Vashon Island tour will show gardeners' skill and hard work

VASHON ISLAND is still so gorgeously, rustically rural that fruit trees in snowy bloom and pastures full of lambs and llamas distracted me from my mission to preview the annual garden tour. But even the alluring pygmy goats and roadside wildflowers were forgotten when I turned up the driveway to Dick and Pam Driscoll's multiacre garden, which will be in full bloom for the tour the last weekend of June.

The Driscolls bought their classic French-style timber house, complete with Mediterranean blue shutters, only four years ago. Despite its comfortably aged look, the house was built just a decade ago by a local French craftsman. The couple had been searching Whidbey and Vashon islands for years to find five to 10 acres to farm, but as soon as they saw this place, they happily settled for three sunny view acres.

And the garden? "It was a wasteland, nothing but gravel and sheep pasture," says Dick. It's hard to believe the transformation from rough, grassy hillside to this garden bursting with fruit trees, vegetables, perennials and flowering shrubs. "Dick has put in the patios, terraces and nearly every plant," says Pam. "I weed for an hour or so on the weekend."

Dick Driscoll is indeed the gardener, a Seattle doctor who used to grow azaleas and rhododendrons at his shady Mercer Island garden. This island hilltop, with views out to Quartermaster Harbor and the Olympic Mountains, has inspired a new and various plant palette. "I never had enough sun before this house," says a man who is making the most of every ray. Dick turned pastures into garden by hauling in fill and terracing the slope below the house to create a series of lawns and stone patios that cascade down from house to orchard.

Be sure to wear comfortable walking shoes on tour day, because you'll want to stroll the stone patios and walk down through the terraces to admire the dogwood, peonies and roses. The orchard boasts apple, cherry, pear and peach trees. The hydrangeas will be in full flower along with a mass planting of lavender.

Behind the house is a graveled pathway lined in flowering trees and shrubs chosen for their ornamental bark and fall color. The French sign along the driveway, decorative urns and orchard ladder are antiques or purchased from Anthropologie, where Dick has found some of his favorite one-of-a-kind garden accessories.

And then there's the back garden, which was Dick's first landscape project at his new property. On the hillside behind the house, impressive rows of raspberries and domestic blackberries set the backdrop for raised beds full of strawberries, rhubarb, herbs, asparagus and lettuces.

How has one busy doctor been able to so fully embody the saying "So Many Plants, So Little Time"? "We hauled in lots of good soil," he explains modestly. "He goes dawn to dusk," adds Pam. "My job is to keep him hydrated."

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer and author of "A Pattern Garden." Check out her blog at www.valeaston.com. Ellen M. Banner is a Seattle Times staff photographer.