I am in the same zone as you are. My yard is not hardly landscaped…more like hodge podge growth and here and there…a mix of natives, drought tolerant others and fruit and vegetable producers. Around here you don’t get watered after getting established… if you are a plant, unless you make a fruit, a vegetable or a rose flower. If you are a plant that needs water and you don’t make lots of those things, you get pulled. Now, in the summer most of the ground “cover” is stubble from dessicated annuals that have met a mower or a weed eater. It looks fine to me.
There is not one day out of the year that I can’t find a native blooming. Lots of “buckwheat” If you clear an area and bust up the ground, you will get a big stand of wild mustard(an annual). I have lots of manzanita, sage, scrub oak, a few great big engleman oaks. I know you can start the oaks easily. Mostly there is some not so attractive brush that people call Lilac.It does bloom beautifully in the spring. I never leave it as a stand alone plant… There is another other purple blooming small shrub/tree that has very nice branching form but I don’t know what they are called. I can even find a stand of a fern-like plant here. For larger specimens, pines do well without water after a few years. You might find some historic species. I think they look great here.
BTW the fire department inspector was here a few weeks ago. It is not that hard to keep them happy. I have pretty good clearance and/or separation with the fire hazard plants, on about 5 acres of the 20.
