Golden Goose, good luck with your iochroma. I love these plants.

I too live in coastal California -- SoCal to be exact.

My iochroma is in the ground -- no gophers here -- and loves the coastal climate.

I have this plant to attract hummingbirds, and have found empty nests when I do my annual early winter hard pruning.

Thanks for the replies. I also love this plant and it seems to do so well here in the Bay Area. It's the orange flowered iochroma which I bet the hummingbirds will go crazy over.

I have the burgundy and infested with gophers...its done fine. They killed quite a few plants over the decades..But my Iochroma has a tree trunk base...never has been set back by gophers. Just not enough water has been the only problem with it over 20 years now.

THANK YOU! This is the exact answer I was hoping for :)

Same for Brugmansia as you surmised. Plant a row of it in gopher country.

I also just went out and bought some Euphorbia amygdaloides var robbiae and another more upright Euphorbia. Gonna put these out along with the Iochroma. These gophers are relentless but not out of control for me. I trap them with a Victor black box trap. There is never more than 2 at a time. After about a month, a new gopher will move in to the old tunnels. And I'll trap again. They live in a wild area at the edge of my garden, but they have not come in to the garden yet because there is a cement culvert in the way. I'm not tempting fate though and I'm trapping them as they appear.