I am not a fussy gardener. Like many people, I enjoy gardening but have limited time and energy. I don’t want to spend all my free time tending my garden. I want to be able to enjoy it and relax a little. So plants in my garden have to give me plenty of “bang for the buck.”

Getting the prettiest garden for the least amount of work is the focus of the next Napa County Master Gardener workshop on Saturday, June 13. This “Pretty Plants Workshop” will feature plants that give you long-lasting color and are easy to care for.

To get plants to thrive without much care, you must choose the right plant for the place. Consider your garden’s features — soil type, sunlight, water, space — and choose the plants that best fit those conditions and your needs.

In my garden, plants have to tolerate heavy clay soil, full sun, limited water and little tending. I want long-blooming plants that I can use for cut flowers, and I would like to have something in bloom almost year round.

In my sunny front yard, three of my favorites are Shasta daisies, yarrow and pomegranate. Shasta daisies (Leucanthemum maximum) bloom for a long time and make great cut flowers. With just a little deadheading (removing the dead flowers), I can keep them blooming for a couple of months. They have slowly filled in a planter across the front of my house, and they are easy to pull out of areas where I don’t want them.

Another favorite is Achillea millefolium (yarrow). It has attractive lacy leaves and clusters of tiny flowers. My yarrow produces pink flowers, but other varieties bloom in white, yellow and a range of pastels. Yarrow blooms for most of the summer, and again, with just a little deadheading, I can keep the blooms going into the fall.

In the fall or early winter, I set my mower to its highest setting — about three inches — and mow over the yarrow. This cuts it back and it comes back great in the spring. It also spreads slowly but is easy to pull out to control. I started with a four-inch pot that has now filled in an area about three feet square.

I’m also fond of my pomegranate tree, Punica granatum. A relatively small tree, it has vivid red flowers in the spring and early summer, requires little water, produces delicious fruit in autumn and has beautiful fall color. The fruit can hang on the tree until you want to eat it. When ripe fruit splits, I leave it on the tree and let the birds feast on it.

To discover more plants that are easy to care for and colorful, you can attend the free Master Gardener workshop or consult  reference books. Among the books I find most helpful are “Wildly Successful Plants: Northern California” by Pam Pierce and David Goldberg, “ Plants and Landscapes for Summer Dry Climates” by East Bay Municipal Utility District and “Sunset’s Western Garden Book.” 

Pierce does a nice job of detailing plant requirements and care but also covers removal and control of each plant. Many of these easy plants can be aggressive or invasive, something to consider before planting them.

 The EBMUD book highlights plants that need little water and has lots of photos of plants and landscapes. Charts in the back of the book allow you to easily compare plants for bloom time and other details so you can choose what works best for you. The Sunset book is a good general plant reference.

One final source for information on easy-care, non-thirsty plants is the U.C. Davis Arboretum All Stars. On the Web site http://arboretum.ucdavis.edu), look for the Arboretum All Star link. With a little bit of planning, you can choose the right plants so you will have more time to enjoy your colorful garden.

The “Pretty Plants Workshop” will be held on Saturday, June 13, from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the University of California Cooperative Extension Office in Napa. To register, call 707-253-4221.

 Napa County Master Gardeners (http://cenapa.ucdavis.edu) answer questions Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 9 a.m. to noon, at the UC Cooperative Extension office, 1710 Soscol Ave., Suite 4, Napa, 253-4221, or (877) 279-3065.