Gardening is one of my favorite things to do. I love plants, I love designing, and I love nature. I try and do a project ever weekend (time permitting) and so I thought I'd share some of the things I've done with anybody who might be interested. I'll start with the front yard (street view) and work my way  to the back (but not all tonight, LOL).

The yard as viewed from the street. Except for the large Junipers and the Olive tree, everything has been re-done/added by me. I brought the Juniper up off the ground to be more tree like, added a lawn area and a "dry river" using flat boulders to tier and give dimension, added a raised planter using boulders as well, a sitting bench with a small path. Next pictures will be closer up views of these things.  


The small lawn area. In the middle is a Colorado Blue Spruce, lawn is bordered by Santa Barbara Daisy's, red Salvia, random boulders and Wheelers Pittosporum

My "dry river"...it actually starts in the inside courtyard and I have it winding its way through this outside/streetside front yard.


Raised planter viewed from the inside courtyard. I change out things here with the seasons...but my red Amaryllis resides here (not in bloom in the pic)


Raised planter as viewed from the street. I have this black Dahlia with yellow blooms, some red Salvia, a Cassia and some Agapanthus with blue blooms

Closer up view of river



River view from inside courtyard...


Next to the river, under the Olive tree, I have Orchids, a Pink Rapheolepsis, and a species of Asparagus Fern, Red Flax


ok...thats it for tonite...I'll try and add more tomorrow or something

Jimmy, such a lovely home you have, so inviting!! I wish I had half of your patience and creativity, my place would look so beautiful. Thank you for sharing, I think I have a long weekend coming up, you may have inspired me, lol.

That is a lovely planting...only about 1/3 of which do I recognize the names Like something out of a magazine!

You have me craving an asparagus fern. Your place looks awesome. Totally professional grade. I could never keep up with all that.

Job well done! love it.
flowers and plants look great.

like you we started with a blank canvas at our house and over the last 7yrs have created a lovely area that is almost done!

Gorgeous!

... and then, when we get to the back yard we get to see where the Husky have "maintained" it.
Jimmy, that is indeed a beautiful yard ... I'd be thinking, though, that it's a lot more effort than I'm willing to expend on a showpiece.

Looks good! Just curious, how long have you been working on your landscaping?

Wow, thank you all so much! I truly appreciate every one of your messages

@Renee. You underestimate yourself I'm sure your yard is beautiful, I think when we see other peoples pics, it's just...different. But there is beauty in every one of our yards, we all put our own stamps on it. I wanna see pics of your "long weekend" project thank you Renee!

@Amy...I'm sorry! I'm not good at knowing the "proper" names for plants...so I use the ones they're commonly referred to as. And yeah, they can vary by region too. If you want to know any of the plant names you didn't recognize, tell me which ones and I'll find out their true names. And thank you so much!

@Jenn (Twister)...you could definitely handle it, it's so low maintenance it's not even funny. Doing it on the other hand, not so much, LOL. Things like the boulders, most are extremely heavy and they were delivered and dumped in my driveway. I was out there til like 10:00 pm moving them either into place or out of the way of my car (my car must go in the garage, lol) and most weren't lift able, by me anyways. All the pebble type rock for the river I hand picked out of my canyon, I didn't want any broken ones, and brought up in buckets and placed. Everything else though was very do-able. Maintenance is nothing. I like a natural look so I just go out once in awhile with handpruners and snip here and there. All the plants are slow growing as well. Only trimming I do is along the grass border and every Fall I lace out all the juniper and the Olive tree. You could definitely handle it and thank you so much! ahh, the asparagus fern is cool huh! It's not that real invasive variety and I love the growth pattern of these.

@Jenn (jbealer) thank you! I've seen some of your pics, you're doing an awesome job. I love to see your updates. I always say mine is "almost done" too, but it never is, LOL

@Lucy...thank you! I hope to see more updates of yours when you have them

@Al ...LOL, you are exactly right...I'll also be using a lot of phrases like " I put this here cuz Kohdi and Mishka were..." Haha. And thank you!! Like I said to Jenn though, it's really not a lot of time involved. Most of it is getting it where I want it, the rest is easy plus I love doing it.

@Valerie...thank you! That's a hard question to answer because there wasn't really a timeframe involved. Some days I worked in front, other times in back, with no set agenda. I didn't tear out everything at once, and the existing landscape was pretty so it never looked unfinished. If I were to put a timeframe on it as is and say this is what I'm going to do, and everything necessary for the job is right here, I'd say it wouldn't have taken more than a few weekends. But that's not how I did it, like maybe one Saturday was devoted to the river, another day was devoted to getting the sod in and bordering plants, etc. it's really hard to explain! Lol. But like, there's a tiny lil juniper down by the river towards the sidewalk, that used to cover almost half the yard...those large bluish junipers used to connect to each other, getting them lifted off the ground and isolated opened everything up to where I could envision what I wanted. I wanted to keep mature plantings just because to me, it always looks better that way, more complete and not so sterile looking. Here in California everyone does the palm tree things, I really don't like that look, I much prefer evergreens, pines, spruce and things like that. And there is hardly any care involved either! My biggest "problem" is keeping the Blue Spruce alive. The dry winds/heat here isn't so good for it. But I'm determined! Lol

Just a few more pics before I start on my courtyard pics...those I'll do later tonite.
My Amaryllis in bloom in the raised planter. This looks AMAZING right now


These I dont remember the name of...was something with the word "snow" in it.


My Kaffir Lilies...on the walk opposite my raised planter and sitting bench



Dont remember the name of these either. I like them, very pretty yellow blooms.

Artic_Wind wrote:

These I dont remember the name of...was something with the word "snow" in it.

Looks like an annual flower I used to have in one of my pots that was called "Snow Princess".
Here's what I had: https://www.provenwinners.com/plants/lobularia/snow-princess-alyssum-lobularia-hybrid Maybe it's the same?

@Valerie...no, that's not it. I do have lots of the one you posted a link to though (Alysum) in the last pic you can see some of it around the yellow flowers. It's cool stuff! When it dies out I pull them out and shake them in areas I want them to grow and sure enough they do. The plant I posted a pic of is slightly different though, it's not as delicate as the Alysum and its there year round without dying back, it's pretty much covered in the white flowers too year round. I wanna say it's called "carpet of snow"  but I think I'm going to try and look it up so I can post the actual name. Thank you though!

Edit...I looked it up and I think the plant is called "Silver Carpet" Cerastium tomentosum.

This area is one side of the courtyard. Its not m "pride and joy" in that this area was landscaped without spending any money (except for an avocado tree)...I wanted to fill the space for the time being and had some potted plants i had no space for, and a lot of plants I just seperated them to make *new* plants...so there are a lot of lily type plants, like calla lilies, daylilies, canna lilies, lily of the nile, kaffir lilies. There is a rosemary that was bought once as a pine tree shaped Christmas tree, daffodils, impatiens, a spider palm, a rose bush, 2 onion plants, lol, a lot of mumbo jumbo, haha...one day I'll landscape it the way I want it but for now it looks decent. I have the dry river started here and made a lil bridge across it with an old arbor top. It all sits under a large evergreen pear tree which I dont like (its messy in the Fall, and when it blooms, although very pretty, smells like dead...butthole.) but it gives nice shade to sit under in the summer. I did buy an avocado tree, one day itll be big enough that maybe I can get rid of the pear tree, haha. Anyways, I also will put in random things like a tomato plant, once I grew pumpkins, stuff like that. Anyways, on the other side of this courtyard is m memorial fountain for my past two Huskies, Malukhai and Anuschka. It has its own thread in here but I'll take updated pics of it this weekend.

The pumpkins I grew. I didnt know when I planted them that they'd be white...I kept waiting for them to turn orange!, LOL



One day I look out the kitchen window and there this in the pear tree! all these bees...15 minutes later, completely gone...was weird


And this guy comes and kills doves that come to my birdfeeder. It always bums me out

Oh wow, Jimmy, that is quite a swarm! Too bad you didn't have a spare hive or box around. You could have yourself your own honey!

https://www.itsahuskything.com/t13176-another-surprise?highlight=another+surprise

Love the pumpkins! How do you get daffodils to bloom without a chill period?

I would love to have my own honey, Amy...these guys didn't stick around though...not even one!!!

Do daffodils need a chill period? Mine come up every year in San Diego weather. I knew tulips needed a chill period but didn't know daffodils did. I bought some beautiful tulips here and had them in planters in the backyard...Mishka took every single one of them.

I like that yellow calla. I have a black forest calla but am still waiting for it to come up. It's hard for me to remember when different things come up around here so I anxiously await seeing what survived the winter. I never dig up any bulb plants like people always say to so it's always a gamble in our climate. I'm envious of how many different plants you have. All the stores around here sell the same stuff so it's hard to get non average plants without shipping them in.

I love that yellow Calla, Jenn. Only thing I don't like about it is it goes away after its season kinda like the daffodils, whereas all my white Callas are here year round. ..and bloom year round too. I would LOVE to see your Black Forest Calla, even the name is cool!!! *wow, just as I type, the doves took off all of a sudden and that hawk or whatever it is came swooping down over my head, they got away, yay! *

The Home Depot is pretty good with having a nice variety of plants here, some seasonal though, and we have an Armstrong Nursuries here that's awesome with cool varieties but high priced with most, my lil Colorado Blue Spruce came from there...2 gallon pot...$79, to me that's a lot, but...I like the tree though. I'd like to try shipping stuff in, I've never done that before.

Jimmy - a thought just occured and I checked it out...San Diego has africanized honey bee genetics. I would not be catching any wild swarms in your area. They are considered "hot" bees and are much more defensive of their hive than european honey bees.

http://fire.escondido.org/killer-bees.aspx

Are your daffodils tazettas by any chance? They don't need a chilling period.

I will try to get pictures of the black forest when it comes up. I have black irises as well that I'm waiting on. I fear they've changed colors though.

@Amy...I don't think I've come across the Africanized bees yet here, but Escondido is only about 20 minutes from here. I've been outside trimming and stuff right amongst bees and Im left alone by them...but yeah, Im not going to try and catch any (although my own honey would be the coolest thing!!) . Im just going to answer "yes" to your  daffodil question, LOL, cuz I really dont know the variety I bought but they bloom every single year and I doubt its from our very short cold snaps.

@Jenn, Thank you! I look forward to seeing it! Today I bought some "Black Cherry" Supertunias...I love these colors that are almost black but are really dark reds or blues. Im putting them in my backyard and if Mishka doesnt get wind of them before I can take a pic, I'll post some.

Today I went out to take updated pics of the other side of my courtyard where my Memorial Fountain is...I'll post them up later when I have them uploaded to myy computer. But here is a sneak preview, haha  

Ok, on to the other side of the courtyard. While the side I just posted is not my pride and joy, this side IS my pride and joy. It has its own thread in here already "My Fountain Project", which has more details on what I did and how I did it, but long story short, My last two huskies passed away in the same month, it was April (this month) to be exact, and for Malukhai, the 9th was the anniversary date, and for Anuschka it will be on Monday (the 27th)...I created this area, with a fountain, as a "memorial" for them. A LOT of thought went into every detail of this project. My goal was simple...to make it as beautiful and peaceful as possible. So here are updated pics of that area.

Jimmy, I know you live in a big city and have close neighbors, but your memorial area is as if you are in the middle of nowhere. Everything looks so wonderful and tranquil. What is that lovely white climber, covering your trellis on the wall? It is gorgeous. The rocks and the fountain just add a spectacular flare, almost like a European garden or a country cottage garden.............

Thank you so much Renee. I have more pics to post with this with closer up views of the plants, and I'll post their names but I'll probly do that tomorrow, I just didn't upload them yet. The white climber is Star Jasmine (smells awesome when it's in bloom) I want to add one or two more trellis so I can get it to cover the wall. I've changed a lil bit here and there since I posted the original thread of the fountain, like I got rid of the planters on each side of the fountain itself, I was thinking it looked very cluttered. My ultimate goal is to take the small window off the bedroom that's there and put either sliders or French doors so this area can become an extension of that room, with a step down or two and more "patio" type space.