Unthirsty and beautiful

Sunset, Spring-Summer, 1998 by Sharon Cohoon, Lauren Bonar Swezey

Garden rooms with a Mediterranean sensibility

* Transplanted gardeners in the Northwest who have watched their plants wither begin to understand that little rain falls in the Northwest between May and September. So, despite its soggy reputation, Seattle is a good place to practice water conservation.

This garden is unthirsty, but it's also a vision of abundance and voluptuous growth. For its design, landscape designer Nancy Hammer took cues from the site's hot southern exposure. But she was also inspired by owners Mary and Jim Scurlock's love of Italian gardens.

The soft-hued, Mediterranean-inspired garden is filled with unthirsty ornamental grasses and perennial flowers. On its crushed-stone terrace, designed for entertaining and dining, profuse foliage and flowers encircle visitors. Pots scattered informally throughout the beds and terraces enhance the garden and give it a casual feel.

Stonehenge hillside, Southwest-style

* This Santa Fe hilltop garden, designed by landscape architect Faith Okuma of Design Workshop, reflects the native New Mexico terrain. Surrounding the house is a wild, colorful, natural-looking planting of native and drought-tolerant shrubs, perennials, and grasses. Off the back patio, the landscape is punctuated by a small green oasis of lawn and lush plants - an allusion, says the designer, to New Mexico's heritage of enclosed courtyard gardens. Elsewhere on the property, an "exploded Stonehenge hillside" is designed both for erosion prevention and for effect. At its pinnacle is a hot tub with fabulous views.

* Scott Spencer's garden in Fallbrook, California - a series of ornamental borders separated by broad pathways of decomposed granite - looks lush. Each island bed is a complex tapestry of textures and colors. But Spencer is too busy designing new gardens for clients to spend much time watering and tending his own garden. The large (16 by 75 ft.) border shown above and two others like it manage fine with only an hour a week of Spencer's labor.

One reason for the garden's easy-care design is its plants: large flowering shrubs such as salvias, ornamental grasses like Miscanthus sinensis, and evergreen subshrubs like santolina are Spencer's mainstays. Perennials play a secondary role in his borders (tough Mediterraneans are his favorites). "Neat habit, long bloom period, not fussy - my kind of flower," he says.

These plants all take temperatures topping 90 [degrees] - common during summer - in stride, and they don't require copious amounts of water to look good. All they need is to be cut back sharply once a year. "Grasses are the easiest," he says. "You just tie a rope around them and cut them like a sheaf of wheat."