds in the Cornell bird count for 12 seasons now, but it finally dawned on me that I could get new and different birds if I planted more native plants. As you can see I am a slow learner. I have Jeffery pines in part of my yard but they all suffer with bug damage. I have a number of Buffalo Berry bushes which the birds love but they only have berries several months of the year. I leave my vegi's to go to seed and don't clean up the yard which helps ground feeder, but I want to expand the native ornamental's. The problem here is where to find plants that will survive this climate. The local nursery's don't carry much native plants. They seem to like Southern California types. I finally found a local nursery in Truckee California about 60 miles from me. So I will have to travel some to purchase locally. The picture is my front yard view.