Nandina makes a decent hedge. You keep it at a manageable height and keep it looking fresh by getting in there once a year and selectively removing the oldest, tallest stems. It can reach the eves of a 1 story house eventually. Disadvantages is that It spreads by rhizomes so you have to keep it in bounds root-wise, and if you don't remove the old tall stems you get a bare base and a tall plant arching outwards. Eventually kind of scraggly. With yearly maintenance it can stay pretty. Ignored it can get pretty sad and taller than 4'. I like Nandina 'Firepower', though it's not going to get 4', more like 2'. It's really well behaved and very shrubby/pretty, doesn't spread like Gulfstream. Red fountain grass should be cut to the ground once a year in late winter as new growth appears, to keep it looking good, not sheared into a bottle brush shape. It's a grass and needs to be refreshed. So you temporarily lose your hedge every year for a month or two. Is that going to work? What about common myrtle, which shears into a really pretty hedge and can be kept at about any size. Its slow growing so one shear a year is fine, and can live on winter rain alone, provided we get some winter rain. The foliage has a beautiful sweet fragrance and the foliage is a deep, dark green year round. It's also very tough and long-lived. Boxwood does pretty good considering you are so near the coast. Inland it looks poorly in heat and in winter cold. These would be examples of standard easily available plants for reliable performance, rather than a trendy solution. Avoid Euonymous because it needs more water to look good and protection from scale and spider mites. It looks great in a pot at the nursery but commonly not too good in your yard a couple of years later. Jade plant believe it or not makes a decent hedge and needs little water, but I'm not a jade plant fan myself.

Sorry if I came off as so negative with my advice, certainly you have gained a wealth of personal experience that has now elevated you from a "newbie" gardenener to one more experienced with the trials and tribulations of invasive weeds, and poor winter drainage. A bit more about using Roundup in case you didn't know: 1. Works best when bermuda grass has not been cut back, but is full and lots of surface foliage 2. Apply when bermuda grass is in active growth(usually once it has hit 75F temps for a couple of weeks 3. Roundup works best when you have consistent warm weather so that it actively gets translocated to the roots 4. When bermuda grass is invading from the neighbors gardens, you need to do regular weed patrol to keep on top of runners that spring up from under the fence, probably at least every couple of weeks About the annual bluegrass: 1. If you are planting out small seedlings that can't effectively compete with weeds, try cutting an 18 square of weed fabric and pinning down at the edges around any new seedlings, this is what is typically done with revegeatation seedlings/trees planted out in grasslands, they need help creating a clear zone so that they can get large enough to compete with the weeds/grasses 2. Mulching deeply to keep bare soil from being exposed greatly helps with inhibiting weed seeds that need light to germinate, such as the annual blue grass 3. If you are trying to reseed poppies and other wildflowers, you can keep smaller areas weedfree and scatter saved seed, but will need to be vigilant about weeding seedlings of weeds as they come up Watering new plantings; 1. Standing with the hose and giving things a splash of water just isn't enough with valley heat and small seedlings with their limited roots 2. Better to give things a really good soak twice a day if starting seedlings when the weather is still hot, and use mulch to minimize soil evaporation 3. You might consider creating temporary shade structures using bamboo stakes and shade cloth if you can't resist starting seedlings outside the ideal fall planting window 4. Ideal time to plant out small sized native species is in the fall, once it starts to cool off enough in your area that you won't be getting any more 75F and above days, this makes a huge difference in heat and water stress for small plants Drainage issues 1. You are absolutely right that if you didn't know how poorly drained your intended garden was going to be, you wouldn't have known that it would be a problem. 2. You now know that it may be worth investigating first before you start planting; ie, look to see if there are rain gutters or downspouts off the roof, where they drain, if there is enough slope to the ground that water can drain away, etc. It may also be helpful to ask the neighbors, landlord, former tenants, when you have a chance to do so, if there are any drainage problems with the site Weeds; 1. You now have the experience to be a better judge of whether your intended garden area is surrounded by weeds, and if so, you now also know that it is always a good idea to try and get rid of the stored seed bank before you start planting 2. Getting rid of entrenched weeds may mean using Roundup at the right time of year to effectively kill them(and use the full strength applications and repeat usage after clearing away killed weeds, watering for at least a couple of weeks to initiate new growth, wait until weed regrowth is at least a couple of inches and spray again. You may need to do this 3 or 4 times over 3 to 4 months to get rid of all the weeds. 3. It may be useful to cultivate/disturb the soil several times to expose weed seeds to light, hoe them off or spray with herbicide, and repeat several times if you suspect you have a real weed problem. This could even mean that you don't plant your garden until 3 to 4 months of weed treatment. Dogs and new plants 1. it may be preaching to the choir, but small plants and dogs who aren't trained to be careful around small plants, or don't get enough walks/excercise to keep from being bored when left alone all day, are not a good mix with new plantings, especially at small vulnerable sizes. It only makes sense to give the plants some protection from dogs if you can't mitigate their behavior, dogs will do what dogs want to do without work on your part. Maybe I have just been lucky with the dogs I have owned, but I started training them very young to be careful around the garden, and not destroy young or old plants. I also had the time to take them on long walks every day, and burn off all that excess energy, which is important when you have a labrador retriever. Now if I could just train the raccoons not to damage plants in my garden.. You have gotten some valuable experience in gardening by the "trial by fire" method, but it can also be useful to ask questions when you aren't clear on the methods, take classes, and keep reading up. Obviously there isn't just one way to garden, and I certainly don't claim to know all the answers, but over 40 years of gardening, over 30 years of them professionally, mean that I do have a very good handle on how to handle weeds, drainage, soil amendmending, etc to fit within the budgets and efforts of my clients, and can tailor solutions that will work within different circumstances. It is always about tradeoffs, and I am not against using weedcloth as a first line of defense to be set underneath deep mulch when I can't eliminate the weeds in the first place, it has been my only workable method to minimize bermuda grass and Oxalis pes-capri infestations when I didn't have the time or budgets necessary to really control them before new landscape plantings.

The plants in the photos grow near the edge of the Laguna Escarpment. In other areas not far away are mixed oak-conifer forests, but as you see in the photos, this immediate area is chaparral. Chaparral consists mainly of woody shrubs, in this area usually less than, say, 4 ft high. Chaparral communities in California occur from sea level to high mountains. Each elevation has, of course, its own mix of species, but plants like manzanita (Arctostaphylos spp.) Ceanothus (Ceanothus spp.) and chamise (Adenostema fasciculatum) are common themes in southern California chaparral. One thing all chaparral communities in California have in common is that they are adapted to wet winters and dry summers, and they like well-drained soils. There is great season-to-season variability of precipitation. There can be several consecutive months with no precipitation at all, though they may pick up a little moisture from fog (mountain tops buried in the clouds). At the site shown, winters regularly bring snow and temps in the teens, but snow is extremely rare at low elevations. The nearest weather station for which I have data is Julian, which is a bit lower and less exposed and surrounded by mixed forest. Julian's mean annual precip is about 26 inches, most of it from November through April, and with occasional summer thunderstorms. Some summers bring several, some summers bring none. I would guess that my Salvia sonomensis site at Mile 34 on Sunrise Hwy is somewhat drier than Julian. They should get those summer thunderstorms, since this is exactly where the clouds build up, at the crest of the mountains.

In my opinion, the best strategy is to drip only 2 to 3 times a weeks to the point that the soil gets entirely saturated. And only try to give the plant additional supplemental water in the Summer season, when it is especially hot and dry. If used in the proper way, a drip system can help make sure the lower soil levels get saturated, since the water is applied at a very slow rate that gives it time to seep down into the lower soil levels. If you just dry to use the hose, the top soil will get very wet (possibly muddy) but then all the rest of the water will just run off the surface.