I'll not debate the style, as I think you can go either way. Reproduction French Provincial houses can be extremely formalized as well as quite rustic - a rural manor house much like Monet's farmhouse at Giverny. These are pretty common in the California wine country and the landscaping tends to be pretty loose. If the house in question is very symmetrical and formally styled, then a formalized garden would suit as well. Otherwise, I'd go with the looser, more Impressionistic garden style that lucy describes. A formal garden is a lot of upkeep :-) Do some research on formal garden styles and look specifically at parterres and knot gardens. It is not so much the plant selection particularly as it is the manner in which they are used. Generally, the very formally sheared or clipped hedge plants are used to surround and contain looser plantings, but often these are rather monochromatic gardens with a very strong emphasis on green. Roses would be appropriate as well as any smallish broadleaf evergreen shrub amenable to frequent pruning - azaleas, gardenias, germander, dwarf hollies, etc. Yews or privets for larger hedges but other evergreens could work as well - camellias or choisya for example. Then it's pretty much your choice as to how the fill the beds these plants define. Lots of lawns and paved areas too.

Steve, it would be easier to refer you to the photos of this same garden showing the entire area, to illustrate how a vignette relates to the larger garden. I was trying to use the analogy of the human body as a metaphor for how the similarities of the plants as a repeating element link the entire garden together when one steps back to see it as a whole. From a greater distance, it will be the massed repeating forms and color more so than the textural contrasts that unify the garden, which I think of as the "skin" that ties it all together. I also find it a natural linkage between plants when they are similar in their needs; in this case, all had to be both shade and root competition tolerant because they were being underplanted below existing mature Coast Live Oaks, and also tolerant of drier soils between irrigation cycles, as our native oaks are intolerant of continually wet soils in summer. I also switched out the irrigation system on this front slope from uniform spray to targeted drip so that I could keep the immediate areas adjacent the oak trunks completely dry. This wider view of the front garden is not really at a point where I would use it as a portfolio photo, as the limited irrigation for the oak's health has meant that the plantings have yet to really fill in. Typically, after a year's growth, almost any of my recent garden installations would be completely filled in; this section of the garden has been a tougher one for the new plants. I think you will be able to see that the vignettes of those two plant photos are just a subset of the entire garden, but repetition of plant forms, foliage colors, plant types(multiple layers of different succulents in this case), and repeating the monochromatic house colors with the choice of rock for retaining the slope by the sidewalk all reinforce a common experience. While the individual plants selected have nothing whatsoever to do with a native California Oak Woodland understory plant community, they are all quite well adapted to the conditions, and look "woodsy and shade tolerant" without screaming "exotic" in my opinion. Does the additional photo explain what I mean more so than the text? Browse the other photos in the various Drager Garden sets on my Flickr account if you want to see how much the garden really varies from area to area. The east side of the house with the most sun is the most radically colorful portion of the landscape,(lots of orange against the copper house siding), and the rear garden slope at the back of the house/patio is also less monochromatic in use of plant colors, but still uses a lot of the same plants as here in the front garden. Fire safety issues and deer browsing tolerance as well as gopher tolerance were also prime selection criteria for plantings in this garden. Here is a link that might be useful: Wider view of Drager Front Garden

I've heard that Hedberg's is a good place to go for all kinds of rock. You might want to check their website or give 'em a call. Good luck in your search.

Orange fingerprints on papers....leave a trail of student guilt. That's pretty funny, Sylvia, but frustrating, I'm sure. I've kind of lost my taste for Cheetos, but into my fifties, I was occasionally eating the orange cheez crack. The bad thing is, if you start on a bag, you can't quit. They contain the crack of snack food--powdered cheez..... I know that lots of companies in Europe pay to have roses named after their businesses or people in their businesses. How about the rose, The International Herald Tribune, or Savoy Hotel? I wish I could think of more names offhand, but there are a lot of them, some of which are copyrighted or trademarked......Isn't Alakazam a sport of Simsalibim? That was the rose that rose fans paid hundreds of $ for at auctions held by one of our rose organizations. I think the top price was around $400, but the price varied the years it was offered. Jasmine/Bonnie, K&M and Alakazam are wonderful. I love those crazy color combos, and if they are displayed well, these roses are pretty eyepopping. Diane