The Contra Costa County Library system is promoting California native plants to its patrons and has created a list of books about planting natives in your garden.
It’s a bit of a process to find the list of books, but below is the chain of links, which offer some other interesting options to explore. If you want to go straight to the list of native gardening books, here’s the direct link.
To find the native gardening book list from the main Contra Costa County Library home page, click on the Sustainability box toward the bottom of the page.

When you click on that box, it will take you to another page with several sustainability topics, one of which is called Seed Library. Many of the libraries in the county have seed libraries where patrons can pick up free seeds for their gardens as well as donate seeds. Most of the seeds are for vegetables and nonnative flowers, but it’s still a useful resource.

If you click on the Seed Library box, it will take you to the Seed Library web page, which lists all the libraries in the county that have seed libraries.

At the very bottom of that Seed Library page is a box titled California Natives Gardening.

Clicking on the California Natives Gardening box will take you to a list of several books on California native plant gardening that you can check out from the library (currently there are eight books on the list). They are all very good selections and will give you a good start on planning, planting, and maintaining your native garden.

— Robin Mitchell, Recording Secretary, CNPS East Bay Chapter
January 2023