My former San Francisco Backyard....revisited

I was recently in the Bay Area, and was able to visit my old San Francisco apartment.  Located in the Sunset district, this area is routinely shrouded in fog and is so close to the beach that the soils are basically old dune sand.  Upon visiting I was able to snap a few photos and reminisce about my former backyard.

Four years ago this garden began with just a few ornamental cherry trees that were the only things that survived after years of neglect.When I began creating the garden I was faced with a subterranean dilemma. The resident mole population I inherited was quite happy with the flora of annual weedy grasses that emerged every spring, and as the infant garden took roots my mole friends were curious to sample the exotic buffet of ornamentals I unwillingly offered them.  I planted, they devoured.  I planted strange plants from far regions, they sampled.  I planted aromatic Meditteranean like lavender and sage, they still sampled!  But after giving up on ornamental grasses and Phormiums, I began planting stuff they hated (lavenders), to stuff they were unfamiliar with, such as Grevillea and S. African Honeybush and other southern hemisphere Mediterranean climate plants.  Because not only are moles and gopher unfamiliar with these plants they thrive in nutrient poor soils, so beach sand is like rich hummus to them.  Getting the garden going was not easy, and this was not only an example of creating a garden ad-hoc, but learning from it, and letting ideas evolve over time.  Gardening is often about trial and error, and in difficult sites that is often the only way to learn.