began to realize that effective design statements can be made by a limited plant palette. Groves, forests, prairies, chaparral, all imply repetition of appropriate species, where arrangement and disposition create interest, where the particular situation of each plant gives that specimen its unique aspect, balanced with the sense of harmony that results from repetition.
Limiting the number of species can deepen appreciation of the plants already in place, their seasonal changes, their aspects from different viewpoints, their fragrances and textures. Robert Michael Pyle, butterfly expert and nature writer, talks in his book Wintergreen: Rambles in a Ravaged Land about his decision to move to the Willapa Hills in Washington State, a place where the number of butterfly species is mysteriously few. Colleagues and friends, puzzled by his choice, wondered why a butterfly lover would choose a place not known for its variety of butterfly species. Pyle replied that he is thus forced to know one species deeply, rather than being distracted by variety. The time and focus it takes to understand the flutterings and movements, the larval necessities, or the inexplicable arrivals and departures of any single species absorb a significant chunk of a lifetime. Depth of understanding is the goal and the reward of the back-yard restoration gardener.
Choosing a keynote plant, to be repeated throughout the garden, can give a garden “bones,” a structure that the eye can follow throughout. Ceanothus nipomensis, in San Luis Obispo County; black sage, Salvia mellifera, along the south coast; bigberry manzanita, Arctostaphylos glauca, in the Sierra foothills; toyon, Heteromeles arbutifolia, in Santa Clara County; and western rhododendron, Rhododendron macrophyllum, in a woodland garden in Mendocino, are evergreen plants that can hold the garden together through seasonal changes.
ARRANGE PLANTS WITH A LIGHT HAND
Natural models of spatial distribution and vegetation architecture can give us a sense of how we want to arrange plants in our garden. For example, the plant association known as “Douglas fir-mixed evergreen old growth forest” is two-tiered, the tall Douglas firs overtopping the lower-growing tan oaks and bays. The gardener working with that plant community can recreate and work with that spatial arrangement.
In some stands of coastal scrub, the coyote bushes are spaced far enough apart so that each expresses its own mounding shape. In other stands, plants are exuberantly crowded. In my coastal garden, I have used both schemes, providing an opportunity to draw tentative conclusions about the consequences of plant placement. To avoid some weed problems, “plant cramming,” leaving no openings for weedy species to fill, can be effective. Spaced according to their ultimate mature widths, plants can display the full beauty of their form, but more time will be spent weeding until they reach adult size.
The “mosaic” is a way of describing patches that visually knit together. Chaparral and scrub communities on faraway hillsides, with their close weavings of shrubs, can inspire the designer in the use of these species.
For an Ojai garden, take the sacred plant of the Chumash, white sage,Salvia apiana, as your keynote and form a grouping of its associates, ascertained from a local flora or from John Sawyer and Todd Keeler-Wolf's A Manual of California Vegetation, to make a cluster of plants that can be repeated, with variations, throughout the garden. This cluster might include California buckwheat, chamise, chaparral yucca, chaparral whitethorn, deer weed, and, of course, white sage, whose flowers are a powerful lure for bees and whose pungent leaves make a prized incense.
California fescue is a large grass that expresses its nature on many an oak-studded hillside, coastal bluff, or partly shaded road cut. On one striking bank, each plant is spaced so that a perfect staggered design is formed, and the eye takes pleasure in the arrangement in the wild, where it contrasts with less-ordered plant arrangements. The eye seeks repetition, while variation maintains interest. Give the eye a strong message through repetition, as nature does.
Interesting garden designs come from the play between symmetry and asymmetry. Take, for example, a neat threesome of wax myrtles at one end of the fence, one wax myrtle at the other end of the fence, and one wax myrtle somewhere off-center in between. Large garden spaces give opportunity for mass plantings—fifty California fescues rather than eight. The eye strongly registers the growth pattern of this grass, the fountainlike leaf blades, the upright flowering stalks, the silvery skirt of old leaves at the base. Plants that are subtle in shape and color can be given impact by numbers.
The ways plant communities intergrade, the ancient oaks giving way to the silvery shrub lupines, giving way to the tufted bunchgrasses, can be reproduced in the garden in such a fashion as to enhance different kinds of movement through the garden. Openings planted with low-growing forbs, grasses, and wildflowers are places for garden furniture and activities that require free movement. Close plantings of shrubs along pathways that require the garden walker to squeeze through or brush past create a moment of actual physical contact with the plants, feeling and smelling the soft leaf of the hazel or the stiff twigs of coffeeberry. It is pleasurable to be forced to brush past fragrant plants like ceanothus in bloom. Such moments enhance the dimension of immersion in local sensuality.
LET THE PLANTS DICTATE HOW THE DESIGN GROWS
In many landscaping situations, success is based on the notion of a complete plan, precisely and absolutely implemented. The designer's vision is enacted upon the land, and the plants are considered static design elements, whose ultimate heights, widths, textures, and colors can be previsioned and planned around. The operating assumption is that the designer knows his plant “materials” so well that they can be spaced precisely to the distance required. The designer will have failed if the plants do not perform as planned. Such implicit expectations lead to the use and reuse of the same tired but reliable non-native plant species.
Many gardeners expect plants to be predictable. Garden books that use charts perpetuate the notion that height, width, and growth rate are fixed quantities. A close examination of such charts often uncovers unhelpful information, such as height ranges defined as “two to six feet tall.” The chart format implies predictability. Horticulturists sometimes laugh among themselves about the unpredictability of plants, but there seems to be an unspoken pact to keep this aspect of horticultural reality from the gardening public at large.
I have seen oaks shoot up two feet a year in some situations, while in others they eke out a bare eight inches of new growth yearly. Many coastal shrubs, like Pacific wax myrtles and coffeeberries, initially grow slowly in our sandy soil, then take off after two to four years. Other gardeners see quicker growth, possibly because they have more clay in their soil. A chart that reflected such complications would be an unwieldy vehicle for making planting choices.
Some plants are more predictable than others; it is a horticultural goal to breed plants that provide uniform results. Natives have a reputation for being unpredictable. Some are and some are not, but this reputation is a major factor preventing more frequent use of natives. It provides part of the impetus to the search for garden selections of native plants that will behave reliably in different situations.
I have a friend, a sculptor, who said she both admired and felt sorry for landscape designers. “It's like making sculpture, only with unpredictable elements that change through time.” Although appreciative of her compassion, I feel, however, that the gardener's dynamic relationship with soil, insects, sun, and rain is to be rejoiced in, rather than regretted.
Seedlings may appear of their own accord. We look for signs of reproduction as an indication that processes have been set back in motion that may previously have been interrupted. Combinations of plants not hitherto thought of may then occur. To take advantage of this aspect of natural gardening, plant in sections, using a plant grouping that, if it thrives, can be repeated, with variations, throughout the garden. The back-yard gardener has the advantage of being able to take time, gathering information as it comes in, without meeting imposed schedules. Information from the first planting can be used in succeeding plantings,
