Gardening in San Diego-This or That?

This is a photo of my garden in Athens, GA where I lived starting in the late 90s. I loved getting the chance to garden in the South. My career as a flight attendant brought me out to Atlanta originally, and school kept me there a little while longer. Words cannot express how much I loved that garden, the soil that I built, and all of the plants that flourished there. I miss it so much! In my mind, I can still walk around and look at the plants. As the saying goes, when the gardener leaves, the garden dies, and, unfortunately, it only exists now in history. I dearly miss the sweet little native spring ephemerals that started the gardening year, and the cherished, but loud, memory of the frog chorus in the springtime. The thing is I saw firsthand how camellias, azaleas, hydrangeas, magnolias, and other "Southern" plants grew and thrived on almost 60 inches of rain a year and deep acidic loamy soil. We had warm summer nights and sometimes 100% humidity!

Sharon's garden Athens, GA

And yes, I have seen some passable examples of Southern plants in San Diego but I shudder to think about the amount of water and changes to the soil that this illusion requires. Do I desire to grow the wonderful plants I grew in Georgia? No, not really, they exist only in my memory. It seems strange to me to try to recreate such lushness in such an alien arid environment. In Southern California, our alkaline soil, dry summer weather, lack of humidity, cool nights, irrigation water filled with salts make this climate so completely different, as to seem like another entire planet. No, gardening as I did in Georgia is only a historical point in time--never to be repeated. I have a fresh opportunity here to try a whole different way of gardening with a huge palette of plants I only imagined I would ever grow. It's funny how many California natives I tried to grow in Georgia with disastrous results because that is what I knew. It was only when I made the decision to work with what I had that the successes came. 

This is how I would like to garden now. The upper photo is a Michael Buckner garden in San Diego and I love the hot colors. The second photo is a Kate Frey garden in Northern California. I want something in between. I am so lucky to try to grow completely different plants in my garden. It sure is trial-and-error at this point and I am learning more with my failures than my successes. Do I want to try to recreate my Georgia garden as much as I loved the plants? No way. I love it here, but I sure do wish it would rain more.