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“This is the place where you wanted to put them?” he asked, pointing to the spot she’d placed a few hydrangeas.

“Approximately,” she said.

“Hydrangeas do better in more shaded areas. I haven’t seen the land yet or seen how the sun tracks, but if you have a rose garden there already, I’m willing to wager there’s too much sun for hydrangeas to thrive.”

“The north side of the house might do,” she said, remembering how it stayed cooler and more protected most days. “I’ll show you.”

As they walked along the flagstone garden path, their feet crunched fallen oak leaves. They were nothing to the oranges, reds, and yellows that she would see in London’s parks every autumn before revealing bare branches for the winter months, but she’d come to appreciate that the seasons changed more subtly here. She had learned that the dryness of the summer and autumn would eventually break and give way to bursts of torrential rain like she had never seen, followed by the most beautiful cornflower blue skies framing the snowy peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains.

The stone became gravel as she stopped next to the house to show Macalister a large swath of patchy grass on the north side. Between the trees not too far away and the long shadow of the house, it was the least sunny area of the property.

“What about here?” she asked.

He began to nod slowly. “This is better.”

It was silly, really, but hearing him say anything positive about her ideas lifted her spirit.

“There are many different varieties of hydrangeas,” he said slowly. “Mophead, lace cap, panicle, oak leaf, smooth. Rather than dotting them around, you could create an entire hedge of them, using different textures.”

She stared at the area he’d designated, imagining the hedge come to life before her eyes. “I like that idea.”

She watched him take a bit of pencil from the pocket of his sun-faded blue cloth jacket and make a note on her plans.

“Star jasmine would also tolerate this exposure.” He turned around and gestured to the northern side of the house. “You already have it on your list, and it could complement the hydrangeas if we trained it to climb up that wall.”

And they would, she realized, perfume the second-floor bedrooms that had windows on that side of the house.

“Then we will put star jasmine there,” she said. “But what of my clematis obelisks? My aunt’s garden had them, and they were beautiful.”

He looked up from his notes. “Where was your aunt’s garden?”

“London.”

“Clematis are fussy and don’t like our heat. I tried to grow them for my last employer, but they never took.”

“What would you suggest instead?” she asked.

“Sweet peas, morning glory, even roses would all work there,” he said definitively before pointing to the front of her border plan. “You need shorter plants here, too, and taller in the back of the border.”

“Why?”

“To build up layers in the border. The tallest at the back, then a middle layer, then short in the front. Salvia would be good to plant with the roses. It helps keep pests away.”

They retraced their steps, the olive trees swaying a little in the breeze. They walked slowly, him stopping from time to time to add to her plans. California poppies, scabiosa, African daisies, Pimpinella, cosmos, hollyhocks, and verbena. Occasionally he asked her about her preference for colors, but otherwise he focused on his sketching.

When finally he was finished, he stood back. The drawing he had produced was far more sophisticated than her amorphous blobs, with the shapes of the leaves and flowers clearly delineated.

“Well,” she breathed.

He handed her back her plans, now covered with his own pencil marks. “You have good ideas. They just needed some refining.”

Pride swelled in her.

He crouched down and ran his hands through a bit of soil at the base of one of the trees. It crumbled in his hands.

“Good soil up here.” He looked out across the garden, the caretaker’s cottage just visible around a bend in the brush. “Still, wouldn’t hurt to bring muck in to improve it.”

“Whatever you think is best.”