Finding the right garden idiom

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Hi all,

Just a query for anyone's thoughts on regionally appropriate garden style:

We've lived in southern California for almost ten years now; my spouse is native to Atlanta, Georgia and I grew up on Long Island, NY.  It took a while, but I now feel at home as a gardener here.

However, I still find myself searching for the right garden idiom, the _expression_ of what I love about California, and I haven't quite found it.

My first plant love as a child was for wildflowers in the pine barrens and salt marshes of Long Island, and an interest in native flora both in and out of the garden has remained with me as an adult.  

Using California natives can be challenging -many seem averse to domestication- but they can create a charming scene: a grove of sycamores (Platanus racemosa) shading hollyleaf cherry, ceanothus,  heuchera and iris, for example. If you have space for a grove of sycamores, it's a nice basis for a garden, and creates a microclimate comfortable for both humans and numerous native and exotic plants.

Sycamores are riparian, however, not very water-wise or reflective of the dominant chaparral vegetation of southern California.  In most cases, they will rely on water imported from northern California, whereas many non-native trees can get by on far less water.

I'm very impressed by photos I've seen of gardens by prominent designers in Provence, in particular Philippe Cottet, Nicole de Vesian, Michel Semini, and Dominique de la Fourcade.  They each have a way of distilling the native landscape, refining and humanising it yet still remaining true to the surrounding countryside: De Vesian's garden La Louve, in particular, seems to be a humanised maquis.

I would love to create a similar garden in southern California: not an imported quotation of a Provencal garden, but one which like those gardens seems to have a dialogue with the surrounding countryside.

Sort of a clipped and tended chaparral garden, I suppose, hard shiny green contrasting with soft grey green, with a bit of shade from the noonday sun.

Anyone have any ideas on the subject?

Ben Armentrout-Wiswall

Simi Valley, inland Ventura County, California