An Energetic Evolution

FIRST PLACE

SHARALYN FERREL has two rules for a garden. "One, it has to be fabulous or functional. Two, you have to drink champagne."

Fabulous and functional, her Bellevue garden captured this year's grand prize in the 14th-annual Pacific Northwest Gardens: A Competition for Home Gardeners. Ferrel's award is a trip for two to London, five nights' lodging and admission to the May 2007 Chelsea Flower Show. The Seattle Times' Pacific Northwest magazine and the Northwest Flower & Garden Show, in cooperation with the Arboretum Foundation, sponsored the competition.

Ferrel's gardening style is both formal and exuberant. In keeping with neighborhood covenants and restrictions, her entry garden is restrained, elegant and classical in the European courtyard tradition. In back, however, a lush, tropical style better reflects her outgoing personality.

What the public sees may be a bit subdued, but everyone can enjoy three large window boxes that overflow year-round with festive blasts of red, green or silver foliage, depending on the season.

And near the circular driveway, solar-powered spheres, which glow at night like luminous dinosaur eggs, are nested amid steel balls in a fountain bowl. Here are cannas, black basil, heucheras and Helleborus argutifolius 'Silver Lace.' A low boxwood hedge, flowering perennials and succulents, a neat lawn and small trees round out this neighborly landscape.

A gravel path along the west side of the house suggests other possibilities, with its scores of Sedum 'Autumn Joy' and Asiatic lilies that poke through sprawling grasses.

Years ago, Ferrel sought gardening advice from neighboring women, who kindly gave her a few plants to get things going, including the ancestors of this sedum and some calla lilies. The family dog, Bubba, also kicked things off, in his way. Bubba trashed the new plantings, which led to a fence, which led to a fresh way of thinking about defined spaces.

The house connects with the main garden via a terrace, chairs and a glass-topped table under a gnarled cherry tree. If the weather turns nasty, guests can still enjoy the garden from a nearby covered porch where there is an overhead heater and clear curtains can drop to offer protection. The masks, textiles and furniture here came from her trips to Morocco, Greece and South America. Her son, Turner, also contributed souvenirs from far-flung places.

Lofty Douglas-fir trees, bamboo, maples, laurels and rhododendrons border this back garden, as does a wooden fence painted in resplendent colors. In a perfect world, Ferrel says, she wouldn't have photinia on the property, but they were there when she started and have helped demarcate the various garden rooms.

Neighbors are near but invisible behind greenery. Paths loop past eye-popping plant groupings in raised beds, an oasis of lawn, small water features, container plantings and more than a dozen sitting areas, all on a city lot. Here, too, are space-expanding mirrors, a tiki hut and sculptures, including art glass that dangles from trees, blazes a trail or just sits and looks gorgeous.

"I'm not a plant person, but I am artistic," Ferrel says. "I have a way with color and texture. I believe the glass art makes the plants look better, and vice versa. I know it's the drama."

Dramas, of course, are not static. Among the contest judges' comments: "The garden evolves as she does. It's not constrained. She doesn't hold anything back, and yet she's obviously in charge."

Ferrel dates her real progress in the garden to 1992, when she started to explore the world. She and a friend toured great gardens in England, including Sissinghurst and Leeds, which helped her see what was possible. In recent years, her volunteer work for Habitat for Humanity, and other travel, continues to influence her garden.

"In Costa Rica, there were bottlebrushes along the road, so when I came home I bought some to try. And when I got back from Tuscany, I planted Italian cypress. After I trekked the Atlas Mountains, I was inspired to find a place in the garden for a fig."

Recently, a longtime interest in glass has expanded to art pieces that fit her garden. Now, recycled objects and family treasures, including a tree house her father built (itself recycled into that tiki hut), mingle with these collectibles.

"I've always liked reflective surfaces. It's the Northwest light — moody and cloudy," Ferrel says.

She sketches her ideas to remember the annuals and to help adjust color combinations from year to year. She also makes lists for each section of her garden and plans accordingly — none of which detracts from the garden's spontaneous spirit. Pleasing visual juxtapositions result from this kind of strategizing: the symmetry of formal boxwood hedges, flanked by urns and an arbor, near sprawling, playful plantings of potato vine, taro, iridescent Persian shield and blowzy banana.

She'll buy five of this, nine of that. "I'm like a kid with a box of new crayons. I know what I like, but I'm not always sure what to do with it until later."

There are always opportunities for change. A year ago, Ferrel installed a salvage garden — transplants from other parts of the garden — and revamped her son's unused basketball court. She transformed it into a dining space in the style of King Arthur's court by adding a pavilion swathed in gossamer fabric. "I had to make a path to get access to a hose and realized there was the potential for a wonderful view corridor," she explains.

In the months before judging, Ferrel redid the entire front garden, added a pond in back and made the whole of it more glass-centric. She had entered this contest the year before, earned an honorable mention and never stopped refining.

Not to say it's all rock 'n' roll. Bulbs and cool-season plantings are mainstays near the terrace. In summer, dozens of echeverias fill the gaps. Although she replaces a number of cold-intolerant plants, she digs up her favorite echeverias before winter, tucks them in flats with cactus mix and stores them in a greenhouse because "they give fabulous, fabulous color."

Ferrel makes generous use of black mondo grass to accent arrangements in large pots and as border material. If she had to choose favorites, they might be melianthus and Sedum 'Angelina' (the latter's fleshy leaves are a luscious yellowish-green). Deep-purple Sedum 'Black Jack' is a hardy newcomer here and a bellwether plant, because Ferrel hopes to someday coax this ongoing drama into an easy-care garden. After all, there are other things in life.

Fortunately for her, Ferrel, who is a busy agent for Windermere Real Estate on the Eastside, finds harmony in her passion for both sales and gardens. "Real estate is all about the flow, the space and the light," she says.

"And the garden is the same."

Dean Stahl is a Seattle freelance writer. Mike Siegel is a Seattle Times staff photographer.