Thank you all for the replies and the reassurances! Now I realize I have a wheel barrow full of suitable crushed granite :) One thing, though, will the crushed granite still be okay with everything 1/8" and smaller sifted out? Should I amend with a little more Turface to balance out the increased drainage? I suspect the crushed granite is still good from what I know about gritty mix, just want to make sure. @Al - I hope your recovery is swift and complete. Thank you for your help. Not just here, I've learned so much in such little time reading your many posts. @simonk - Lyngso is indeed the place a tried, a lead I got from the Regional Supplies thread. I'll keep that max size of 3/8" in mind! @robertbay - If you are around San Jose, check out U-Save Rockery. They have crushed granite that is the same grit as Lyngso's Desert Gold. The plus, though, is that it doesn't have nearly as much dirt and debris encrusted. I only went to Lyngso because I visited U-Save Rockery and thought Lyngso's crushed granite would be smaller. I don't think I need the $200 investment into an eco-shredder :) I will keep EB Stone in mind though, thanks!

I like High Country Gardens catalog but it isn't really suitable for our climate here. I live in the Oakland hills and found very few of their plants worked here. It's much better to stay local since we have such great nurseries here. Even the big box stores and some of the drugstores (like Long's) have fabulous nursery sections. Get a copy of the Sunset Western Garden Book; it's the Bible of Western gardeners and has all kinds of useful info in it. Remember you are going to have water in all plants, even xeric ones, until they become established, for at least the first year. Also, the better your soil, the better they will do. Then mulch, mulch, mulch. Soaker hoses work great in mixed plantings and waste so much less water. Use quick couplers to make it easier to switch your hoses around. A groundcover I'm surprised more people don't use is Convolvulus mauritanicus, a morning glory relative. It's amazingly xeric. Not the prettiest groundcover, but very tough and pest-free. Another groundcover that is xeric but won't look good during the winter, is lambs ear (Stacchys byzantia). 'Helen Von Stein' doesn't have the spikey flowers that some folks object to, but the color is a darker green than the standard variety. Any creeping groundcover will need some periodic maintenance to keep them from running over neighboring plants. It's just a fact of life here in the relatively frost-free zones we live in. I'm always fighting my evergreen vines because they keep trying to swallow their neighboring plants! Any vine that grows to 15' in other regions becomes a 30+' monster around here. Lavenders will be very happy with little summer water, as will tagetes lemmonii (bush marigold), hunnemania, dwarf Indian hawthorn, tibouchina urvilleana, any of the new pelargonium hybrids (people call them geraniums, which is botanically incorrect; true geraniums are less showy and thirstier), salvias, cistus (rockrose), roses (once established), artemisia, leptospermum (tea tree) Again, my soil is quite good - we replaced the first 8" of adobe clay with top-quality compost from the Davis St. Recycling Center - and I mulch every year. We like a cottage garden look, not to everyone's taste. I water every 10-14 days, depending on how hot it gets. This photo is from May, when the lavenders, nasturtiums and poppies put on the best show. But I have flowers all year long, actually.

hoovb, yes, I will look at Grevilleas some more. The main street tree is currently planned to be a white redbud (Alba or Royal White variety), so I'm not sure I want the large screening plant to also have white flowers. (The street tree in the rendering is a different tree - I can't find a suitable image/model of a redbud tree.) But I know there are lots of Grevilleas to choose from with all kinds of flower colors. Also I guess the redbud will only flower a few weeks a year, so maybe I shouldn't worry too much about the white/white combination. Andy, your point is well taken. In fact, now that I'm coming around to the idea that we'll need to prune/shape whatever we put in front of those windows, maybe the original idea of a Pittosporum Silver Sheen there is not such a bad idea. I modeled a Pittosporum Silver Sheen in front of the right window using a different but similar shrub (similar in its size and open habit), and threw in a Leucodendron Safari Sunset in front of the left window for now. Any yay's or nay's on this combination? Although I like the Ceanothus Ray Hartman in the abstract, I'm finding that I like the red color of the Leucodendron Safari Sunset and the neutral green color of the P. Silver Sheen against the house paint color, rather than the blue of the Ceanothus Ray Hartman with that paint. (The rendering is a pretty good representation of our actual house color, at least on my computer monitor.) Thanks again.

Yes, the Bay area is a little outside of my normal business commute :-) And were you closer, I'd gladly come and give you a hand!! Now that my sister has moved here from the Laguna Beach area, I don't even visit in CA any more. I hope I have given you a few tools to help you find someone. I am not as familiar with the professional certifications offered by the CANGC as I am with those through WSNLA but the skill level should be somewhat comparable. It is exactly that kind of service you are looking for that I do as an independent contractor for my local nursery......consulting horticulturist. I live on the east side of the Island, just a block up from the beach. But in the woods so I have only a peek-a-boo water view :-( However, I drive along the best view on the Island - IMO - daily to and from the highway. A majestic view of Puget Sound, including all of the Seattle skyline and if clear, Mt. Rainier and all of the Cascades. It's a very narrow road that runs right along the water with a lot of walkers and a low speed limit but I would dawdle anyway, soaking up my daily fix of that view!!