A Wind-blown Garden on a Sea Ranch Bluff

Front of the house from the cul-de-sac, with an established meadow of California oatgrass (Danthonia californica) and Molate fescue (Festuca rubra ‘Molate Blue’). To the right of the entry is the arbor-covered walkway connecting to the garage. Author’s photographs

Safe are we on the cliff; but, ah! that mad shatter and crashing

Brings the chill tremor of fear, the short, hard, shuddering breath;

Look, oh God, look beneath us! How fearful the tumult, the lashing –

Lashing of crazed, hungry billows that clamor for terror and death.

Herbert Bashford, “On the Cliff” in California: Romantic and Beautiful, George Wharton James, 1914

Maybe that melodramatic poem is a bit overstated, but the elements of wind, wave, and salt that lash the Sonoma Coast certainly do challenge the making of a garden—at least, a garden in the traditional sense. Bashford’s focus on the crashing surf omitted the incessant winds that also lash the bluff and everything that grows on it—as I learned in designing a garden at The Sea Ranch several years ago. The process has been both instructive and humbling as I experienced i...