Since you're in SF, spend some time at the SF Botanic Garden (Strybing Arboretum). The plants are labeled, and they'll give you a good idea of what grows here -- lots of special gardens (Calif. native, Australia, dinosaur, South Africa, etc.). Its bookstore is probably the best place to find the book you're looking for (bet you can't buy just one). You might like the Trees of SF book or Trees of Stanford, which focus on a relatively small number of trees but give locations. UC Press has a small Trees of the SF Bay Area handbook. My favorite tree book is by Arthur Plotnick, The Urban Tree Book, 2000, because he includes lots of field notes about how to distinguish trees that may look similar. It's not specific to Calif. or even the west, but I think it's the most useful field guide to trees for this area aside from the site-based books. For succulents, I've heard good things about a new book from Timber Press titled Designing with Succulents (it's not specific to the bay area, though). Don't miss the Ruth Bancroft garden in Walnut Creek -- it has the best collection of succulents in the Bay Area, artistically arranged, and sometimes has plants for sale. Another great place to see succulents is the Arizona Garden on the Stanford Univ. campus, which I think is more fun than the SFBG collection. (And if you ever get down to Santa Barbara, don't miss Lotusland.)

Wow - your space looks perfect for roses - lots of sun! If I were you I would do some more investigating before buying any roses. Going to your local nursery and buying grafted roses (the "bare root" ones you spoke of) is not what I would do. My reason is that grafted roses are actually 2 roses - one is the top (called the "scion"), and the other is the roots (called the "rootstock"). They are grafted together at the soil level, in a lumpy thing called the "bud union". In our warm climate, my experience has been that the usual rootstock on roses sold here is one called 'Dr. Huey'. The problem here is that Dr. Huey likes our climate so much that it decides to take over the entire bush, and puts up its own canes within 2-3 years, and can then take over and kill the scion. Dr. Huey is a once blooming climbing rose with medium sized red flowers (if you look around at neglected gardens near you, you will see LOTS of unintended Dr. Huey bushes!), which in our climate gets horrible powdery mildew all over it. To prevent Dr. Huey from taking over you have to continuously recognize and tear off the emerging Dr. Huey canes, which is a pain, especially if you have roses in a hedge - OWE! What I would recommend is that you purchase "own root" roses, which are grown on their own roots - there is only one rose, not two. This means that any new cane that shows up is good news, as it is part of the rose you want. Own root roses are becoming available at local nurseries, but the best selection is from mail order nurseries. I order my roses from "Heirloom Roses" and "Rogue Valley Roses" - both are in Oregon. You can google them. They both have lovely catalogues in addition to their web sites (personally I like to look at catalogues). They both sell old and new roses. Another nursery I love is the "Antique Rose Emporium", which is in Texas. You can easily get catalogues from these nurseries, and then you can see all of the different kinds of roses which are available. Many times these nurseries will ship you roses in "bands", which are very small pots. These are just as good (and probably better) roses than you can buy locally. They just need some time to get bigger before you plant them in your garden. What most folks do is to plant them immediately into a one gallon pot, and let them grow in it (out side only!) for 6-12 months, at which point they are big enough to plant. In our climate, you can actually plant roses 12 months of the year. The only conditions I would avoid planting in is if it has been so rainy that the soil is completely saturated (I will be SO HAPPY if that happens this Fall/WInter!)- wait until it has had time to drain and dry out a bit. The types of re-blooming (as opposed to once blooming) roses which do best in my garden (contrary to what "they" will tell you, roses are VERY climate specific) are old tea roses, china roses, hybrid musk roses, and polyanthas. Look at the catalogues - once you have found some roses you think you would like, look them up on the website "Help Me Find/roses". A couple of things to keep in mind: 1) The higher the climate "zone" numbers at the bottom for a rose, the better it will like our warm climate (I, and I think you, are zone 9). 2) The sizes they say the roses will grow on HMF are smaller than they really get in our climate. After you get a list of roses you think you would like, I would post it on here and as about people in the Bay Area who actually grow those roses what they think about them - that is the best way to find out, next to growing them in your own garden. Lastly, you are lucky re where you live! There is a thing in the Spring called the "Celebration of Old Roses". It is in El Cerrito - very close to you. There are roses for purchasing there, and also an immense display of all kinds of roses - thousands of them laid out by type - cut blooms in little glasses. There are also 2 local fabulous roses gardens where you can go and look at various types of roses growing - one is the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden, and the other is the Historic Rose Garden in the Sacramento Historic Cemetery. I would go see these in Oct, when they will have lots of roses blooming, or of course next Spring. Sorry to be so long, but I can tell by looking at your garden that you are a gardener, and just need some encouragement! (BTW, if I had your garden I would plant a huge climbing rose like, say Madame Alfred Carriere, on that fence way in the back, and start it up that huge fir tree - it would go up to the top!). Hope the above is helpful. Jackie

Thank you both for the advice! My house is a two story 3 br-2.5 bath with total sqft 1490. It was built in 1985. The existing one is Rheem and it is really old, I think it came with the house. So the efficiency might just be joke. :) I do agree that 2 stage furnace will probably be better ( I assume this means I have two thermostats to control different floors). If anybody lives in the bay area, I would like to know how much you are paying for the cost of the equipment and the installation. The quotes I get from contractors usually vary a lot.

Thank you, Diane and Shelia, for your kind feedback. It makes me feel so much better. I'm heading out to the garden now to plant a few ARE roses. Happy gardening!