LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Add beautiful color, form and texture to your landscape.

Enjoy months of delicate, urn-shaped blossoms borne in a decorative white to lavender, followed by attractive clumps of berries. 

As a shrub or small tree they blend with their neighbors while showing off their many shades of year around green leaves that form a loose canopy.

Supporting the canopy is a living sculpture consisting of gnarled trunks clothed in smooth, lustrous cinnamon brown bark. 

Of course it's the manzanita (Arctostaphylos), of which there are 43 species native to California. 

They are drought tolerant and truly a plant for all seasons.

You're invited to learn more about water conserving native flora and all phases of gardening at a meeting of the Clear Lake Trowel & Trellis Garden Club. 

The club meets at noon on the third Tuesday of each month (except July and August) in the Scott's Valley Women's club house at 2298 Hendricks Road near Lakeport. 

A light lunch is served. 

The next meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 18, will feature published author Kate Marianchild who will speak on “Secrets of the Oak Woodlands: Plants & Animals among California's Oaks.”

For more information please call Marva Brandt at 707-279-1625 or visit www.clttgc.org . 

Clear Lake Trowel & Trellis Garden Club is a member of Mendo-Lake district, California Garden Clubs Inc. Pacific Region and National Garden Clubs Inc.

Jerry Shaul is publicity chairman for the Clear Lake Trowel & Trellis Garden Club.