Mediterranean Landscape Design Mood Board
I undertook a major landscape redesign project last spring of the side garden of my 1920s Spanish style home, which on my property, is the main “backyard” so to speak.
Now that it’s grown in some, I want to show you how it turned out, which I’ll do in an upcoming post. Today, I want to show you my garden “mood board.” It’s not a mood board in the traditional sense, but a collection of imagery compiled via Pinterest that helped me pull together design ideas before actual design work began.
For detailed info about why mood boards are a key first step in any design project and how to make your own, read my “mood board manifesto” which led to me authoring a course titled “How To Create A Mood Board” for LinkedIn Learning.
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My Mediterranean Landscape Design Mood Board
I’d had a vision in my head (and a Pinterest board) for some years now of what I wanted to do in the garden; the types of elements I wanted to include and the overall feel. Let’s take a look:
Garden design priorities
Pea gravel - beautiful, permeable, budget-friendly, & won’t ever crack!
Natural stone pavers
Natural shade structures. I didn’t want to build a shade structure - I rarely think they’re beautiful, they’re very expensive, and they often don’t age well.
Bocce court - in the grand scheme of a landscape overhaul, they don’t cost that much. I live in Napa, CA, a.k.a. Wine Country, so they’re a value-add design element when well designed and maintained.
Mediterranean plantings - drought tolerant and adapted to California
Plant palette - green, white, and lavender mostly
Here’s the tip of the iceberg for my garden design Pinterest mood board. Pinterest boards are a great way of pulling together ideas you like and then identifying your design preferences based on your pins.
Like I said, I’ve had this garden design Pinterest board for nearly10 years now, so it was a great source to reflect back to me what I really am attracted to. They say the camera doesn’t lie, and I say neither does your Pinterest board.
Given enough pins and taken in as a whole, you will see your own trends emerge. What you think you wanted isn’t always so, and conversely, sometimes your Pinterest boards point out things you didn’t even realize you were into until you pull back and note that you have 25 pins of rustic limestone water troughs. (True story :)
A stone trough and fountain with olive oil jars planted with lavender on gravel. Source | Providence Design
Pea gravel and natural stone
One thing I recommend with any design project is finding what I call your “springboard” object. This is something that really inspires you. Indoors it could be a painting or rug, or outdoors it could be a a water feature or a spectacular specimen tree for instance. Once you’ve identified your springboard, it gives you an element to rally around making it much easier to then envision the rest of the design.
Try not to laugh, but for me, my springboard objects here were pea gravel and natural stone. Yep, I know, exciting, hot stuff! But hear me out: I have this thing about cracking concrete - it drives me crazy (OCD much?) and my neighborhood has a fairly high water table (I have a well in my backyard) so concrete tends to crack.
One of my “springboard” images for my garden design mood board. The gorgeous stone trough with a whimsical dragon spout, granite pavers, gravel, and plantings including Blue Glow agaves, echeverias, and boxwood. Photo | Scott Schrader Exterior Design
My love affair with natural stone is well documented. Those who know me best shake their head when learning I’ve acquired yet another heavy stone table, object, etc.
I love the stone pathways and walls in this French courtyard. Source | Clem Around The Corner
Practicalities aside, I just love the romanticism I associate with both pea gravel and natural stone. It conjures images of beautiful old buildings and estates a world and centuries away including Provence, Andalusia, Tuscany, and Morocco.
After reviewing my garden design board once it had a number of pins, I nicknamed it “Gravel Porn” in my head because of all the pea gravel imagery!
Lovely, informal gravel pathways at Patina Farm in Ojai, CA. Source | Giannetti Home
Also, a permeable surface like gravel is better for the environment than concrete. It allows rain water to percolate through to replenish the aquifer below rather than being diverted to the storm drain system.
Urban areas can have up to 95% higher chance of flooding (trying to remember the exact % from a grad school class) than natural areas due to the fact that rainwater has no place to go because so much surface area is paved, so it remains on the surface causing flooding.
A casual outdoor dining area set on gravel with a Spanish style home. Source | Bread & Olives
I love the rectilinear gravel pathways lined with planting beds that flank this beautiful S. California home. Design| Studio William Hefner, Source | Kier Design
Natural shade structure
I decided almost before anything else that I didn’t want a typical overhead pergola shade structure. Even if they’re well designed, I still rarely really like them, they’re expensive, and they often don’t age well.
If I have a built shade structure, I still want it to be covered with vines like this beautiful pergola in the Spanish countryside. Source |Twitter via Rachel Balmforth
What do I love instead? Sitting under beautiful trees shaded by their canopies instead of a rusting or splintery built shade structure.
Practical? Well it takes time to achieve shade this way. A newly planted Charlie Brown Christmas tree isn’t going to shade well for some time.
Another springboard image - dining in the shade of gnarled olive trees at designer John Saladino's Montecito estate. Source | House & Garden
Dining under enormous ancient Sycamores at a Provencal estate? Yes please! Photo | Eat Drink Garden
Delusions of grandeur? Perhaps, but I figure with what I save from not building shade I can invest into purchasing larger tree sizes, which is what I did. (Truth time - I also broke down and bought two cute umbrellas a month ago - more on that in a future post!)
Sycamores planted close together for shade and a feeling of enclosure. Image | My Domaine via Pinterest
A big Coral tree (looks like) holds beautiful Moroccan style lanterns over a dining table on decomposed granite. Source | The Alfresco Life
Garden design elements - bocce court
Bocce is a form of lawn bowling along with pétanque. (Bocce is the Italian version, pétanque is French, beyond that - don’t ask me.) As I mentioned above, bocce is popular here in Napa, including their own league up in St. Helena, and I thought it would be a fun element to include in the design. Either that or a lap pool - the dimensions are almost identical! Alas, the budget doesn’t allow for the lap pool though, so bocce it is.
Besides, I’m ever pragmatic when it comes to my remodeling ROI (return on investment), and an in-ground pool often doesn’t generate a positive ROI. A bocce court in Wine Country on the other hand is a value-add.
A beautiful bocce court at a Silicon Valley estate. Design | Arterra Landscape Architecture, Photo | Paul Dyer, Bernard André
Plantings and plant palette
Your plantings should first determined by climate. Choosing plants well adapted to your local environment is the most sure-fire way to a successful garden. Napa is located in Northern California which is what’s often referred to as a Mediterranean climate, characterized by mild, wet winters and dry, hot summers. (This of course is a generalization as there are many sub-climates.)
We’re lucky we have no shortage of beautiful plants that are well adapted to our mild climate. What we don’t have here though is much rainfall.
Summer-dry plantings include Miscanthus sinensis ‘Morning Light’, Olea europaea ‘Little Ollie’, and a personal favorite - a silvery carpet of Stachys byzantina ‘Big Ears’. All of these plants made my final cut. Source | Pacific Horticulture Society, Photo: Saxon Holt/PhotoBotanic
So while certain tropicals grow well here (actually much better in mostly frost-free Southern CA), if they require a lot of water (which defines the tropics) it’s best to avoid them. Same with excess turf grass. Instead, I look to plants that are native to California, Australia, the Mediterranean, and South Africa. All are characterized by dry summers with winters that are wet but not too cold.
I have no shortage of beautiful plant choices from these regions, and by sticking with those types of at least semi-drought tolerant plants, I can keep my water bill in line. Plus California is in yet another drought with water restrictions that just went into place again - seemingly the new normal.
Drought tolerant plantings in Australia. Source | Gardenista, Design | Peter Fudge
Beautiful silvery, gray-green plants well suited to a California climate. Silver and gray-green indicates for drought tolerance. Image | via Pinterest
Working within the framework of Northern California appropriate plantings, I still have lots of color choices. However, I chose to mostly stick to greens, gray-green, lavender, and white. Not without exception - I love my fuchsia bougainvillea that came with the house, and I have some pink camellias etc, but I don’t have any red for example, or even yellow, although yellow would be an easy one to introduce since it compliments the purple-lavender and greens.
A beautiful mix of pale pink roses, lavender, thyme, santolina, and sage. Source unknown via Pinterest (I really tried!)
Espaliered citrus is a fantastic way to maximize space and cover potentially unsightly walls or fences. Echeverias, thyme, haworthia, and gravel below. Source | Gardenista
If you like these images you can check out my entire Pinterest mood board for this project. I had a lot of fun doing it, and honestly, I could have put out this post a little faster if not for getting distracted by so much beautiful imagery all over again.
UPDATE: Here’s my full garden reveal: Napa Garden Reveal [California-Mediterranean Landscape Design]
If you have any questions about landscape design process, please post below and check back for responses since the site doesn’t let you know when I’ve responded. Have fun planning your own dream garden!
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