Spring has been very busy here at our house. Since we had gotten some nice rain this winter, I had at last felt comfortable removing our front lawn and replacing it with drought tolerant plants. I know we aren't out of the drought, but at least we are better off than this time last year. Although I am using drought tolerant plants, I knew that the first year til they get established they generally need water. I had been planning this for some time and couldn't wait to have our dead lawn gone. Because of the drought we had stopped watering it the last two summers. The only thing green about it were the weeds which were growing like crazy after the rains. It was so ugly that it hurt every time I drove up to the house.
I met with the landscaper who told me his team would remove my lawn, enrich the area with new soil,put down landscapers fabric, change my impulse sprinklers over to a drip system and plant the new plants where I wanted them. So my job was to find and get the plants.

We have established plants on the other side of the driveway, and I wanted the whole front landscaping to flow. We were also keeping the dry riverbed and plantings to the far side of the front area. I decided to repeat plants that had already shown they could do well under our conditions. So I got several more Euphorbia characias ssp wulfenii 'Shorty', I love the chartreuse mop head blossoms in spring. I also got more Russian Sage, Perovskia atriplicifolia, which have a billowy silver foliage and purple blue blooms that seem to go all summer long. I also repeated the Euryops those cheerful yellow, daisy like flowers. I needed something low near the sidewalk so got two Ceanothus griseus horizantalis, Carmel Creeper, and two dwarf plumbago, Ceratostigma plumbaginoides.

I had been planning to stick with only drought tolerant plants that either I had grown before or that I knew would work in our area. But then I fell in love with Cousin Itt, Acacia cognate in a catalog. It said it was drought tolerant and was so darned cute, I had to throw in a few of those. To act as filler in between the plants I had gotten I put in many blue fescue, Festuca ovina 'Glauca'.

A little bit of bark, some flagstone stepping stones and it was done. My hope is that as the new plantings mature, the whole front area will look as if it was planted at the same time. Only time will tell. And to be truthful just about anything will look better than it did.