I like your plant selection! I grow or have grown all of these and there good choices for a low water use border. Although my plants are spread out more with landscape boulders and rock mulch instead of a traditional border I have helped others with a border. The reason why it’s recommended to not have too many varieties is because it looks messy so repitition and rhythm are your friends when planning. If you put groups of odd numbered plants together and repeat them your border will look better than one of these and one of those.

You can have one of for accent plants and I would recommend octopus agave since your worried about spines as it’s probably the most harmless of them.

Here’s some in front of my house but they would look great interspersed with other plants in your border. The red flowered plant in the Back is chuparosa a California native. I’ve grown a lot of Ca native plants and they are great. Salvia Clevelandii has the most wonderful smell and beautiful candelabras of blue flowers. The sphaeralcea I grew was a glowing coral pink instead of the more common orange and amazingly drought tolerant.

Germander is great but also look for it’s lower grayer but lovely relative teucrium cossonii. The Australian eremophilas are evergreen bushes with beautiful flowers and amazing drought tolerance. Summertime Blue flowers about 8 months out of the year. Can you tell I have a hard time limiting the palette but your border will look best if you do just that. Here’s Teucrium Cossinii.

Boulders + rock mulch (grey pebbles) and plants was my first choice for the border till 3 days ago! Till I saw Houzz experts warn against rock mulch and its tendency to catch debris and overheat plants. Given that the olive tree and the maple tree together shed all over the lawn throughout the year, I decided against it :(

Thanks for the tip about grouping odd numbers and repeating them. That really helps! And your teucrium looks gorgeous! Do you remember how many you planted together initially for this patch?

Also, I think I saw your sphaeralcea today :) (see pic). Thanks again...I will look up the other plant suggestions. Meanwhile, do you think succulents and these CA natives can live really close together?

I tinkered around with this app called FloraMe and created a super basic mock-up. The app has very limited plant choices, so I just chose the ones that looked most similar in structure. Imagine this is blue flame agave immediately surrounded by sedum cape blanco, and then there are bunches of a salvia/lavender/teucrium at the narrowest parts of the border. It looks a bit too uniform to me. How/where can I add more plants to make the border seem a bit more natural/informal?

The mock-up. I'm also hoping to add a bougainvillea to the far left.

That teucrium is one plant! You could easily use bark mulch instead of rock if you want but use something as it keeps soil cooler in summer and really conserves water. Rock mulch is used everywhere where I live and the plants don’t mind it but it does need to be cleaned up with a blower if tree leaves are a problem.

there’s no problem with mixing agaves and aloes with drought tolerant plantings if they are all on a drip system. If you used a sprinkler every day I don’t think any of these plants would be happy.

I like your mock-up! Bougainvilleas are great - except for the thorns:) congratulations on taking steps to conserve water, we in the southwest need to and the world of water sipping plants is a great one.

Agaves make dramatic accents and their spikes are not such a problem if well away from kids. Agapanthus will add height and blue or white flowers. It's drought resistant. Red or purple salvias attract pollinators and hummingbirds.

I happened to run across this blog and loved what she did. She provides a plant list at the end, as I recall.

https://suburbanpop.com/2020/06/14/front-yard-updates/

I'd think tall and vertical - bird of paradise, flax, crepe myrtle, etc. and fill in with succulents. There are lots of varieties without sharp edges.

@calidesign, I love your inspiration pics, especially the last one. Part of my problem was figuring out how to do the tall background and shorter foreground in a 2-4 ft border.

Would you happen to know a few more tall and vertical drought-tolerant evergreen perennials?

Carolina Cherry Laurel makes a good tall hedge, and is easy to trim both height and sides. It works well in sun or shade. If you use a trellis or other type of support, there are a lot of different vines you could try. Miniature citrus trees would also be great in areas with full sun, then then you can plant around the bases.

Rubber mulch can get very hot and soft, this mulch has been removed from playgrounds in the central valley of Ca. due to burns on children. Succulents like rock mulch but never put mulch of any kind up to the stem of any plant always leave an inch or so from stem/trunk. Maybe you should check out Ca. Native plants for a little color and to help pollinators in your area so many native plants are drought tolerant, and succulent like. Blue grama grass and Bufflio grass could be great as your lawn. check with your local Extension office at the University, Also the Master Gardeners in you area they are very knowledgeable.

Whatever plants, and whatever width of the border; to make it look 'natural' and not stiff;

- variation in height, also from front to fence

- mingle 3 or 4 kinds of plants, the easiest way is to make 'props of paper in 3 or 4 colors', each prop represents a plant. Make a draw of the border, take all the props i one hand and 'throw' them over your drawing. Wher they fall you plant them in real. So no pattern or thinking, just 'feeling'.

Plants in a small dry border; leaves, flowers, seasons and scent.

Lavandula 'Aromatic Blue', Eryngium, Aster ageratoïdes (varieties), Stipa 'Pony tails', Phormium,

Rosmarinus and more herbs.

Be careful, pollinators and kids don't play well together. My pollinator friendly plants are FULL of bees. I don't mind them but hubby is terrified to walk past them. Love salvia, lantana, texas yucca, verbena bonisaries, and Jupiter's beard - Centranthus ruber has been excellent blooms all year but can spread by seeds. So far the gophers leave it alone. Good luck.

yellow Daylillies spread and thinker and are tolerant to everything and you can buy plants now at Walmart and Lowe’s and they will bud and bloom now and return in the spring.

There is a California landscape designer that has a terrific book with many plant suggestions and photos of various gardens. I suggest you get her book for inspiration. Hot Color, Dry Garden: Inspiring Designs and Vibrant Plants for the Waterwise Gardener
Nan Sterman . You will be able to see how she plants out the areas and then adapt to your space.

I just had mine landcaped, up the road in RWC, and we have all drought tolerant... yellow yarrows, with catnip, gaura, penstemon, white iceburg roses, and dwarf lorepetulum.. and big ambs ears.

The California Native Plant Society-Santa Clara Valley Chapter has great video lectures. I found them on MeetUp and I think they are archived on YouTube

Thank you all for chiming in! Following hours of deliberation at various local nurseries and gardening websites, I have managed to narrow in on a few plants. Attaching pics. From the left, the taller ones are salvia chamaedryoides, blue flame agave between all the shrubs, leucadendron summer red, germander sage azure blue, salvia gregii (red). The ground cover ones are senecio serpens, sedum cape blanco, and teucrium cossonii majoricum. Open to ideas on rearranging them. I also bought 2 rosemary tuscan blue - wondering if I should replace the germander sage with the rosemary.

Hi. I’ve been watching this thread. I’m not far from you and will need to patch up our yard after an addition to our house. We have blue flame in our yard and love it. Make sure you give it lots of room they can get quite big. We have also had really good results with grevillea. Lots of different varieties. Long John is tall and willowy and would look great against your fence.

@Terrie B. The bit about kids and pollinators only occurred to me yesterday, when I got stung by bees twice in 15 minutes. My 4-year-old who kept pulling her mask down and stuffing her face in all the plants to "smell the flowers" escaped unscathed thankfully. At this point though, I am so not feeling up to redoing all my plant decisions :(

I have plenty of agave and they do put out shoots and babies...so they take a lot of care in a border. Take a look at a New Mexico landscape artist, Judith Phillips. All the plants are drought tolerant. Great books. And we enjoy the lovely white and fragrant blossoms of the Cliff Rose we got there.

https://www.judithphillipsdesignoasis.com/

I like your plant selections! other than arranging them in drifts(groups) it is also nice if you can put different foliage’s next to each other. Gray next to green, coarse texture next to fine texture.

Another thing I love but some may not is negative space. If everything is planted close so it just becomes a solid mass it doesn’t have room to breathe or for your eye to rest.

most of our yard has space around plants in differing amounts which is more natural looking. We do have rock mulch but you can use bark and that works well to.

Even if you plant things and change your mind later that’s what transplanting is for!

You're right, mojavemaria and nevemarin, I should probably space them all out a bit more. Looks like I'll be returning more plants than I planned.

You should try to find some native milkweed. It attracts birds and butterflies. It's also the host plant for monarch butterflies.

Plant a two or three taller things behind some of your plants, which will give you better height and more curve to the planting area. Make sure the salvia will be in full sun. If the main sun comes from the direction behind the fence, they won't do well.

The work done so far. The plants are not quite in the positions I had in mind. I'm planning to go in over the weekend and reposition a few myself. Also, both the agaves developed edema in the one week they've been under my care :(

calidesign, I'd have loved to make the border wide enough to have taller plants at the back and shorter ones in the front; but that would mean encroaching upon more of my kids' play area. The mulch makes the border look really wide now, but much of the area near the fence is unusable because of concrete at the bottom of the fence.

The salvia will be in full sun, yes.

Looks great Cheryl! I’m surprised the agave are having problems as they are bullet proof for us here in the desert. If you wanted to get some height without much width you could replace you agaves with totem pole cactus. they are way cool looking and totally thorn free.

the ones I have in my current yard are great grand “kids” of my original plant. When they grow big enough you just cut off the top and put it in a pot with cactus mix to grow another one.

If you want to hide the fence, Mandevilla is a fast growing vine that comes in a variety of colors and without the sharp thorns of bougainvillea. Our small local nursery in Santa Barbara sells them for $10.50 per 1 gallon plant.

You could replace the agave with red or yellow yucca plants. Kangaroo Paw would also work. They come in lots of colors and sizes.

To the original poster: did you end up using Ruschia Nana? If so, I'd be curious to hear how you like it. I'm considering the same, but can't seem to find anyone in the Bay Area who has it installed.

Yes, I did. I'm quite happy with it so far. The uneven surface is a bit of an acquired taste, and it is not completely weed-free. It also took quite a while to fill in. Still, it works for my use case, and the periodic tiny flowers are a nice bonus.

Here's what it looks like a year after installation

Cheryl, how has the Ruschia held up to foot traffic, please? Considering planting in place of lawn but I sometimes need ro use that area to set up a small water play table for preschool-age grandkids.

@kilcuptrust It holds up great to foot traffic. A water table and kids would be no problem at all. My kids are on it all the time.

Did you use seed or flats? And how many did you use if you used flats?

@bravemily I used flats. Bought 10 trays.