Part of the Mound Garden

Thinking about this garden, a narrow strip on the same level as the house I realize that it has gone through several incarnations. When we put this garden in we removed some scraggly looking palm trees planted in a boggy grass and a two foot deep pond that didn't drain properly. It's spa-like look wasn't exactly to our taste but it turned out that it was built to last with rebar encased in tile. It took two days instead of the expected two hours to get it out. We  replaced it with a big pot with a bubbler in it to keep the idea of water in what is a pretty arid garden with poor soil. After some years of drought we moved the big pot and planted an olive tree.

The section shown here bothered us because the wall stood out so starkly.  We planted rosemary at the top of it which grew quickly and was soon trailing down the wall almost to the ground. It bloomed profusely and attracted bees but also proved to be full of oil and all the plants went up like candles in the fire. We replaced it with lantana which was slow to take off but is now finally starting to trail over the wall.

This section was also where the garden originally got its name. We took out the boggy lawn and brought in yards of soil creating mounds of dirt. John and Dana located and dragged down the biggest rocks they could find and placed them strategically around and we all gathered smaller rocks on our walks which Dana placed in spirals and patterns. This is where they started.

Now everything has grown so successfully that there aren't even any real mounds visible. Salvia is growing up to meet the lantana and there is a frog sitting on a rock buried in the white flowers. John thinks things should be neat and tidy and I sort of like a more untamed look, but we will at least try to uncover the frog and some of Dana's beautiful rock-setting  handiwork later in the summer.

What we call the fire garden around the corner from the mound garden and outside our bedroom was even more dramatically transformed after the fire destroyed everything out there, including an 8 foot tall wooden fence, a madrone tree, thick bamboo and other jungle like plants. I have written about what we did out there before and probably will again but I was thinking about it today when two firefighters in CalFire uniforms came to the front door to do a defensible space inspection. They said we were doing a great job and to keep it up. The left the report in extras. I said we had had a near miss, which of course they knew about, and that we were very grateful to them. I found myself getting a bit choked up as the went out the back gate, and climbed into their truck.