A California garden is a place where, if I closed my eyes and were transported there, then opened my eyes, I would immediately recognize it as a unique and distinctive place.

If the weather is hot and dry, then parts of the garden may be dormant and I will, as Judith Larner Lowry counsels in her book _Gardening with a Wild Heart_, learn to love brown. In other climates the dormant season is winter; here, the quiescent season for some of the native flora is summer.

To be recognizably Californian, the garden must have a large percentage of California native plants. Many people are partial to plants that come from where they grew up, but if they move to California and recreate the huge midwestern greensward or the groves of eastern birch trees, then they have lost an opportunity to inhabit this land.

It is indeed wonderful that we can grow almost anything here, but garden designers like to point out that plants from one region look good together; a mixture often seems "off." If I were to land in a garden with plants from all over the world, it could be anywhere, a garden that had lost connection with its context.

If I opened my eyes and saw eucalyptus and kangaroo paws and lavender and aeoniums and cannas and magnolias, I'd imagine that I was in a botanical garden, a mixed-up nursery, or dizneyland. (Though maybe dizneyland is the default California style: overmanicured, overbright and cheery, hyperactive and revved up, never quiescent, all facade and no substance.)

Good books: scroll down to Books & Articles

Here is a link that might be useful: CGLHS

habitat_gardener wrote: "It is indeed wonderful that we can grow almost anything here, but garden designers like to point out that plants from one region look good together; a mixture often seems "off." If I were to land in a garden with plants from all over the world, it could be anywhere, a garden that had lost connection with its context."

"If I opened my eyes and saw eucalyptus and kangaroo paws and lavender and aeoniums and cannas and magnolias, I'd imagine that I was in a botanical garden, a mixed-up nursery, or dizneyland."

Heh. I DO have Kangaroo paws and lavender and cannas and magnolias all in my garden. I don't have the Aeoniums or Echeverias because I haven't gotten to them...YET, and I haven't got a Eucalyptus because I haven't figured out just how to grow it here...YET.

I DO mix plants from all over the world, keeping them grouped by environmental needs. But then, I never claimed my garden was Californian (nor is it physically IN California--even if the state line is only 15 miles away).

I think the mix works in aggregate, though. I call the style "Horticultural Chaos with Western Influences". I also think the style works in its surroundings, because the neighborhood has never had any context to speak of. I live in an older tract neighborhood of ranch-style homes. Most of them have the standard foundation junipers, blank stretch of lawn and a few weak attempts at "seasonal color" (usually petunias).

The splendid mountains that surround the town (Reno-Sparks) aren't visible from the neighborhood unless you count climbing up onto your roof. The desert, although only a few miles away, has long since vanished from this little pocket of tract homes and strip malls. I see my garden therefore as an opportunity to plant whatever I please, and whatever pleases me. I'd much rather do that than conform to the lawn-and-juniper context of my neighbors.

Thanks for the book suggestions; I now have some of them them on order at my library.

Lots of wisdom here on this topic - from GardenGuru's long post on using plants appropriate to the area to Anita's succinct "genus loci". Pinning down exactly what a California garden is, is a "reality ideal".

In our climate, it is really easy to grow plants from all over the world. Some take more work to make thrive while others take no effort at all. The challenge in the garden could actually be NOT planting whatever you want.

Some might say a California garden reflects its owner. I think it's more along the lines of where habitat_gardener was leading - a garden that has a connection with its context. Not in context with its neighborhood but with its region. I imagine that a California garden, in context with its region, will look a lot different from other gardens in its neighborhood.

Food for thought.

Aloha,

Nathan Lau
San Jose, CA

#include (std.disclaimer)

"The challenge in the garden could actually be NOT planting whatever you want. "

You hit it bro, that is exactly the dilemma, which plants to exclude is a far longer list than what will I plant.

Dilemna? I see no dilemna here, except a post that was answered in opinion from the original author. If that is a dilemna, call me seeing it biased.....lol.....not a dilemna here, just choice.....

I agree, it's more a matter of what not to plant, assuming the question is "what can I plant so that my garden looks like a California garden?" rather than "what can I plant given that almost anything will grow here, especially if I'm willing to coddle the few things that I love but need extra care?"

I'm assuming it's the first question: I'm transported to a garden somewhere in the world, and the task is to guess where I am. What aspects will make it seem like a California garden?

Hmm, espaliered fremontia on the castle wall...England.

Lavenders and brugmansias and hibiscus...any Mediterranean climate, or maybe a gardener who likes challenges and wants a tropical look in New Jersey.

Artichokes...could be New England, they take it as a challenge to grow them there.

Coast live oaks and manzanitas and california poppies...California.

The essence of California gardens, to me, is the sculptural trees and shrubs, fragrant foliage, color explosion of wildflowers in the spring, light-catching plumes of bunchgrasses in the summer, a hundred shades of green that change with the seasons (the designer version uses mostly California natives, the kmart knockoff version uses nonnatives). And a few fruit trees mixed in.

This is not to say that any other type of garden is not lovely, or that because we live here we must plant what grows here. But extraordinary gardens evoke a sense of place. Gardens that evoke "California" to me are different from other gardens that thrive here.

Everyone has a their own idea of what a California Garden is and for myself, I like to think that its being able to plant a temperate plant alongside a tropical plant. Like my peach tree that is right next to my banana plant. How great is that!

There is a difference between "a garden that is in California" and "a California garden."

for what its worth and imho at least the "picture postcard"/tourist view of a california garden might well be a stucco "spanish-style" home with a tile roof with a swimming pool foreground and a palm tree (mexican fan or canary island date)in the background (maybe an italian cypress, too), bouganvilla spreading over a wall, orange blossoms scenting the air, and yes, a line of agapanthus somewhere. note that all of the plant material in the "picture" is non-native but generally well adapted to a med-style climate and cruize around lots of neighborhoods (especially in socal) and you will see very similar stuff all over. its what i recall seeing when i first came down from the frozen tundra of "orygun" and it really blew me away then and continues to impress me now.

Redwoods! We just planted a whole forest of them. They were so large they had to be planted with a backhoe. (It was to hide the neighboor's ugly hillside pool.)

Native plants, as much as possible, including trees, shrubs, perennials, vines and annuals. And Mediterraneans and succulents too. Little or no grass, unless they are native ornamentals. And then fruits such as figs, citrus, and guavas that have a hard time elsewhere.

One interesting thought that has often crossed my mind is, what would our gardens look like if the water was turned off and all the people in California magically disappeared for a year. What would we find when we returned? I have a feeling most of the urban areas would have dead lawns and dead plants with a few bright spots of houses with California appropriate landscaping thriving.
-Nate

California is a really big state with varying terrain and climate, so it's hard to define just one California garden.

If you are talking about Southern California, one could argue that a California garden contains agapanthus and daylilies and that you may get fined by your homeowners association for having anything else. ;)

An interesting assortment of visualizations of a "California Garden" here.

Being a lifetime resident I've always thought of the California Garden as being a cross between the Spanish Missionary garden and that type of home garden you see in places like Monterey's old neighbourhoods. No lawn, maybe some fruit trees, often in a raised bed, with herbs and perennials planted under the fruit trees. What we see in California's Gardens today is seldom like any of those gardens, although I've noticed a trend of restoring/rebuilding those types of gardens in Sacramento's older neighbourhoods during the last several years, and I recently gathered up some old bricks laying around the neighbourhood to replace the rotted wood in the raised planters. It will have a nice urban-canyon garden when the plants mature.

Really though, the traditional California Garden of Spanish origin was much more simpler than the gardens we see throughout the state now. Away from the coast where the Spanish influence wasn't there, the California-English type garden in Places like Sacramento/Gold Country and Northern California was still a simple form. Plants were somewhat of English origin (a different assortment of plants than the Spanish-California gardens), and included Holly, Planetree (introduced and native), conifers, and many of the perennials of English gardens that would survive in the local microclimate.

"One interesting thought that has often crossed my mind is, what would our gardens look like if the water was turned off and all the people in California magically disappeared for a year...."

Nate, it's true that many established native gardens would survive with no care. But I see too few of these. What we'd see most of would be some of the most common plants, and lots of weeds.

For instance, what I've seen at old abandoned homesteads is bearded irises, some rose bushes...and this is after 20-50 years. Certainly agapanthus survives a year or more of neglect. Olive, lemon, and oak trees. Lavenders. Plus, if there are any in the neighborhood, all the imported plants that have become so invasive in wildlands -- vinca, ivy, italian thistle, star thistle, broom, artichokes, pampas grass, ailanthus -- will flourish.

(And I really hate that so many restoration projects rely on Roundup to clear the site, or else plant only trees and large shrubs and ignore the weedy undergrowth entirely.)

One that is not covered with that cold white stuff for half the year.

It's the obligatory citrus tree you gaze at from the back porch as you sip your orning coffee, thinking how much square footage it's taking up and averaging that space versus what you paid for your house....hey, it's a $20,000.00 Navel Orange tree!

...and it's got mildew. And whiteflies.

Oh, and the lawn underneath is dying.

Velvet :)

Speaking of non-natives that endure years of neglect and thrive, chinaberry trees are often found alongside olives in a lot of older plantings around the Hemet/San Jacinto areas. You see them all over here.

And if you water around one, you get a hundred thousand (million) seedlings. And every year brings a hundred thousand (million billion) more.

(And then an earthquake hits and the tree that wouldn't die for decades suddenly splits and one trunk falls into your house. Argh.)

"One interesting thought that has often crossed my mind is, what would our gardens look like if the water was turned off and all the people in California magically disappeared for a year...."

I always thought of a garden going hand-in-hand with being tended and cultivated by a gardener. I suppose most gardens would be in the same condition as most of our pets if the water were turned off and all the people disappeared. But then I have heard some suggest that having companion animals is undesirable too. I lived in high altitude mountains for several years and was unable to garden but spent alot of time walking and observing the alpine plants and trees. Much of that time I didn't have any pets either. At one time I did buy alot of natives from the Theodore Payne Foundation, but I probably gardened them to death - not knowing wild things are best left alone. Like most wild animals, better to observe them in their natural habitat than in a zoo.

Mojoboo, funny you would think of agapanthus and daylilies as very "Southern Californian." I would think of them as very "Northern Californian!"

If my garden wasn't watered for a year, it would still look pretty good since anything that lives in my garden has to endure my spotty care anyway.

My backyard looks interesting in the summer. It's got some well established trees and some natives dotted here and there. The grass goes yellow because it's too costly to water it all summer. The strangest sight is the dendromecon harfordii out in the middle looking lush and flower laden in the midst of dead grass and dirt.

Kerrican, here in Northern California, I have begun to think of agapanthus as South African and daylilies as Asian. Keeps me focused and grounded in California.

I live in the Hollywood Hills and the north slope of my garden is set out as an "English cottage garden" (old roses,bay hedge, foxgloves, heliotrope, etc.) but my south slope is my California garden with agaves, agapanthus, succulents, trailing geraniums and artichokes. I like to think I have the best of both worlds.

I think I have a California Garden.

My GPs were dust-bowl OKies and I was born in OK.

I have variegated ivy.

I live near San Diego and I can grow just about anything that nobody else around the country can grow outside--neener neener neener.

-Ron-

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Awesome garden Ron. I see lots of succulents. So maybe that's what a California garden is all about. Succulents and agapanthus and bouganvilla.

Personally me, I am sick of seeing agapanthus everywhere!!!

I also think people need to stop with the boring front lawn. It soaks up water like a sponge and, I don't know about you, but when was the last time anyone played a game or DID anything on it? Unless it is for kids to play on, I say minimize.

Ron, your garden is beautiful.... I'd "steal" some of your ideas, but most of those plants wouldn't survivie a cold winter here. Oh well........

Ooooh! I love your succulents! Your garden and scenery are stunning. I'm not sure it's a "CA garden, though...looks more S. African to me. LOL

Now...what is the name of the Aloe(?) with the yellow flowers?

You know a lot of posts are bragging about how we can grow anything here in California, but that really isn't true. Most bulbs, some trees (like cherries), and many perennials (like hostas) need at least 6 weeks of frost in order to come back again. Since we don't have that here, there is a whole host of plants we can't grow well. I think part of what makes a California garden is the fact that we CAN'T grow many plants that they can back east so it is impossible for us to duplicate the gardens we see featured in many garden books and magazines.

California is essentially a beautiful desert climate since our "bad" months are summer drought months, where in other parts of the US their "bad" months are winter frost months.

We borrow some tropical plants that we keep alive with extra water, but really, low water requirement plants are the foundation of a true California garden.

Actually Jamie, you are right. Any plant that requires a cold, dormancy period probably won't make it here in San Diego.

wanda--I do favor South African and Madagascan plants. One of the reasons is because they do so well here. I think the plant you are curious about is the Aloe marlothii. That particular one starts out with red buds and then opens yellow. Most of the other ones I have are all yellow.

I was hoping that others would post pics of their 'California Garden'. I'm a pic-a-holic.

-Ron-

I like the S. Africans too. They are well adapted to our climate. The pic I am curious about is the second one with the pale yellow flowers. Is that A. marlothii? I have that one, but it's still young and hasn't bloomed yet.

Actually, you can grow cherries and a lot more plants that need winter chill. CA is a big state and many areas get cold winters (think mountain ranges). There are varieties of cherries other fruit trees that have been hybridized to require minimal winter chill. Many do well in San Jose.

wanda

I'm sorry, I misunderstood. That is a pic of a Puya. Puya mirabilis. It is a desert-loving bromeliad. Almost never gets anywater. The bloom spikes are 4-5 feet tall. It blooms every year in mid-summer.

-Ron-

I think a beautiful California garden is just a picture in a magazine or someone who has money and pays someone else to maintain it to look like that picture.

In reality I think a real California garden is what anyone pictures is their own garden and they live here and they love their gardening and they love the time and effort they put into doing it and the plants they plant and tend like babies. I'm building my California garden with all my favorite plants and trees so it's mine not anyone else's idea out of a book. I have a new home that I doing from scratch after gardening for some 30 years and I'm having a blast. Oh yeah, I also use the lawn to play croquet with the grandkids.

All I can say is that "California Gardening" is the best thing that's happened since sliced bread. It's my encyclopedia of gardening which provides me with wiki-wiki answers from other gardeners whenever I'm confronted with gardening pilikia (trouble), like which insecticide I should use to combat invading grasshoppers.

Lesdvs: I've lived in most parts of the USA and I can tell you that CA/SW gardening is different than anywhere I've ever lived. The plants and the culture are different. The things you need to think about are different too -- like transpiration instead of mildew, as an example. I've found that CA, for the most part, is a unique environment, and what I thought should have worked in my blouzy sort-of-English garden just isn't working as it ages. AS time goes on my gardens are more and more taking on the look of "those pictures".... not because I'm copying anything, but rather because it is what works.

Good luck on doin' your thing.

Westelle: I'm sorry if I came off too strong, I'm in Visalia, this is my 2nd move in a year into the home we built from a rental in Visalia from CA Hot Springs. I was a little hot in a couple of ways from the heat and some of the replies I was reading. I've lived in Visalia since '74 except for the 13 years up in Hot Springs and excited to be back in the hot valley to grow again what I couldn't in the mountains because of the deer and the snow and 3 month growing season. I'm planting what I like and what I know will grow and the picture perfect gardens are beautiful but not me and I know I'm on to something with what I'm doing when I can see someone walk by out the window doing a double take when they walk by. This is the just the "birth" of the front flower beds. I'm just starting on the back and it's just killing me to have to wait until next spring for the rest. I have some tall "fence" plants in that have made it through the 110 degree temps when we moved in July determined that by the time I have neighbors next spring I'm going to have screening bushes. Is there another part of the forum you might meet me in to discuss some plants I'd be open to your opinions for here in this area since I am rusty. I want to put in my secondary ones in next in the spring and if the ground softens with rains, ha, I'll plant bulbs to naturalize all around the perimeter.
Anyways, California to me always meant my grandma's in Long Beach, Palm Trees, the valley was dirt and Oak Trees the coast was Cypress trees and I didn't spend any time in the north.

Oh, you didn't offend me. You just sounded like someone who had just moved to CA and expected everything to be like where they came from. (One of my own biggest mistakes.) Welcome back to the Valley.

I've only been here 10 years and so am by no means an expert on the flora here, but I have learned a thing or two. You can contact me through Garden Web email. Just tap my name and you'll find a link to send me an email.

FYI: I've learned an immense amount of CA how-to right here on this forum; the folks here are an excellent resource and have taught me a lot.

Nice to see this thread still alive. It is a great topic.

To me, an immigrant, who has lived in California 27 years (longer here than any place on earth), a California garden is something uniquely Californian, something that reminds me when I look out the window that I am in California. I love going on hikes and observing nature, but I can do that only a few times a year. My California garden reminds me daily of California's great outdoors.

My garden has plants like valley oak, coast live oak, blue elderberry, California fuchsia, coffeeberry, toyon, California poppy, hummingbird sage, purple sage, manzanita, California buckwheat, yarrow, and they all do fine with natural rainfall. Each spring, I have 10 varieties of wildflowers come up (all volunteers, self-sowing). Each year is a little bit different, and there are always surprises.

I went to Australia last winter, and loved seeing eucalyptus and grevillea and other Australian plants in people's gardens. Australians seem to be quite aware and proud of their continent's contribution to the plant world. California has incredible plant diversity (6000+ species/subspecies of native plants). I derive great joy in reflecting some of that rich diversity in my California garden.

Here are some pictures of my garden and a short writeup.

Here is a link that might be useful: Some pictures from my garden

No, no y'all are missing it. A CA garden is a perfectly manicured, architectually designed, group of exotic plants and trees that grow and perform flawlessly, though grown no where else on Earth, while surrounding a home to die for with multi-level decking, redwood of course, ever so cleverly placed lighting and a group of people dressed casually but expensively, holding their Williams-Sonoma wine glasses, of course full w/CA wines, milling around the deck w/an outdoor fireplace glowing near the $$$$ BBQ area w/a very large fish on the barby(caught by the owner of the home of course) stuffed w/an exotic dressing, and being cooked to perfection. The meal is served, the guests are all perfectly happy, still drinking their wine at a lovely table imported from Tuscany with a sunset in the background. I know for a fact that I am absolutely right because I grew up in San Francisco and read Sunset Magazine religiously. Every issue showed the perfect CA garden and it always looked like what I have described. I'm not sure how to go about ordering the kit to set up "The California Garden" w/the appropriate people included but I bet if you wrote to Sunset Magazine they could direct you. And y'all thought it was about the plants, silly people.

Eureka you have it! Not meaning to pun, but you put into words what I was trying to say the first time. I hate those magazines who portray CA like that.
I think the landscapers do have a kit they install.
Thank you for your post! Leslie

An authentic California Garden is easily recognized. Native bees, butterflies and other insects will fill the air, backlit by bright sunlight. As you walk through the garden, it will smell of sages, artemisia or other fragrant herbs and foilage indigenous to the area. You will hear the rustle of decaying leaf litter from scurrying lizards or foraging birds. A California Garden can take many forms depending on its location, but an authentic California Garden is always teeming with native wildlife, reptiles and insects. For my area, it means a drought tolerant garden with Coast Live Oaks, Tecate Cypress, Dudleya, White Sage, buckwheat, Deer Grass, Poppies, Lupines, Elderberry, Toyons, Datura, Blackberries, bladderpod, Bees Bliss, Manzanita, Desert Willow, California Honeysuckle, sword fern, coyote bush, Yarrow, Palo Verde . . . it is a garden swirling with movement and local fragrance.

Climate-appropriate, which for us SoCal folks means drought tolerant and heavy rains in the winter. That doesn't mean a dismal, brown summer garden, either. 2 years ago I ripped out my entire front lawn and replanted with a mix of natives, unusual/endandered plants like puya, Australian/SA natives, and butterfly larva plants. It blooms all year round, provides cutting flowers such as protea, and is alive with clouds of butterflies and zipping hummingbirds. The goldfinches now hang around, and neighbors stop by to see what's blooming. No pesticides, very little fertilizer, and best of all, $6/month water bill even in the heat of summer. My next door neighbor is determined to recreate the lawn, azaleas, and bedding plants of his midwest youth, and spends $60-90/month on water, plus a weekly gardener to maintain his green but lifeless landscape. And the neener neener neener helps too!

My garden is the perfect californian garden... some drought tolerant plants, some subtropicals and some vegetables and some fruit trees... all sort of organized in a messy sort of way. Plenty of slug and worm wildlife... fruit beetles, earwigs,finches, hummers, Oregon junkos (at the moment) Robins (also at the moment) all shoved to one side of my Japanese BF's Japanese style garden with bonsai'd everything. THIS multi-cultural garden is the perfect Californian garden :D

Yes, fragrance. And a little bit of merging the indoors and outdoors. Perhaps a little seating area. Here in my front yard, I have REMOVED THE GRASS. Turf grass is a terrible waste of water and is boring, at least to me, in a front yard here. Waste. I am the only one on my street with no grass in front. No one uses it either. Plants that bring that California feel include ceanothus, coffeeberry, native salvias (like Apiana), native deer grass, succulents, strawberry tree,and my favorit, Echium fastuosum. A little Mediterranean and a little California. Oh, and don't forget to sprinkle poppies and lupine in your yard for some color. Check out some native web sites like Las Pilitas for some ideas.

Right now, a frosted, slimy mess, or 'piece of crap'.

Amanda 'romando'

Wow! You must have had a lot of tropicals.

Westelle, was that for me? LOL
I have (had?)
--4 different bananas: musella lasiocarpa (chinese yellow banana), musa zebrina, musa becarri, and an unknown
--passionflowers: citrina (I think will be okay), manicata (not sure how this will come out), lavender lady, exoniensis (looks really really bad), witchcraft (gone), purple tiger (fine), sanguinolenta (fine), molissima (gone), frederick (okay), nancy garrison (okay), lady margaret (looks gone), vitifolia (not sure), quadrangularis (okay), biflora (not good), amethyst (fine), caerulea (seems fine), sally's rescue (fine), parritae x molissima (fine, which shocked me), indigo dreams (gone), gritensis (fine), alata (fine).
brugmansia 'charles grimaldi' looks like steamed spinach, but my b. sanguinolenta looks great. Go figure. My 'frosty pink' is hanging in there; a double white brug has 1 leaf. My 'shredded white' is, well, shredded.
Patchouli plant is gone.
'blue butterfly' clerodendrum is gone.
callisia fragrans (basketplant) is gone.
All my stapeliads and hoodia look fine, but my rattail cactus looks questionable. My agave parryi is fine. All my echeveria are fine.

On the other hand, perhaps my peonies and tulips will perform better this year? Dunno.

Amanda 'romando'

Amanda, the b.sanguinea is a cool weather tropical, much more able to take the cold. My brugs are spinach, but they will come back... I covered my gingers and they are hanging in... my banana's gone but my CHOCOLATE SAPOTE is still alive! wooHOOO! The rest I was too lazy to get in the ground and are in the garage surviving fine... the mango and the guava... thank you! as well as a michelia champaca, that was a challenge to get it in the garage... thank goodness for procrastination. :o)

It's weird - we were gone for 3 weeks and thought the garden would be gone when we got back.
Everything's fine (except the pelargoiums which will come back , they're just sort of wilted).
Even the brugs, and our lone avocado tree look normal.
Perhaps the ocean influence?

Ron: Lovely garden. I just love the succulent gardens. Since our weather is much more extreme than yours, I have to search for the right succulents. Gardens can be beautiful here in the central valley if people would just get rid of their lawns and plant stuff that attracts nature.