That's how Melissa Kellogg of Sanctuary Gardens describes the grounds she created at her client's '20s-era Spanish colonial estate above rugged Eaton Canyon in Altadena.
When she was brought in by lead landscape designer Mark Goldschmidt to install the planted areas in 2009, Kellogg set out to blur the line between the cultivated and the wild - a big trend these days.
"There was no question that a natural approach involving California native and Mediterranean-adapted plants was both environmentally and stylistically appropriate," Kellogg says.
Be it oak woodlands or desert-inspired cactus and succulent gardens, suburban wildscapes are catching on as more homeowners look for ways to reduce water use and embrace all the color, texture and shapes California native plants and wildflowers have to offer - and without all the fuss.
No fertilizing or soil amending required here.
South Bay landscaper Tony Baker, whose Natural Landscapes promotes California native and drought-tolerant gardening, keeps "a very wild-looking garden" at his home.
The garden attracts an array of wildlife, from bees and lizards to birds.
"It's amazing how just sitting on my deck I'll see dozens and dozens of birds flying around the garden," says Baker, who designed and maintains the native plant garden at the Madrona Marsh Nature Center in Torrance. "It's great entertainment.
"I'm
amazed more people aren't doing it, but they're pretty attached to their lawns."That could explain the quizzical looks from passersby when Marilyn Beaumont began tearing out the scraggly grass in the parkway of her daughter's Redondo Beach bungalow.
"My daughter's spouse, Vanessa, was tired of watering and taking care of the huge parkway that they have ... and this is a big corner," she says. "So she said, `I want a California native garden,' which means she didn't want to water it or mow it anymore.
"So, I said, can I do it?"
While her daughter's family was out of town for 10 days she broke ground. Working off a design she had drafted weeks earlier, she put in plants that promised to come alive with fragrance and color.
She also buried logs and rocks to give the effect that they'd been there for a while.
"I just wanted it to look woodsy, and it does," she says of the garden now featured in the upcoming South Bay Water-Wise Garden Tour on May 15.
But Kellogg says the only direction she got from her client was that the garden be attractive. The rest was up to her.
The property was already home to a number of venerable oak trees, palo verde trees and succulents. So Kellogg worked around them.
She chose vibrant plants that were environmentally suitable and would complement the woodland look she was going for.
"I don't want anyone to have to be constantly irrigating or constantly spraying for pests or constantly fertilizing," she says. "And yet I want plants to always look their best."
The streetside garden features a variety of heat- and sun-loving plants, such as the dark mahogany branches of a manzanita backdropped by the purple-spired Pride of Madeira. In the same area, blue chalk sticks and orange lantana ramble wildly around a cluster of Agave attenuata.
In other areas of this garden, bunches of grassy Kniphofia mimic a seasonal meadow near a plum tree.
Just behind the gate, the entry garden leads to the front of the house.
"How you get to the front door is basically through this woodland garden," Kellogg says. "So it was important to consider where you were going to be standing and viewing the garden, or how you were going to be moving through it."
Matte-leafed coffeeberry grows in a soft natural shape. Native Heuchera maxima sends up huge spires of dainty blossoms and colorful Douglas iris reappear year after year in seasonal wet spots.
Garden-adapted groundcover manzanita slowly wanders over a thick natural layer of fallen oak leaves. At the edge of the oak canopy, purple California native daisy Erigeron "Wayne Roderick" crawls uninhibited through sun-adapted succulents.
"Spring is really the high time for that garden because that's when things are in bloom," Kellogg says. "Once those blooms are done the garden will still have contrast in terms of leaf foliage, color and shape. So there's still interest even though it's not always in bloom.
"But right now it's stunning."
South Bay Water-Wise Garden Tour
What: A self-guided tour of South Bay gardens that embrace water conservation.When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, May 15, 2011
Tickets: $12.
Information: www.southbaywaterwisegardentour.com.
Summer Glau Kristin Kreuk Thalía Jodi Lyn OKeefe Charlize Theron
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