"A design-focused, easy-to-use guide for homeowners and landscapers faced with replacing thirsty gardens in California and other dry regions in the Western US, with an emphasis on colorful, eye-catching foliage and flowers for your whole yard, from the ground plain to the canopy. Includes guidelines on transition to an arid garden, climate info, water use info, and chapters on design categories of plants with profiles for each plant plus background info and top picks lists: flowering shrubs, the ground plain, eye-catching accents, ephemeral flowers, perennials for color, animated plants and fine textures, canopy, and edibles. What makes this book unique is that it features only bold plants that are also heavy bloomers despite heat and limited water. It also utilizes more than just Western natives by drawing from the world's driest climates. This book is a visual treat that supports this transition to dry gardening by proving through beautiful photography that gardeners can have all the gorgeous color and flowers they had in the past using just a fraction of the water."--