GARDENING : EXPLORE THE BACK YARD WITH THIS DANDY FIELD GUIDE.

Byline: Joshua Siskin

The word ``natural'' has been used so much in recent years that any cachet or prestige once associated with it must be gone by now. It's clearly part of the assumed wisdom on Madison Avenue that the baby boomer/yuppie crowd will buy almost anything if the word ``natural'' is attached to it. Even plastic is natural; it is made out of hydrocarbons or fossil fuels, which are nothing more than the remains of plants that lived hundreds of millions of years ago.

So, when I received ``Natural Gardening'' (Time-Life, 1995) in the mail, my suspicions were aroused. Was this just going to be another rehash of home remedies for garden problems (as in, ``put out dishes of beer to drown your snails'') or just one more ode to compost and earthworm castings?

Although the writing in ``Natural Gardening'' is often bland, the anecdotal and pictorial information makes this volume, overall, a learning experience. It would make a nice gift for a young nature lover or for anyone who takes the time to observe plants and the birds and insects which visit them. Whoever you are, it cannot help but teach you something about garden creatures you have probably seen all your life but knew little about.

For example, four pages are devoted to the hummingbird, more commonly found in Southern California than in other parts of the country. Hummingbirds are the smallest, fastest, most energetic birds on earth. ``Their ability to fly backward allows them to back out of deep, tubular flowers.'' Incredibly, the hummingbird's heart beats 1,200 times per minute, and its wings can make 80 up-and-down flutterings per second!

In the words of Tom Colazo, the American naturalist, ``Everything about a hummingbird is a superlative.'' To attract hummingbirds when flowers are not blooming, boil a solution that consists of four parts distilled water to one part sugar. It is not necessary to color the water. As with most avian species, the male hummingbird is usually more colorful than the female.

Still, the first hundred pages of ``Natural Gardening'' do not compare with what comes afterward. The most interesting and largest part of this book comes in ``The Backyard Habitat'' section. Here, more than 250 plants are listed from across the United States, together with the wildlife - usually birds and butterflies - attracted to each.

In the California section, it was a pleasure to see the leopard lily (Lilium pardalinum) described. In discussions of California natives, it is often overlooked because it is a herbaceous perennial that disappears, like other bulbous plants, for most of the year. This is one of those plants that native plant nurseries can never stock enough of to satisfy the demand. No one who walks through the Theodore Payne Foundation garden in Sun Valley when the leopard lily is in bloom will want to leave the premises without purchasing one of these plants; unfortunately, they are usually not available for sale.

In the book's Southwest section, you learn that the trademark cactus of Arizona, the saguaro, is pollinated by bats. The Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia), which grows wild from the Antelope Valley to the Mojave Desert, is pollinated solely by the white yucca moth. Yucca moth caterpillars are nourished exclusively from the seeds of the Joshua tree and other yuccas; this relationship between moth and yucca is a truly symbiotic one. Joshua trees grown from seed are usually available at the Theodore Payne Foundation nursery.

A plant that can grow throughout the Southwest and Southern California, but is seldom seen in our gardens, is the mesquite. What a shame! ``A mesquite tree in winter,'' we are told, ``is a sculpture of dark, twisting trunks and knobby, thorny, black branches.'' I have seen these trees, imported from California, growing in the Negev Desert in Israel, where they have developed into handsome shade trees. Although deciduous, they have distinct ornamental qualities in all seasons, producing attractive yellow flowers in spring and summer. They can adapt themselves to a wide range of cultural conditions. The mesquite (Prosopis spp.) can grow in both xeriphytic gardens and in lawns, reaching a height of 60 feet when well irrigated, but staying beneath 25 feet when watered exclusively by winter rain.

The purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) is praised in the prairie section of ``Natural Gardening.'' This plant has recently taken the country by storm on account of its proven ability to fortify the immune system. Native to the Great Plains, echinacea can be grown in Los Angeles gardens. It is a clumping plant that dies back to the ground in winter, re-emerging in the spring.

MEMO: Joshua Siskin's column appears every Saturday.