Plants
The palette that has to survive a San Diego summer and your water bill.
Planting is the one part of a yard that is alive, so it is the one part that can be got wrong slowly. Everything listed here is a plant type we build with in San Diego County, filed by how much water it wants, how much sun it takes, and how big it actually gets — not how big it is in the pot. No cultivar names are asserted; the specific varieties get chosen against your exposure, soil and irrigation on the plan.
10 of 10 plants in this category
- TreesColour families — we hold no photograph of this finish on one of our own projects
Fruitless olive
The Mediterranean workhorse: grey-green canopy, gnarled trunk, very low water once it is in. The fruitless forms exist specifically so you are not pressure-washing purple stains off a paver deck every autumn.
- TreesColour families — we hold no photograph of this finish on one of our own projects
Mediterranean fan palm
A clumping, slow, cold-hardy palm that gives you the resort silhouette without the sixty-foot trunk that comes with it later. Low water, spiny petioles, so it wants a little clearance from a path.
Structure & accentsAgave
The strongest single shape available in a low-water palette. One well-placed agave does more compositional work than a bed of shrubs — which is also why the wrong one, three feet from a pool step, is a genuine hazard.
- Structure & accents
Aloe
Succulent structure that also flowers, usually in the middle of winter when nothing else is doing anything. Softer than agave and generally safer near a path.
- Shrubs & hedgingColour families — we hold no photograph of this finish on one of our own projects
Bougainvillea
The loudest colour available on very little water, on a wall, a pergola or clipped as a mound. It also drops bracts continuously, so it is a decision about a skimmer basket as much as a decision about colour.
- Shrubs & hedgingColour families — we hold no photograph of this finish on one of our own projects
Westringia
Fine grey-green foliage that takes hard shearing, so it does the job people used to give boxwood on a fraction of the water. The default low hedge in a modern coastal palette.
- Structure & accentsColour families — we hold no photograph of this finish on one of our own projects
New Zealand flax
Upright strap leaves in bronze, burgundy or striped cream. Gives vertical line and non-green colour in a bed without flowering, and it is one of the few accents that reads from across a yard.
Shrubs & hedgingOrnamental grasses
Soft mounds that move. Grasses are the counterweight to hardscape — they are the thing that stops a paved yard reading as a car park — and most of the California-appropriate ones want very little water.
Groundcover & lawnWalkable groundcover
Flat, tight groundcover that takes light foot traffic — the green joint between slabs, or the low-water alternative to a lawn nobody sits on. Slow to fill in, which is a cost decision at planting.
- Groundcover & lawn
Artificial turf
Not a plant, and it belongs on this page anyway, because it is the decision people actually make instead of a lawn. Zero water, zero mowing, a real up-front cost, and it gets hot in direct sun in a way grass does not.