Beautiful California Garden #3

Another beautiful garden on the Mary Lou Heard tour, a garden of which my photos were bad, giving no sense of the layout, only beauty shots of foliage.  A far better sense of the garden here--my post is...because pretty foliage!  A gardener with restraint:  no army of potted plants stashed away in a corner.  The gardener had the control over plant purchasing we all long for (and are happy not to possess).  He filled the garden just enough, and no more.  It made for order without rigidity, a relaxed formality without fussiness.  

A Garden Where The Gardener Knew How To Quit When He Was Ahead. 

The front lawn had been recently removed because of the drought.  To the left of the walk, a hedge encloses a group of Itoh peonies, a shrub, a very interesting boulder, and a slightly random arrangement of a Cordyline, Chondropetalums and Ceanothus.  
The very interesting boulder.
The other, larger area to the left of the walkway didn't look all that great.  Certainly a challenge due to tree roots, the green, green and white variegated, burgundy and golden mix of foliage under the large pine is a hint of the back garden's plants.  A colorful arrangement of foliage under the large pine, but the area was mostly empty space covered with dg--a plastic lawn would better reflect the historic home's style.  
The hell strip had Abelia, Adenanthos, Dyckia (big mistake) and a Leucospermum or two.  Great plants, and healthy, but looking a little out of sync with the style of the historic home and the foundation plantings...
...some obviously very well established, healthy, and old Camellias.  Farfugium japonicum var gigantium (?) below them.  This home is one block from the ocean, so the location provides a cool, humid microclimate excellent for these plants. 
Through the narrow side yard... 
I don't know why I didn't get any wide shots of the garden--you look at what you look at on garden tours.  Every plant was beautifully maintained.  This is distracting. I couldn't see the garden because I focused on the plants. 
I love this black-foliaged Sambucus.  There's a huge pair of them in the Huntington Shakespeare garden I dote on, and have often wanted one of my own.  The lawn is plastic, to reduce water use because of the drought. 
The owner said this rose was in the garden when he bought the property.  Like every other plant in the garden it was nicely trimmed and cared for.  I got the impression the gardener did nothing much to prepare for the tour--that this is what the garden always looks like.  Which you can do when you don't have fifty plants too many. 
A patch of white/green/blue.  Like I said, restraint.
Much of the garden had foliage in the color range of chartreuse and burgundy, that agreed with the paint colors of brown and orange. 
A potted chocolate Albizia
A potted Magnolia...

...and those were all the photos I took.  Really good garden tours are overwhelming.  I was by that time overwhelmed.   

Comments

  1. With the two very different posts it doesn't seem like the same garden. Lovelovelove all your comments

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    1. Thanks Jane! The garden is the same, the observers were the difference. The harmony of the whole vs. the details.

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  2. Another lovely garden as your title already suggested! I zoomed in especially on those patterned and textured pots though, they are gorgeous! And that rock, looks like where rainbow cobbles come from.

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    1. Very nice garden and more like a PNW garden because of close proximity to the ocean. It was a heck of a nice neighborhood--historic houses from the 1920s. (brand new from your country's perspective, ancient from ours!)

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  3. Your photos are wonderful and, as usual, you caught elements I utterly missed - like than unusual boulder. You captured the front entry much better than I did.

    I hope you're not roasting this weekend. It was over 90F here yesterday and only slightly better today.

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    1. As you captured so much I didn't. A few different points of view on a garden are remarkably helpful, no?

      I didn't spend a lot of time outside the past couple of days--before 8 am and after 6 pm, but it is cooling off now, yay! Did you get all your mulch distributed? I'm continuing to dread the job ahead.

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  4. What's this restraint of which you speak? I've heard of it somewhere before but it's certainly not something I posses. Cool boulder. It's funny how we focus on different things/have divergent impressions on garden tours. Makes seeing the same gardens on different posts interesting.

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    1. Your garden makes lack of restraint look good!

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  5. That boulder is remarkable! I saw another post about this garden from another blogger, and I enjoyed your additional perspective very much. Restraint? Unfortunately, I have an enormous garden, and it is hard for me to refuse a great looking plant, as I can always find a spot for it. But of course, good design and climate demand selective plant choices. Otherwise, the list of dead plants may be longer than we care to admit. Fortunately, visitors to my garden don't see all the dead ones!

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    1. With an enormous garden, you have a responsibility to fill it! ;^)

      There are sections of my garden never blogged about--guess why that is? Ha, ha!

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  6. That black-purple lacy Sambucus is spectacular when it gets near full size, particularly when in bloom; the flowers are nearly a foot across, like pale pink doilies against the dark foliage. A pair of them were the absolute stars of a friend's garden on a May tour last year. Tragically one of them just suddenly died back and gave up the ghost in midsummer. [The gardener blames voles.] I have nowhere to put one that wouldn't look bizarre out here in the country, but if I were in a suburb or city it would be near the top of my list.

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    1. Well the country has its own virtues, right?

      The Sambucus pair at the Huntington are so glorious, I swoon over them on every visit. There is a native western Sambucus growing in many places in our neighborhood, and it is an attractive, wildlife-supporting plant, but the black lace version is on another level.

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    2. It does, and one of them is native elderberries growing wild. Those seem to be surprisingly short-lived, lasting just a few years before popping up in another spot. That makes me even more reluctant to plant any cultivated ones... though the purple cutleaf, seen even once in its prime, is impossible to put out of mind.

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  7. Looks wonderful -- I didn't miss having any wide shots.

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    1. Thanks, Alan. I wish I'd taken some though. Maybe I was just green with envy.

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  8. the boulder is something agate?
    But in that case a HUGE chunk of semi-precious stone. Wow!

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    1. I have no idea, but it was stunning, and huge.

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  9. Beautiful.
    I loved meeting you.
    Janicce.

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    1. Best wishes to you and your beautiful garden, Janice! Thank you for visiting my blog.

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