I typed this response below before I realized that you don't live in California, but Oregon! You can still have a mediterranean inspired garden further north, but will have to adjust your planting choices to reflect that you are still mediterranean influenced in climate, but too cold and often too wet to slavishly emulate a California mediterranean style. It can certainly be done, even so, as there are classic mediterranean style gardens even in Vancouver, BC, or along the East Coast, where maintaining drought tolerant mediterranean plants in east coast summer heat, humidity and rainfall takes extra work. Adapting a plant palette that emphasizes gray foliage, and avoids the lush and green will go a long ways towards establishing the look. If you are set within tall conifer woods or surrounded by lots of big deciduous shade trees, it may be a stretch to pull this off visually. Most classic mediterranean gardens are washed in bright sun, and would typically rely on overhead screens or everegreen trees to create some relief in summer. If you have a situation where you can create a walled courtyard, it might be far easier to create a landscape within to suit your theme, and relate the outside to the surrounding neighborhood if the mediterranean theme/illusion can't be sustained. If you ahve your heart set on a palm as part of the theme, a Mediterranean Fan Palm/Chamaerops humilis or Windmill Palm/Trachycarpus fortunei are two that would take your climate. The following is what I had started to reply before I realized you are so much further north... The remnant gardens of all of the California missions are but fantasy recreations, with little basis in fact. You probably wouldn't want to emulate the real thing, it would be too sparse, utilitarian and devoid of plants. Mission gardens were for work and agriculture, not aesthetics. Michelle has pointed you in a good direction as to books and info. You will probably find that it makes much more sense to design a mediterranean inspired garden full of plantings that reflect your climate. If you stay true to this, you won't include a lawn, or insist on the garden being at its peak in mid summer, when a mediterranean garden would be resting for lack of water, and waiting to revive with the fall rains. (This is probably true even for your location in Oregon, where most gardens still need some supplemental irrigation in summer and early fall, even with your reputation for so much more rain that here in California). Winter and spring growth and bloom, lots of plants that are naturally designed to conserve water in summer and survive would be the majority of the garden. I personally would not recommend a Mexican Fan Palm for the entry; too large and messy, there are many other more suitable palms. I'd consider using rosemary, lavenders, santolinas, phlomis, as backbone perennials in the garden. If you want to take a cue from moorish/spanish themed gardens in particular, then inlucing a few classic courtyard more water loving plants to be used as accents might include an orange or lemon tree and a small fountain within a walled courtyard. Using tile, saltillo pavers or decomposed granite fines as paving/non planted surfaces would also give a classic mediterranean feel. For me, there are several public gardens that exude this feeling. Visit the buildings and surrounding gardens of San Diego's Balboa Park, or State Street in Santa Barbara and especially the County Court House Complex. If you wanted to design a mediterranean inspired garden using California natives, the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden above the mission further up the canyon is another great place to visit and get ideas. Also in nearby Montecito, the Casa del Herrero Garden is open to the public by appointment, and has great spanish detailing to the house and gardens. I would recommend seeing as much as you can, and formulating your own style based on what you like, rather than trying to emulate a formula for your new gardenI'm willing to bet there are plenty of good examples of "mediterranean style" gardens in your own community, especially if you live somewhere like Pasadena or San Diego. Well, as you can see, alot of the references will not apply as you don't live anywhere near Southern California, but taking in the sights and paying a visit might still be good for generating ideas to recreate the "sense" of a classic mediterranean garden. Planting things that can survive and still look good on your seasonal rainfall also makes good sense even if the style isn't medit in feeling. You won't have to work as hard to keep it alive in the next drought, nor spend as much time pruning things back that are encouraged to overgrow by too much regular watering out of the natural rainfall season.

I love arts & crafts and mission styles too so I was drawn right into this post. Since you have a budget and say you won't (ever?) have more money to put into the decor I think you need to sit down and think about how to spend the money. Which things do you expect to last "forever" and which can you see replacing down the road? Put the bulk of your money into the forever stuff. I think as long as you keep things simple you can mix art & crafts/mission with other styles with great success. Puffy recliners are no good though so get rid of that thing! Just kidding. Sort of ;-) We'd all like to a houseful of Stickley and Van Erp but most of us can't afford that. There are "no name" antique mission furnishings out there at reasonable prices (because they are no name) that are solidly built. Someone like my father, who hated mission furniture, would use them as work benches or whatever. Now they need refinishing but they're still good pieces. Keep your eyes open for those diamonds in the rough.

Tom- I respectfully disagree. I don't think you understand me. If you look at the room you posted everything is variations of tone. The sofas are brown, the walls are white, curtains kind of beige/burlapy, theaccent chair is building on the tones, and the tables as well. Take a look at the art on the mantle - even that is white with darker tones. The only real bright color is the plant. However you're suggesting a room with 3 chairs that will have the leather color then a wood tone (no calming anchor like the sofas) as well as several very saturated colorful photos. My concerns have nothing to do with architecture. It's very hard to give any kind of real feedback when you post a picture of a room you'd like to emulate but then want to work around elements that make that vision very very hard to achieve. And I don't think you need to take the measuring tape to the store. Look on the ekornes website or call the salesperson. You should be able to get both interior seat dimension as well as total width, height, and depth... That way you can compare across lines and find something that you love.

I did that once, years ago, but did it the other way around... First, I had bought a gold leaf bamboo frame that I liked, at a tag sale. Then, I purchased a stretched canvas to fit the frame. I found the perfect piece of fabric that I liked, it was sort of like a toile, that had a Japanese scene. I centered the scene over the canvas, and pulled it taught, and just stapled it all around..and voila!! as you said, Instant Art. It was a very simple project. Funny thing... when I sold my old house, I had a tag sale, and sold it...lol... It's not a hard thing to do..just have to line up all the right elements to make it work. Hope this was helpful. jane