Front Yard Landscape (2017)
One of the early projects we undertook with the house was the creation of a native plant garden in the front yard, replacing a plain rectangle of grass. Though I grew up with many plants that are culturally associated with this area, the California natives now feel right to me for our garden, aesthetically as well as ecologically, and my non-native spouse is a complete convert. It takes some dedication but it’s so rewarding. The California Native Plant Society and Theodore Payne Foundation for gardening resources and the California Botanic Garden and Santa Barbara Botanic Garden for visiting are a few great places to start.
About some of the plant choices: the pink is heuchera Coral Bells, the orange are California poppies, the purple is penstemon, and there are two kinds of ceanothus: a taller “Concha” ceanothus by the porch on the left and low-growing “Yankee Point.” Our Yankee Point is plotting its takeover of the universe, so gardener beware. The upright silver grass in front of the porch is “Canyon Prince” rye, while the low spreading one in front and parkway is “Slender Sedge” Carex. Fragrant Cleveland sage grows along the driveway (I believe it’s Winifred Gilman with the deeper purple flowers). It’s impossible to pass it without stirring up the scent. The pink climbing rose on the porch was there before us and clearly deserves to stay, native or not! I believe it’s a Cecile Brunner. I went to The Huntington rose garden to look at all the climbers on the long trellis to confirm.
This garden is beloved by neighbors, delivery folks, dogs, cats, bees, birds, butterflies, and lizards alike! Plus there is no noise or air pollution from mowing and blowing. Do consider this important factor if you haven’t yet been driven crazy by that type of yard maintenance while working from home.
The front garden in its full Spring glory, April 2020 (three years after installation). Below are images of the installation process and of visitors—human and animal—enjoying the garden.
I wrote this post as above almost a year ago and never published it. Now there is a funny wrinkle in the story. You may have read in this post here that the removal of paint on the front porch stonework led me to discover that the front steps were not in their original location; they had been moved from the front to the driveway side of the porch. We found this out just as we were embarking on the front landscape work. At the time, we decided it was too much to get into because the project would demand too much work on the porch to reorient it. Knowing that the current whole-house project would come eventually, we just decided to live with it and proceed with the design as it was. But now we have decided to go for it and move the steps, so we are going to have to disturb this lovely garden to make the new entry sequence make sense. More on that later as the work progresses, but sorry about that, garden!