The neighbours screamed as the owners of a south facing home overlooking the ocean took up the grass and struggling shrubs from their front yard, they left exposed the large glacial rock and up went rock walls outlining a two level terraced area that was then backfilled with topsoil, landscape cloth and eight inches of gravel. From the spacious deck that had been added on to the renovated home you looked down onto this space which was sparsely planted with small young drought tolerant perennials, shrubs and ornamental grasses. Now, just a few short years later, it is a garden that has been featured in a number of gardening books including most recently Tom Hobbs Jewel Box Garden.
Today you feel you are in a garden that could be on the Riviera yet feels perfectly at home in this sub-Mediterranean area looking out over the Pacific Ocean. One can sit on a bench looking out at the ocean, hidden by the tall rustling grasses, surrounded by the soft grey foliage of artemesias and santolinas, with the diarama's (angel's fishing rod) arching stems of pale pink tubular flowers gently waiving in the breeze
The verbascum with its large felty gray leaves and tall yellow spires together with the sculptural onopordum acadthiumcomp (Scotch Thistle) tower to your right while behind you is the grey translucent leafed salt bush.. Nearby is a eucalyptis together with other plants from New Zealand and Australia planted in large decorative pots. There is the (rhs garden merit.award winner). pineapple broom (cytisus battandieri) shrub with its fragrant yellow flower bracts and silky grey-green foliage (foliage contrast of sedum autumn joy,)