STYLE : All Grown Up

Some gardeners complain that native California plants grow too fast, get too big and die too soon. But the Laguna Beach garden of Alan and Lynda Eliel--composed almost entirely of drought-tolerant plants indigenous to the state--proves otherwise. Ten years old this year, it is handsome and well-established. Although a few native plants have died, most have not only survived but thrived.

The Eliels, collectors of early California art and owners of Sun Stone Gallery in Laguna Beach, appreciated the wild look of California before it became suburbanized. The inspiration for their garden was a green belt of coastal scrub and oaks just across the street.

Today, young oaks--as well as native sycamores, bays and alders--dot the Eliels’ property. “It almost seems as if there is no street” because the garden blends so perfectly with the hills, says Alan Eliel, who recently started a landscape design-consulting business. Under the trees grow native coral bells, iris, columbine and Ribes viburnifolium . The last, also known as Catalina perfume, makes a dense, fragrant stand on the shady north side of the house.

In the sun are poppies and penstemon, the endangered sulfur yellow Conejo buckwheat, beach primrose and a number of shrubs such as the attractive coffeeberry--one named ‘Eve Case’ and another, ‘Little Sur,’ introduced by growers at Tree of Life Nursery in San Juan Capistrano. There are also manzanitas and ceanothus.

Most of the native plants required a little watering, Eliel says, but watering killed some of the ceanothus. Ceanothus ‘Concha’, C. ‘Ray Hartman’ and the C. maritimus were three survivors. Five years of drought clearly haven’t hurt this garden. But then, some--if not most--of these plants like it hot and dry.