Lovely as always, Renee. Who is that gorgeous pink hussy who's sprawled herself all over the arch?

Kay

That's climbing Pinkie. Second flush of the year- the spring flush was pretty spectacular.

Raising a glass to over-used plants, LOL! :-) 99.9999% of the visitors to our house admire the garden as a whole, or a particular plant -- only a professional would notice and care if a plant is over-used or wrongly used.... in any case it's not the Getty Museum!

Beautiful gardens, Renee!

absolutely Beautiful!

Commonly used plants can still make an inviting garden, and I often use common plants in my own designs. That said, I do think that s. California gardens tend to be much less adventurous in plant selection in general than here in the San Francisco bay area. Part of what keeps it fresh for me as a designer is mixing it up with the common and less usual. Too many gardens in s. California seem to use the same 20 or 30 most common plants over and over, when you can grow almost anything there.

I love Xylosmas expecially as I've noticed the spiders seem to chose coarser leafed shrubs for their webs. Great with the sword ferns! Alluring entry!

I don't know why we don't see more walnut trees - they produce here!

Irisgal, I'll tell you why. The Walnut Husk-Fly. Not a single walnut on my tree is unmolested by this awful pest, and the maggots make the fruit bitter and inedible. I got so mad last year that I picked off every walnut before they matured, just to spite the Husk Flies.

Before the arrival of the flies, back in the 50s, my neighborhood was a commercial walnut farm. My parents paid their property taxes by harvesting the walnuts from their trees and selling them to the Nut House. The guy across the street from me still has an original tree. It's a beautiful thing, but it is beginning to lost limbs. I will be sorry to see it go.
Renee

Here in the SF bay area, total predation by squirrels is as likely as insect damage. My beef with this tree is more to do with how difficult they are to plant a garden within their rootzone, and how the squirrels do major damage to any newly planted beds or containers in my garden during walnut season, even when the nearest tree is 3 houses down. I suppose I'd feel differently if I actually got to eat some myself.