1. The outer rim:
Little did I know when I bought my corner-lot property that my garden stretched to all of the planted beds along the sidewalk! Since I’m responsible for weeding and caring for all of them, I filled the beds with California native plants that require very little water, and support the butterflies, birds and bees hereabouts: Yarrow, lavender, calendulas and California poppies abound in these beds, along with blue-eyed glass, sticky monkey flower and agapanthus, luring in hummingbirds, finches, robins, butterflies and bees!
2. The Hidden Garden
Did any of you ever read The Secret Garden? It is my favorite
book of all time,
and that was the real reason my husband and I fell in love with our house. It has
an actual, secret, gated garden at the front that no one can see from the
outside at all. In fact, it’s so secret that I’m not posting any photos of it here.
But you can imagine how lovely it would be to walk past
strawberry beds and
weeping Santa Rosa plum trees and blooming camelias every morning in the
shade of a large maple tree that no one else ever sees!
3. The Back Yard:
Eichler was an
architect well-known for incorporating the garden space
into the living space of the homes he built. The entire back wall of our
house is made of glass, so our tree ferns and rose garden form a huge
presence in ever room. As lovely as it is, if the garden is untidy, it’s kind
of like a messy floor—it reproaches you every time you look up! But the
roses justify themselves. Our rose beds all face the living space of our
house, and they are color coordinated, ranging from pink, to yellow, to
orange:
Here is a closeup of the pink rose bed, which is made up of English David Austen roses known for their scent. At their feet grow chives and mint and oregano.
Finally, the orange
rosebed surrounds our redwood arbor, with the climbing rose Crown Princess Margarita entertwining with
honeysuckle and lavender, along with Lady
Emma Hamilton.
Here you can see the redwood arbor, which has a little seat shaded by the apricot tree and the climbing roses:
These rose names: Crown Princess this, Lady that, give a highbrow quality to the garden that seems a bit out of place! There are plenty of plebean areas of our garden as well. Here is our spring
vegetable bed, a work in progress:
And our newly planted raspberry enclosure:
My favorite working part of the garden is our plot of miniature fruit trees, designed to produce the maximum amount of fruit in the tiniest space: a baby bear peach 2 feet tall, tiny columnar apple trees, a yellow Newton pippin apple, Seckel pear, red currant bushes, a gooseberry bush and chamomile bed, all surrounded by a hedge made of lettuce.