Little Ballard backyard bustles with artistic, diverse elements

Diana Isaiou's garden fits her family like an old shoe. Not just any old shoe, but one that is both comfortable and stylish. Her garden, made up of equal parts sophistication and funk, boasts lessons for anyone working on a garden of her own — and isn't that most of us?

Isaiou is a food stylist, preparing and arranging food for photo shoots. She brings her artistic eye to her garden, too.

Six years ago, she was looking for a house and yard with a south-facing slope and alley access; she found it in Ballard.

The backyard retreat she shares with her husband and 2-year-old son has winding brick paths and the sound of rushing water. A greenhouse stands close by a vegetable garden filled with herbs and other edibles.

The open sunny lawn used for play and lounging provides contrast to an adjacent shady woodland garden that shelters winter-blooming black hellebores.

At the request of her husband, Robert, she created a secret garden room paved with stone.

How did Isaiou manage to squeeze all of this into the 50-by-70-foot backyard of her 6,000-square-foot lot? She made a plan.

Planning it out

After listing all the features she wanted, Isaiou sketched the garden on paper, then went to work to build it.

"There was nothing here in the yard when I started, just lawn and a few fruit trees," she said.

Isaiou brought three truckloads of plants from her old house. The plants have matured in six years and serve to divide the garden visually into separate spaces.

Water splashes into the pond from an ancient-looking ceramic jar. Blue herons stop by to stalk the goldfish that flash in the water.

The irregular shape of the pond gives a natural feeling to this part of the garden. Isaiou dug it herself in one day and installed a rubber liner.

Another water feature is more practical. Isaiou bought a stock tank, an 8-foot circle of galvanized metal, to use for a swimming hole.

"I jump in after a hot day of work in the garden," she says.

Special features bring character to the garden. An old garden shed with rustic shingles is a focal point for the lawn. A Victorian chimneypot — a terra cotta artifact that once stood on an English rooftop — stands like a chess piece marking a bed. Fragments from the demolished Music Hall Theater serve as sentries on both sides of the back gate.

Isaiou, 42, has been gardening since she was a child, with her parents on a big suburban lot in Bellevue.

"After I began gardening on my own, I went through phases," she said, recalling the perennial phase, the dark-purple-against-chartreuse phase, the tree phase, the evergreen-shrub phase.

Adventurous plantings

The plants now in her garden show off her adventurous side. A windmill palm (Trachycarpus fortunei) stretches out to 10 feet tall and wide. A yucca beside it adds to the tropical feel of this corner of the garden. Also exotic, a Chilean firebush (Embothrium coccineum) attracts hummingbirds with bright-red tubular flowers in May.

A purple-leafed ninebark (Physocarpus 'Diablo') with deep-burgundy foliage echoes the burnished bronze of purple New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax 'Atropurpureum').

The vegetable garden is ornamental as well as useful, the curving beds outlined with brick and the paths filled with wood chips. The herbs give year-round texture, and Isaiou picks them to take to work for photo shoots.

Everything here and in the rest of the garden is organic. The only pesticide she uses is a soap spray for aphids.

"If you are taking care of your own corner of the Earth," Isaiou said, "why would you put poisons on it?"

Advice for new gardeners

Isaiou advises those new to gardening to add as much compost into the soil as you can afford.

"Get to know your site," she said. "I spent a lot of time figuring out where the sun was."

The process of creating a garden is more fun than actually finishing it, she said, so she always has another project under way. She sees her biggest challenge as editing out the plants that have gotten too big in the last five years.

When asked why she enjoys gardening so much, Isaiou said, "I like to watch things grow, watch the seasons change. I can't imagine not having a garden."

Phil Wood has a degree in landscape architecture and designs and builds gardens. Send questions to thegardendesigner@seattletimes.com or call 206-464-8533.