Designing this garden in Victoria, Canada, was something of a departure for landscape designer Fi Campbell. For one, this project was personal, not professional: Campbell had purchased the house for her college-aged daughter to live in during her school years, and as a result, the budget was much smaller than Campbell’s usual work. The climate, while similar, was distinct from her Southern California home base. Plus, Campbell was managing the project from afar and needed her choices to be low-maintenance.

Campbell selected the house in part because she loved the elderly seller’s existing garden. “The garden was chockablock full of incredible fruit: raspberries, an apple tree, rhubarb, and fennel,” Campbell recalls. “It was like an English country garden.” Campbell wanted to keep the wild, romantic spirit of the garden, but she also planned to make changes, including removing two aging trees that were planted too close to the house.

In front, the tree removal necessitated starting over completely. Campbell turned to Satinflower Nurseries, a local nursery specializing in plants native to Southern Vancouver Island, to source plants. “Southern Vancouver Island has many different micro climates, and the one that I live in is Saanich,” says Campbell. “It’s a very drought-heavy area, as it’s inland.” They identified grasses that would be found in the Garry oak savannas to create a predominantly native meadow garden, much of which was grown from seed.

Of utmost importance was choosing plants that could deal with a fair amount of neglect. “There was no irrigation in the garden. So I had to rely completely on rainfall,” she shares. “I would hand-water in the summers, obviously when I was there, but even if I weren’t hand-watering, what would happen? And so that was the drive to choose things that were (drought-tolerant).”

Behind the house, Campbell reconfigured beds to create more privacy. She also planted Portuguese small leaf bay laurels, red currant, Arbutus menziesii, and various different species of Ceanothus for additional screening. She replaced the traditional turf lawn with a no-mow fescue and moved around hundreds of existing bulbs as she discovered them.

The garden that resulted over several years is both wonderfully personal and super site-specific. Let’s take a tour.

Photography courtesy of Fi Campbell.