A Portland garden goes contemporary cool with high-def design

GARDEN DESIGNER Lauren Hall-Behrens' Portland home may be a hundred years old, but her garden is unabashedly new millennium. From the concrete entry sequence to the recycled materials, rusty metal and chic plants, a modernist aesthetic rules.

Yet this stylish young designer has skillfully linked a house and garden from different centuries into a harmonious whole. The home's architecture extends out into the garden with arbors and pergolas painted in the same deep shade of blue-green as the siding. The comfortable, outdoor living spaces are as straightforward and welcoming as the old house.

"My grandmother fed me the gardening bug," says Hall-Behrens. "She took me to Mexico often, which really influenced my eye." Her garden, and her design business, are both named Lilyvilla, after her great-grandmother.

Despite inspiration from ancestral muses, Hall-Behrens is drawn to contemporary, minimalist spaces. Her new garden is so coolly contemporary you'd never guess it was a grassy old orchard when she set to work just five years ago. A few fruit trees remain as remnants of the old garden, but succulent-stuffed metal baskets now hang from their limbs. The stately trees lend scale to the garden, forming a canopy over the newer, less-mature plantings. A massive metal gate serves as a portal, its sleek custom design hinting at the unusual delights within.

"I love the big picture and the small details of the garden," says Hall-Behrens, who excels at both. She designed a generously scaled, simple square of bluestone dining patio defined by tall, rustic urns and a brawny arbor. The beds are edged in metal, to raise the level of the soil up a bit for better drainage, and to keep the paths tidy. The pathways are a mixed palette of gravel, pavers, black Japanese stones, and sweeps of Mexican pebbles.

Luminous chunks of recycled glass slag are piled up here and there along the paths, reflecting light and coaxing eyes downward. Such foot-level theatrics draw attention to the colorful variety of textural ground covers and ornamental grasses that lap against the paths and keep down weeds by carpeting the garden between larger plantings.

And what plantings they are! "I try to use plants in a playful way, like an artistic medium to create spaces and atmospheres," explains Hall-Behrens. Hummingbirds dive into jasmine, abutilons and fuchsias. Bananas, fan palms, yuccas, flax, ornamental grasses and unusual finds from New Zealand and Australia create a pan-Asian vibe. And among these semi-exotic specimens she's tucked her treasured hydrangeas, lilies and fragrant roses. This mix of high-low/ new-old/ familiar/unexpected, as in a wardrobe, lends a unique, personal flair to the finished effect.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer and author of "A Pattern Garden." Check out her blog at www.valeaston.com. Jacqueline Koch is a Seattle-based freelance photographer.