STYLE : GARDENS : Fast-Lane Flora

From the street, the garden of photographer Elizabeth F. Kitchen looks as if it’s part of the Santa Monica hills beyond: It picks up where nature left off. The mix of Mediterranean and native California plants is quite drought-tolerant, but saving water wasn’t the whole point. Kitchen wanted to continue the color and texture of the coastal scrub so that, when seen by motorists or pedestrians, her front yard would appear almost parklike.

The garden also had to complement her house--a whimsical Moorish fantasy built in 1929. “We made a California Mediterranean garden,” says Los Angeles landscape designer Janice Tidwell, explaining that it is “horizontal and billowy like the native coastal sage, and intensely fragrant.”

Gray plants predominate, from the icy white of cushion bush and fern-leaf tansy to the glistening silvery foliage of bush morning glories. Santolina, Matilija poppies,Echium,lavenders, salvias, St. Catherine’s lace and the shrub Westringia make what Tidwell calls a “serpentine sweep.”

These plants wouldn’t stand out, however, without the deep greens of other shrubs, such as the native ceanothus ‘Julia Phelps’ and the trailing rosemary that spill over the short retaining wall, or the sharp-leaved dracaenas against the house walls. Together, the grays and greens of this garden make a drive down the street seem like a drive in the country.