In Altadena, one of our simplest gardens. The brief, from a good friend, was to use plants native to California and the wider, arid Southwest. The site is at the foot of the San Gabriel mountains and the terrain has a lot of large granite cobbles as if it were once a river bed. Inspired by nearby Eaton Canyon, which has an actual river, we designed the garden using large pieces of rock sourced within 100 miles and matching the rock in the local arroyos. This was our first native garden and the challenge here was to make the natives work aesthetically, using garden values, not just habitat values (although we created great habitat in the process). The plants needed to look smart year-round. We used coast live oak as a kind of modern, informal topiary, sculpted to highlight the shapes of the rocks (although subsequent maintenance gardeners took this in their own direction). We used baccharis ‘centennial’ as the main shrub in the garden and boy did it perform. We underplanted with epilobium and penstemon heterophylus. We also used the grass, muhlenbergia dubia, as a structural element under an old walnut tree. We included rosemary, which we planted for culinary reasons. Project was completed in 2013 and was, sadly, destroyed in the Eaton Canyon fire of 2025.