A Pasadena Craftsman’s native plant garden

The yellow flowers of the bladderpod, a California native, play off the gray-green foliage.   (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

The purple spires of native wooly blue curls (Trichostema lanatum) rise from Debe Loxton’s garden.   (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

The native island bush poppy, sometimes called Channel Island bush poppy, is a shrubby perennial with sunny spring flowers.   (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

More poppies are beginning to bloom around Debe Loxton’s young tomato plants. The orange flowers will draw pollinators to the garden’s vegetable plants.   (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

California poppies draw beneficial insects to Debe Loxton’s vegetable garden, where the Swiss chard glows in the afternoon sun.   (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

The petite blooms of baby blue eyes.   (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

Candy cane morning glory, a California native plant that can work as a green fence or drought-tolerant ground cover, climbs the posts of a shade structure.  (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

The view from the front porch of Debe Loxton and Martha Clark’s Pasadena house, where California natives and other drought-tolerant plantings thrive in the place of traditional turf.   (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

Ceanothus -- that stalwart of California native gardens -- lines the walkway of the Loxton-Clark home. This particular variety is Yankee Point, with low-growing true-green leaves and petite blue flowers.   (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

The shrub is sometimes called malva rosa.  (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

Debe Loxton pictured in her Pasadena garden, one of 42 to be featured in the annual Theodore Payne garden tour.   (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

Like many other California natives, Cleveland sage is a favorite of bees and hummingbirds.   (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)