Don't water it. Moist, disturbed soil will become covered in weeds in no time. Bury the disturbed soil in 3-4" in of bark mulch and zap the weeds/grass that poke through with RoundUp.

I would go with drought-tolerant natives such as penstemon, zauschneria, salvia, eriogonum, and maybe a manzanita or two. Once established, you won't have to water these in the summer and the lack of soil moisture will keep weed growth to a minimum.

Great tip OregonGrape! I didn't think of that. Would you recommend spreading pre-emergent herbicide to keep any seeds from growing through the mulch? I haven't spread the mulch yet, I'll be spreading that soon.

I have some penstemon, salvia pachyphylla, festuca glauca, eriogonum rubrum and some anigozanthos, as well as succulents like bright yellow sedums, blue senecio and grey cotyledon. I'll be planting those later today and I'll post some photos!

Did you move or is it a rental? And where is it? If its near the coast,the blue Senecio's make a nice ground cover- pure blue. Dimondia is low and neat.
That is a nice period house..with the chimney too. I think rebuilding the porch would look great if done in stone. That's like Greene and Greene homes in Pasadena that are in every movie nowadays..like Transformers-lol.

I would hand-pull the remaining weeds/grass, lay down the mulch, and spray those that pop up with glyphosate (RoundUp). If there's any benefit to the drought that you folks are experiencing, it's that the weeds will struggle this summer.

It sounds like you're no stranger to water-wise gardening. That's a nice list of plants. If it were my yard, I'd probably add some Salvia clevelandii ('Alpine' and 'Winnifred Gilman' are both nice) and, if you have room, a manzanita or two. Arctostaphylos 'Sunset' and Arctostaphylos densiflora 'Sentinel' are both pretty easy and should do well there. And if you really want to challenge yourself, there's always Trichosetma lanatum.

I'm jealous of some of the stuff that you folks can grow down there. I tried Salvia pachyphylla in a container last year and it choked to death in our winter fog. I've had a little more success with Salvia clevelandii 'Alpine' (also in a container).

This post was edited by OregonGrape on Fri, Apr 18, 14 at 0:16

I'm not a fan of lawns and the grass goes before the weeds in my book. I have an entire garden of ground covers and naturalized plants, including volunteers and inherited plants from other gardeners. My plot in back includes fragaria, stachys byzantina, hardy geraniums, lamium archangel, catnip, ajuga, cerastium, and ground ivy. Granted, ground ivy is considered a weed by English gardeners. It's sold as ground cover in the states, and it does a good job. Lamium archangel will suppress any weed you throw at it. Including grass, and it grows in dark shade to sun. I mix in annuals and perennials to suit my taste. And I don't like to mess around with upkeep because I'm a lazy inpatient gardener. I putz. I been putzing for ten years around this house and my soil is hard clay, I don't amend. The palms will set off the fantastic sunburst inset in front of your house. I would get two tall columnar planters to place in between your present columns and place the low round planters you have atop the pedestal columns flanking the entrance if they will support them. Plant out your parking strip too. Look up Anni Jensen's Dry Garden Richmond on the web for ideas. Have fun with your emerging lawnless Eden. Take out the sidewalks too! I'm kidding.

You might want to include some shrubs or small trees, some of my favorites are barberry, ceanothus, chaenomeles, cercis occidentalis, and garrya elliptica.

When planning a garden I find it helpful to make a chart of plants I like, noting features like size and season of interest, because it makes it easier to ensure continuous displays through the seasons. Planting natives attracts wildlife, and once you start noticing the birds and butterflies you usually want to keep them around through the year.

Peter Pan or large Agapanthas comes in shades of White and Blue and is nice for a border. For a taller blue solution, try Blue Plumbago. These are luscious, drought tolerant plants.

I planted ceanothus, manzanita, buckwheat (eriogonum), mallows, and more in my little front yard (after hand pulling the bermuda in the middle of last summer phew!)

The Blackheart Mallow is gorgeous and growing fast with really pretty flowers - purple though. My ceanothus centennial bloomed the prettiest blue little puff ball flowers - that variety will grow low and wide as a ground cover, and I also have a Siempre Blue variety that will be a tree and also bloom blue.

Another thing I did in front of our rental after taking out some old plants is threw in a mix of wildflowers - and it has been quite a show!!! Best 4.99 I've ever spent. ;) I also threw some seed around the natives in front of our cottage and they are all coming up like crazy - a lot of clarkia which is pretty. We'll see if I regret that later - but several people recommended it as a way to hide the "bare dirt" stage of landscaping with natives.

Also I second the advice about weeds - I try not to use Round up too much - but the mulch helped for sure. Also, I regret putting down weed block fabric in the sidewalk/parking patch - our quick fix - we put bark on top of it, and as I feared, the ugly fabric comes up inevitably. Best to use more mulch/bark in the long term.

I have zero help on what to plant but you need to finish getting rid of the Bermuda Grass first. Its an ugly process. Weeds that grow from seeds are way down the priority list compared to the problem below the surface. Don't disturb the soil because you don't want to break off the Bermuda Grass and leave pieces that are very deep and will not come back for many months.

You need to water deeply and wait for the Bermuda to come back up. You can gently pull on them and see if they are shallow. Don't break them off. Mostly that is a waste of time. Hit the new growths with Round Up. Repeat until there aren't any new growths of Bermuda Grass. You will probably need to repeat this 4-5 times so you are looking at a 3 month process. If you try to do this in a month you will have lots of remaining Bermuda that will sprout. You will need to be vigilant and Round Up every new growth. If you have established plants at that time, the best way is to dab Round Up Concentrate directly on the sprout. The plants system will circulate it through the plant. An alternative process on such a small area is to completly sift the top 8" of dirt to remove all the Bermuda Grass rhizomes.

I understand that the best way to do this on the other side is to mow the Bermuda short and then use lots of Round Up on it. That gets down into the rhizomes and then very little will come back. I'm not a huge fan of Round Up, or any chemicals for that matter, but this is an ideal use of Round Up.

Edited to add: I forgot to mention that the rhizomes from the remaining side can spread under the walkway and recontaminate your hard work.

This post was edited by GregBradley on Sat, Apr 19, 14 at 13:05

Re: Bermuda removal - There are two methods it seems - Roundup, and trying not to disturb soil - maybe several rounds of it - or the hard way sans Roundup which means sifting through the top 6 inches or so of soil and picking out the rhizomes. I went for option 2 in my small front yard - took maybe 2 days or so - and then I solarized for 6 weeks though it was a little late in the season and I'm not sure how much good it did. But the bermuda is pretty much gone - bits and pieces here and there but they're cut off from their underground matrix so are pretty easy to pull. My fear was that if you only Roundup and don't remove the rhizomes you really were relying on the Roundup to work underground, and I trust my eyes and hands more than labels - especially after reading about having to do it 4 times to be effective yikes.
But I had more time than money and was willing to get dirty - it was definitely hard work. Sore muscles, blisters for sure - but they were my battle wounds and I didn't mind. ;)
http://www.garden-counselor-lawn-care.com/bermuda-grass-pictures.html

Here is a link that might be useful: Bermuda Anatomy and Removal

Wow, so many great tips. thank you! Slowjane, I found my particular patch of bermuda was within 2 to 3 inches from the surface. After removing it with a shovel, I sifted through about another 1.5 inches of dirt and found no bermuda rhizomes except near the concrete, where some of the rhizomes had gone under the slab of concrete. I got as much as I could out, and will have to keep a good eye on those as they continue to grow.

I finally did a bit of planting! I'll post photos tomorrow!

And Stan, this home is in Fresno! definitely not coastal, but we can grow senecio well this far inland. I've grown it in Chowchilla for several years without a problem.

OK Here is an updated photo. It looks rather empty right now, but by hope is to have a full tapestry of yellow sedum (front) Blue Senecio (mid) and Cotyledon (back) to fill in this entire area.