Beautiful shots. The so-called English garden style is somewhat unsuited for the desert that is much of California. Most of us now have water restrictions or will in the near future, and we have drought 6 months of the year. Our gardens require irrigation for a large part of the year. It is difficult to achieve that look with low flow irrigation. We must rely more on shrubs, and the palette of small shrubs is annoyingly limited. We do what we can, but usually it's seasonal with spring glory because we have little rain between mid-April and mid-November. I rely on a number of hard-scrabble ground-huggers and have learned to avoid everything that even thinks of being invasive around roses. Try watering your annuals with drippers, and you'll understand what I'm talking about.

This is a good thread. We have more annual rainfall than you Californians, about 40", but have long summer droughts and very heavy soil, somewhat compensated by the garden's being on a slope. We get snow most winters--last winter was a wet one, with five feet of snow that melted however promptly--but temperatures rarely fall below 20F, tending to stay in the thirties and forties much of the time during winter. I grow my plants as others have described here: roses and shrubs underplanted with subshrubs, perennials, bulbs, and self-seeding annuals. We don't water plants after the first year. Last year we went four months with one centimeter of rain: most things survived. We keep a heavy mulch on our beds. My plant list: Bearded iris, which I DO like; this is unkillable if you don't overwater it. Also I. orientalis, more commonly known as I. ochroleuca. Snakeshead iris, an iris relative, is good. Lavender, mostly lavandins (L. angustifolia x L. latifolia) and L. angustifolia and close relatives: these are hardy and don't mind heavy soil. L. stoechas may need looser soil; my finely cut tender lavender died to the ground last winter but is coming back. L. lanata is supposed to be tender, but I've never seen cold damage on mine: it has brilliant silvery foliage and violet flowers, and does well in hot, dry places. Artemisias of every kind, perovskia. I hear some of these can be invasive; in my garden I think they employ all their energies just staying alive. Caryopteris is good and handsome; sometimes it seeds. Thymes don't hold up well, but I think they might do better at the feet of roses with some protection from sun and wind. Mother-of-thyme (Thymus serpyllum) does very well this way as a ground cover, as does the caraway-scented thyme, the botanical name of which escapes me. Common culinary sage does well for me and is a handsome plant that the bees love; if it's particularly happy it will self-seed. The form with purple leaves dies out, but the yellow-variegated kind does great without summer water: mine stays prostrate. I'm beginning to discover the ornamental sages. I was recently given S. microphylla and S. 'Indigo Spires'; the giver tells my they both do well in a dry garden, but I'm watering mine as they're in their first year. S. guaranitica is a magnificent plant, but it gets big (think two meters tall and wide, though somewhat open in growth) and needs a little shelter from sun and wind, but it's not fussy. Rosemary in its many forms. It can be killed by a very wet winter, but I just plant a new plant: like most of these aromatic plants it's very easy to grow from cuttings. It stretches out and roots as it goes. Dahlias and kniphofias (red hot poker) are surprisingly modest in their water needs, at least if they're in heavy soil. Spring-blooming bulbs do their growing in winter and early spring when there's water, then go dormant in summer during the dry period. Daffodils, tulips, crocus all thrive here. Many of them need winter chill, and critters like them, except for daffodils, which have the enormous virtue of being poisonous. Common daylily (Hemerocallis fulva) grows everywhere. In California I'd be checking out the native bulbs. More aromatics: every kind of Nepeta; lavender cotton (Santolina) in all its varieties; Phlomis, to which a friend recently introduced me; this year I'm trying hyssop in the open garden. Field poppies, the annual red poppy that you see in Impressionist paintings; that stately weed mullein (it does take up a lot of space its second year). Then there are the drought-tolerant shrubs, but that's another discussion. Gardening is always an experiment. Our garden is influenced by our deep and heavy soil and by our usually generous annual rainfall. Since we don't water in summer we usually can grow plants like rosemary in heavy ground, but if we do get a lot of rain in late spring or summer, rosemary can die. A dry garden in summer means that we usually don't have to worry about our tall bearded iris rotting or losing our daffodils. We have enough winter chill for temperate climate plants. There are so many factors that influence a plant's growth that it's worth trying ones you like. Melissa

Hi, I had a talk with my sister again. What she wants is a place where she can relax after work, block out the neighbors, and grow herbs. Actually, she like to grow herbs that are in thai food like thai basil, lime, etc. Because of the sun, she would also like some sort of foldable roof or umbrella that she can adjust to shelter her from the sun. The garden should incorporate a grill. We went out to a garden when she visited and was interested in a lot of the vertical gardening stuff. An irrigation system is already in place apparently to water the existing citrus trees. I am thinking may be some wooden planter as Renee suggested and combine it with some sort of hanging vines to block out the neighbors. The issue is to find a selection of plants that will bloom may at different times of the year so that it's colorful all the time and is also low in maintenance. I'll start checking out the catalog suggested by Carla and also talked to the extension services. Has anyone grown thai basil in California near the Bay area? Thanks! Paul

Make sure you visit places before you decide -- we are beginning the process of moving back to Vermont after years in California and Arizona. We miss the seasons, the culture, the history, the greenery, etc. All the websites pointed us to the PNW, and it was the "logical" choice; we even have a number of friends in Portland (Oregon -- the "other" Portland!) and Seattle. But despite a half-dozen trips to various areas there, it never felt quite right. Then this past summer we came back to New England and it fit like an old glove! So wherever you go, it has to feel "right" if you're going to make it work. In New England / the Northeast, I'd think you'd do well in any of the smaller towns in an arc from the Delaware Gap in PA/NJ, up through the lower Hudson Valley to NW Connecticut. A little milder than VT/NH/ME, but still 4 seasons, good rain, etc. For that matter western Maryland and the Shenandoah Valley in VA are also good bets, but they get a bit hot & humid in the summer (I speak from experience -- can you guess that we're also a bit peripatetic!?) In the PNW, check out Hood River OR, Bellingham WA, and Port Townsend WA. All great towns with recreation, diversity, etc. Also Bend OR. Portland OR is also pretty nice, in a funky kind of way. When we visited last summer I was stunned at the flowers everywhere, especially roses. Where most cities have ivy or weeds along their freeway embankments, in Portland it's solid roses! Amazing to see. And of course the rose test garden in Portland is a treat in itself. If you've never lived on the west coast, the thing to watch out for is the "marine layer", a.k.a. June gloom, a.k.a. overcast skies. We lived in Santa Monica for 18 months, just 10 blocks from the beach -- and I hated it! It was overcast 8 days out of 10. But just 1 or 2 miles inland, it would be sunny (and 10 degrees warmer). Of course the PNW is even more prone to overcast than SoCal... though of course that said, during the summer months it's sunny and beautiful most of the time, *if* you're inland.