Southern California natives can find good company with plants from other areas of the world with a Mediterranean climate: southern and southwestern Australia, the western cape of South Africa, central Chile and the Mediterranean basin, including France, Italy, Greece, Morocco, Portugal, Spain and Turkey. Garden designer Susanne Jett likes to mix perennials, grasses, shrubs and trees indigenous to these areas to create striking and unusual designs. The Desert Spoon, Dasylirion wheeleri, is among her picks. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)
Crested blue cereus, Myrtillocactus geometrizans. The pink blooms at left are from a Hong Kong orchid tree. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)
Aeonium arboreum Atropurpureum. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)
Aloe hemmingii. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)
Pincushion plant, Leucospermum cordifolium. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)
Gazania hybrids. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)
Echeveria katella. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)
This Santa Monica garden, designed by Susanne Jett, is a study of unusual groupings of plants, textures, colors and sizes of plants from other parts of the world that share Southern Californias climate. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)
