Just FYI, you should put your Sunset zone. USDA zones are pretty useless in CA. The Sunset Garden Book is the acknowledged "Bible" of all Western gardeners. It doesn't look as if any of your beds are very deep - they all look around 12-18" or so. Consider that you don't want to block your shutters, even if they're only decorative, I'd do a shrub pelargonium, such as this one (to those that have seen my recent February Flowers slideshows in the Gallery, you've seen this photo before). It stays about 18" H/W. They're very floriferous in our climate and don't take too much water, either. You do have to be careful; there is a lot of variation between pelargonium hybrids; some get to a gangly 6' tall. But this one stays neat and compact: I would warn you in that second photo, that spiky leaved clump looks suspiciously like Fortnight Lily, aka Cape Iris, Dietes iridioides (there are two, one white, one yellow-flowered). If it is, once established it gets a full 3' or more around (big, round clump) and takes an axe to remove. It will behave itself if you starve it for water, but if you've got lawn sprinklers, there will be no holding it back. I have narrow beds on both sides of a walkway on the south side of our house. It isn't easy to keep those plants from sprawling outwards. The following plants are ones that have proven well-behaved/upright in these beds in our Oakland hills garden: - Dwarf cannas (variegated ones need some shade or they'll burn) - Kalanchoe - Shasta daisies (deciduous, however) - evergreen bearded iris (in fact, if you live within driving distance of me, I will GIVE you some rhizomes. Mine is an heirloom dark purple iris that multiplies like the proverbial rabbit; if it were edible it would solve world hunger in two years flat) - Aeoniums, some sedums and crassulas - Some of the upright, smaller perennial salvias - Mini or smaller shrub roses, like J&P's Ladies in Waiting. - Liriope (for foliage, but once a year it has very pretty purple flower spikes) - Hellebores: the newer colorful hybrids only. They stay small and neat; like partial sun only. When a bed is not very deep, it's important that you consider a couple of things: 1) It's difficult to "layer" a shallow bed. Normally an interesting garden grouping is done with subtle layers: High/Tall, Medium height, and Low/Short, with each layer providing visual interest for color, shape and texture. 2) Because of this difficulty, you are very dependent upon the ***basic background colors*** of your site. This means the house color, trim color, permanent shrubs, and lawn color. Too many people think of flowers, and forget that flowers are transitory. Here in coastal CA, leaves are EVERYTHING. The most boring beds are those where the flowering plants have green leaves the exact same color as the lawn and/or shrubs. This means that except for the 6 weeks or so your plants are in flower, the rest of the time they fade into one big sea of grass-green. Although this is a wider bed (3' deep, shady side), you can imagine these foliage plants in back of a green lawn and understand how height, texture, leaf shape and color still allow them to show up in contrast to grass: Roses love the Bay Area but many, even in tree standards, grow "out and around". This makes them unsuitable for narrow beds unless you have the "head room" - you don't want to fight rose thorns when you're mowing the lawn, trust me! Roses lean towards the sun; the only tree rose I have that stays quite upright is partially shaded by the plants along the fence so it naturally seeks to grow up and not out like the others do. It's "Intrigue", and as you can see, it has spread over 4' across seeking the sun: As mentioned above, plants lean towards the open spaces, like this long view. The bed on the left is 18" deep; on the right it's 12" deep. The "Intrigue" rose shown above is about 3' past that big flowering pink "Delany Sisters" standard on the LH side: Here is a closer look at the top of the 18" bed against our tan stucco house. L-R, top layer: Variegated golden euonymus, "Double Delight" tea rose, "Delany Sisters" floribunda tree rose, J&P "Ladies in Waiting shrub rose. L-R, bottom layer: green-leaved shrub pelargonium, black flowering Aeonium ("Rubrum", I think), yellow kalanchoe, variegated Iris pallida, ceratostigma groundcover (which I would never plant again, it's impossible to remove): Opposite this stucco wall is a 6' dark wood fence. This is a great backdrop for lighter colored or variegated plants, like the following ones. L-R shows a variegated rhamnus (nice narrow tree, gets to no more than 12') shading orange-flowering clivia (shade plant) at its feet; fancy-leaf pelargonium hybrid "Vancouver Bicentennial" with its reddish-orange flowers; silver liriope; variegated English boxwood: HTH, and good luck!

I find that the hummers do use my M. fistula so much so that I actually leave a raised 4'x12' bed of it in the late spring and early summer the hummers and butterflies use it while the annual red salvia is getting ready. Once the salvias and agastaches are blooming, I tear out most of the M. fistula plants so the seeds don't mature and put in other things. Come next spring there will be plenty of it to fill the bed all over again. I think it is a worthwhile plant to add to the "natural" part of a critter garden. I don't even mind the pulling out part since the fragrance of the plants is pleasant and my sheep gleefully eat the plants. spiderwoman

Y'all are sooo helpful! I will be printing lots of posts and keeping them in a notebook for future reference. For the most part, I'll want lots of natives. But... also lots of hummingbird and butterfly flowers, so I figure the first couple of years will be a trial and error proposition. The good thing is, finding all of you here and knowing that help is just a post away! bpgreen, how do fight that iron chlorosis thingy? jaliranchr, when we were in WP for the closing on the house, we spent quite a bit of time just reveling in "our" house and yard and hot tub... I figured out really fast that the humidity is way lower that what we have here in the hot and sticky mid-atlantic climate! wow! it will take getting used to! skybird, I love hens & chicks! I only have one kind right now, but they are the most prolific little babies I've ever seen. I've given so many away already! I have some in a strawberry pot and it's so full it needs some attention but at this point, I'm just figuring a way to take it with me as is!!! Winter sowing has been one of the most enjoyable things I've found, so I'm hoping to continue when we move! My home here has so much salvia coccinea (Lady in Red) and coral nymph salvia it's almost over whelming (however you spell that) but I've got tons of seeds and I just bought a bunch of seeds (shasta daisy, red flax etc.) from Cheapseeds.com and some from valueseeds.com that I'll be w/s this winter and I'll be saving lots of seeds to experiment with the next year in WP. I can't wait!!! glo

Mellon--Lovely, lovely package. So generous and thoughtful!! She sent me a ton of stuff. My friend Mare is visiting and she remarked "It's just like Christmas!!". Oh, yah. She's been helping me get my dahlias in the ground because I have an injured left wing. Mellon gifted me with TWO hostas 'Chinese Sunrise' & 'Plantangea'. Heucherra 'Can Can'; Daylily 'Erin Leah'; Wigalea 'Ruby Glow'; and a big fat bulb of lilia 'Black Beauty'. Love, love, love it all. Everything was well wrapped and packaged. Thank you very much, it was a wonderful package. Oh wait, and a hilarious (and oh-so- true) card with a nice note inside.