California Landscape Design

Euphorbia ‘Blackbird’
BLACKBIRD SPURGE

"Its beautiful rich, dark purple foliage adds drama and flair to the garden and provides colorful contrast to a planting scheme. ‘Blackbird’ is lovely in and out of flower, but stunning when its red stems sporting bright green bracts open to lime green flowers. It draws the eye and invariably leads to the question, 'what is that plant?!'"

Dendromecon harfordii
ISLAND BUSH POPPY

"This is a wonderful evergreen native shrub that adds a happy sparkle to any garden! If in full sun it will get to its maximum size. But if in part sun, it will keep an airy open styling that is lovely.  The silvery glaucous blue leaves add a wonderful contrast to deep greens and the sunny, clear yellow blooms are noted to be Winter-Spring but I find them constant thru at least 3 seasons!"

Santolina chamaecyparissus
LAVENDER COTTON
"I use this drought-adapted subshrub as a fragrant border and fill-in plant for Mediterranean style gardens. It spreads fairly easily, has a nice soft gray color and texture, and the summer blossoms are a bright sunny yellow. Very nice with rounded boulders, flagstone, and even birdbaths! Good transition species for rock gardens, too."

Salvia clevelandii ‘Aromas’
AROMAS CLEVELAND SAGE

"This sage has many virtues: once established it needs no supplemental water, has a wonderful fragrance, and statuesque lavender flowers in late spring. It works beautifully in front of darker shrubs and behind other short colorful perennials. For clients who are interested in creating wildlife habitat, wonderful russet- colored spent flower heads need not be deadheaded until it is time for early winter pruning."

Grevillea ‘Moonlight’

"I’m loving this as a loose hedge or screening. It’s a lovely change from green to have that silvery lacy foliage and the surprise of such a large creamy flowers. It works so well with Dianellas too."

Rhamnus californica ‘Mound San Bruno’ SAN BRUNO COFFEEBERRY

"This is a tough native shrub that I have used with great effect in several projects. It is very easy going – doing well in sun & shady conditions – and looking nice year round."

Sesleria autumnalis
AUTUMN MOOR GRASS

"Nice evergreen clumping grass, sun or (part) shade, and good substitute for Carex divulsa when a WUCOLS medium water plant can be used."

Melaleuca incana
GREY HONEY MYRTLE

"The weeping habit of this Australian shrub or small tree would make a fine specimen plant, but it also shows nicely in front of coarser, darker foliage shrubs, with its fine grey foliage and poofy little yellow bottle brush-shaped flowers. The deer don’t touch the plant, and it seems to do fine with little or regular water."

Cistus ‘Little Miss Sunshine’
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE ROCKROSE

"An excellent size for smaller gardens or for repeating in the landscape, with beautiful yellow/chartreuse foliage and a nice, neutral white flower."

Fremontodendron californica ‘Dara’s Gold’
FLANNEL BUSH

"I love this plant for dry sunny slopes. Low growing and spreading with handsome evergreen foliage. It flowers in late spring with sporadic blooms during the year. Great composition plant with other California native plants that like zero to occasional watering after the first couple of seasons."

Salvia greggii
AUTUMN SAGE

"So many different colors of Salvia greggii’s – blues, purples, reds, pinks and soft yellow. Long bloom that attracts hummingbirds!"

Grevillea lanigera
‘Coastal Gem’
WOOLLY GREVILLEA

"This evergreen plant has a unique texture and shape, adding interest to the garden year round, but especially in winter/early spring when it blooms its head off with tiny pink curly cue flowers. It can be used to cover open hillsides, or as one-of-a-kind in smaller gardens. Loves sun and very drought tolerant."

Cotyledon orbiculata var. oblonga ‘Flavida’
FINGER ALOE

"I like this plant because of its interesting texture (think finger grass) and white chalky leaf color.  The coral orange bloom stands out amongst the foliage in spring and so easy to cut off some stems and start in other parts of the garden."

Ceanothus 'Valley Violet'
VALLEY VIOLET WILD LILAC

"Ceanothus is often too large for the average garden. This one stays compact at 2'x4', and blooms profusely."

Leucadendron ‘Ebony’
EBONY CONEBUSH

"This 4’x5’ shrub has beautiful black/burgundy foliage and standout red bracts. It can be used as a specimen or to create a dark background for brighter plants. This should be a go-to plant for all your goth garden designs."

Agave x ‘Blue Glow’
BLUE GLOW AGAVE

"I love this Agave for its compact form, the red edging on its blue-gray leaves, and the fact that it needs almost no water but won’t sulk in a garden setting either."

Arctotis ‘Ruby Creeper’
RUBY CREEPER AFRICAN DAISY

"This Arctotis, with its magenta/ruby daisy-like flowers, creeps along the ground about 1’ high and 2-3’ wide. It’s evergreen foliage is a grey-green tomentose lobed leaf that looks good year round—great for a parking strip mixed with Gazania and grey festucas."

In designing this sustainable urban meadow garden in the Cheviot Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, my goal was to transform a desolate front yard lawn into a low-maintenance, naturalistic space that conserves water, provides valuable habitat for beneficial pollinators, and offers captivating aesthetic appeal.

While meadow-style planting may appear spontaneous and haphazard, this meadow garden is organized with a series of carefully choreographed transitions and combinations of ornamental grasses and flowering perennials that create defined spaces within the garden. These spaces—each with their own distinct character and design intent—are both separated and unified by a serpentine drift of Carex pansa that meanders throughout the garden and produces negative space.

In developing the plant palette for this garden, I considered several factors, including the site topography, location, background elements, and lighting. To account for the relatively small scale of the space and low-maintenance requirements, I selected shrubs that generally don’t grow too large and can be layered well with grasses and groundcover. Aesthetically, I choose to make this simple, yet complex meadow more readable by limiting the foliage and flower color scheme to shades of purple, green, gray, and white. I also selected plants with seasonal interest that interact well with wind, light, and shadow.

In particular, the non-invasive Pennisetum ‘Fairy Tales’ cultivar provides stunning late afternoon interest in the spring and summer, when the backlighting of the sun makes its abundant foxtails glow like candles. Likewise, Salvia ‘Mystic Spires Blue’ blooms nearly year-round in Southern California and produces vivid deep blue upright blooms that rhythmically undulate in the wind and shimmer in the late afternoon light, especially when massed and layered with complimentary plants sharing similar form, such as Lavandula ‘Goodwin Creek’.

To help attract native pollinators—particularly birds and butterflies—I integrated California native flowering perennials, such as Achillea millefolium and Verbena iliciana ‘De La Mina’, and seed-producing sedges, including Carex tumulicola and Carex pansa.

Photos courtesy of Jonathan Harnish.

URBAN MEADOW GARDEN PLANT LIST

ORNAMENTAL GRASSES

Carex pansa CA MEADOW SEDGE

Carex tumulicola FOOTHILL SEDGE

Pennisetum ‘Fairy Tales’ EVERGREEN FOUNTAIN GRASS

Pennisetum ‘Little Bunny’ LITTLE BUNNY DWARF FOUNTAIN GRASS

GROUNDCOVERS

Cerastium tomentosum SNOW-IN-SUMMER

Achillea millefolium COMMON YARROW

Nepeta fasssenii ‘Walker’s Low’ WALKER’S LOW CATMINT

FOCUS ON FLORA:
Useful Plant Lists for Special Situations

The Toughest of the Tough: Plants for Greenroofs

For 20 years, Cynthia Tanyan has designed over 500 varied residential gardens throughout the SF Bay Area and beyond, including a master plan for a Stanford Lands horsepark, a rural cemetery in Massachusetts, a Native American sculpture garden, and an extensive modern greenroof.

Cynthia's designs have been featured in Sunset (she is a recipient of Sunset's "Best in the West" and "Dream Gardens" Award) and People magazine. Her designs can be seen in The American Meadow Garden, by J. Greenlee (c.2009), and Reimagining the California Lawn, by C. Bornstein.

"Greenroofs are tough environments for plants as they are usually exposed to all-day sun, wind, drought conditions and have only a shallow root zone. This is similar to native conditions for many rock garden and succulent plants.  Sedums of all kinds are the mainstay for greenroofs. Choose plants that are tough, stay fairly low to the ground, and don’t require much deadheading or other maintenance."

BOOK REVIEW:
Garden Revolution: How Our Landscapes
Can Be a Source of Environmental Change
by Larry Weaner and Thomas Christopher

Reviewed by Francesca Corra, APLD
APLD California Chapter President

I wanted to read Garden Revolution: How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change because Thomas Rainer, when speaking at the recent “A River Runs Through It” seminar in Los Angeles, mentioned Larry Weaner with such enthusiasm that I made a note of it and immediately afterwards ordered his book. I then discovered that Larry Weaner would be one of the speakers at the upcoming APLD International Design Conference in Toronto.  

In the interest of complete disclosure, I have not read every word in the book. The book is packed full of decades worth of experience, shared freely and in generous detail. After first skimming through, I decided that it would be perfectly fine for me to read some sections now and save others for when I may need them.

The primary reasons that the authors gave for writing the book are to give us the resources to create landscapes that are easier to manage, more ecologically beneficial, and reflective of the plant compositions of our respective regions (i.e. natives).

The authors discuss gardening as a “process” and the garden as an “ecosystem”. We are encouraged to ride and guide the wave of natural plant succession—instead of constantly battling it—and to collaborate with the landscape to reduce time-consuming practices. Although the book deals mainly with east coast plants and large areas, there are still plenty of takeaway gems to make it a worthwhile read in other locales. For instance, in discussing Site Analysis, the authors mention creating borders for wildlife corridors, which is something that might elude us in our normal practices. Throughout discussions of ecological design, good and sound design principles shine through.

Weaner and Christopher introduce a novel way of designing with “niches”, both spatial and seasonal. I will leave you to discover this for yourselves.

It is an engaging read, and a book to save as a resource. I look forward to hearing Larry speak at the conference.