From left to right: zygadene, soap-plant, blue-and-white lupine Plant drawings by Margaret Warriner Buck, from M.E. Parsons, Wildflowers of California, 1897.

LISA OWENS-VIANI ONCE PLANTED WITH water-guzzling exotic species that were difficult to maintain, many of California's state-managed roadsides now sparkle with bright orange poppies, sky blue lupines, and silver-green native grasses.

The switch to a wilder, less tended look did not come about overnight, nor did it come easily. As so often in cases of radical change, it took citizen pressure to convince the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to alter its roadside management practices, which "in the 1980s," according to Caltrans Landscape Architect Ralph Carhart, "took a hard, chemically-reliant, economics-driven approach."

When coastal residents in Marin, Mendocino, and Humboldt counties won an injunction preventing Caltrans from spraying herbicides along Highway 1, "we came to our senses," says Carhart. "We realized we needed a lot more tools in our toolbox to solve problems in an economic and safe way." Until then, "safe" had meant ensuring visibility and reducing fire hazards. Now "safe" also came to mean reducing worker and community exposure to herbicide spray.

At about the same time, the California Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides and other citizen groups, aided by the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, threatened to seek a statewide injunction against Caltrans unless it agreed to complete an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) on the impacts of its maintenance programs. Caltrans agreed to do so, examined several approaches to vegetation management, and in August 1992 committed to establishing an integrated pest management program that would reduce herbicides by 50 percent by the year 2000 and 80 percent by 2012.

The agency began to implement the new practices that same year, and Carhart says things are on target so far. Instead of routinely spraying herbicides to reduce fire hazards, maintenance workers now analyze each site before deciding whether to apply chemicals. "We only spray where we absolutely have to," says Carhart. "We've also decreased the width of our spray strips, and in many areas we no longer spray at all. And we use a lot more mulch." Caltrans also came up with a "smarter" shoulder design that provides more of a buffer zone between the road and roadside vegetation. The new shoulder includes a flatter berm that is safer than earlier designs, acting as a barrier between muffler sparks and dry vegetation.

To prevent erosion, Caltrans has begun to sow wildflowers and native grasses rather than relying on invasive exotics. Instead of ice plant or African daisies, wherever possible, the agency now plants native shrubs and trees like ceanothus (wild lilac), elderberry, oak, and toyon. George Hartwell, wildflower and native vegetation coordinator with the Caltrans Office of State Landscape Architecture, says these plants save money and time. "I'd get laughed out of the front office if I argued for natives on their ecological value," he says. "But when I explain that native trees, shrubs, and wildflowers thrive on the natural rainfall we receive and have aesthetic appeal - that people drive for miles to see wildflower displays - they start to listen."

But is it simple to establish and maintain wildflowers and native plants along highways? Not at all. It was far easier to blast the roadside with herbicides. Many site-specific choices have to be made now. Carhart and Hartwell agree that the key to success is giving native plants a head start and helping them to outcompete invasive weeds. This can mean extensive maintenance in the first few years.

Caltrans uses a combination of techniques to help the natives along, including hand-pulling weeds, mowing, herbicides, and biocontrols. Some of this work is labor-intensive and dangerous for workers, Carhart says. The department is also considering selective use of controlled burns to destroy exotics and encourage native grasses and wildflowers to reseed. Burning requires special permits, however, and smoke can reduce visibility for motorists.

Hand-weeding is done by Caltrans maintenance crews with help from state penitentiary probationers and inmates, who in fact perform about half of Caltrans' maintenance work. In some areas, citizen groups and private sponsors adopt and maintain wildflower sites as part of the Adopt-a-Highway program.

Caltrans is also working with native plant experts to complete a database of California's 300-some native grass species. Its data fields (more than 165) include historical geography, soil type, elevation, and species characteristics. This information will help Caltrans select, establish, and maintain native grasses. Frank Chan, cohead of the Native Grass Database Group, says that eliminating existing weeds and their seeds before planting will be critical. He says native grasses are just as good - if not better - at controlling erosion as introduced grasses, historically thought to be the best option. "We're seeing now that was an erroneous assumption," he explains. "These native grasses have that same potential - there is such a range of conditions where they are particularly valuable."

Protecting native grass and plant communities is at the heart of Caltrans's new "botanical management area" program. A team of consultants is inventorying every plant on each of 12 study sites throughout the state to come up with site-specific management plans that will, as Hartwell puts it, "encourage propagation and revegetation of native plants while effectively combating invasive weeds." The first of these sites to be established, the Vina Plains Wildflower Demonstration Project, extends 4.5 miles along Highway 99, from the Butte-Tehama County border northward beside the Nature Conservancy's 2,000-acre Vina Plains Preserve.

So far, all designated botanical management sites are in rural settings. Along Highway 101 in Del Norte County, the uncommon Columbia lily lives alongside native rhododendrons. At State Roads 16 and 20 near Colusa, showy natives include tidytips, lupines, and goldfields. On Highway 58 in San Luis Obispo County, along Shell Creek, a spectacular wildflower display takes place each spring. On Highway 168 in Kern County near Fresno, in an area managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the endemic Carpenteria californica can still be seen.

"There are some magnificent remnant plant communities even in urban areas," also says Hartwell. "If anyone knows of such a site and it meets certain criteria they can nominate it for inclusion." (Plantings must not obstruct drivers' ability to see the road, for example.) Already many urban roadsides - even Highway 80 in the San Francisco Bay Area - have been planted with wildflowers, including large patches of a stunning rose-colored clover. But, Hartwell says, many cities still want formal landscaping that looks like "America's front lawn." While Caltrans tries to be responsive to those desires, its landscape designers now urge roadside managers to use natives wherever possible. "Why use a nonnative when you can just as easily plant a native?" Hartwell asks. Ralph Carhart points out that for years, the only thing people found attractive was irrigated landscaping. "But we're finding that people are much more tolerant of perennial wildflower meadows and native grasses than we thought."

Somewhat surprisingly for an agency in the business of altering the landscape, Caltrans's new practices are designed to disturb roadside environments as little as possible, to the extent that maintenance crews now often collect native seeds before work begins at a site, so they can later try to reestablish what was there.

Carhart admits that "there's a certain inertia you have to overcome" to change long-established management practices. He, Hartwell, and others are making decisions that will affect California's roadside environments for years to come. But can these well-intended but limited efforts make a difference? "If you preserve or create even a small area, you're providing a native plant for a native pollinator or an access corridor for wildlife," says Hartwell. In a state where urban sprawl and freeways have become a way of life, perhaps little bits of natural are better than none at all. 

Lisa Owens-Viani lives in Richmond and writes on environmental topics.