A Seattle hillside is reborn with tropical flash

"I'M KIND OF gaudy!" declares fashion mogul Milari Hare. She's had her flashy way with three hillside acres above Lake Washington, transforming a tired garden into a banana-canna fantasy for outdoor living. Instead of giving in to Seattle's inclement weather, Hare has simply raised the temperature a few degrees with bold foliages, brilliant colors and luminous glass pieces.

When she lost her Laurelhurst garden in a divorce a few years back (see "A Stucco Sizzler," Northwest Living, Aug. 1, 2004, at seattletimes.com/pacificnw), Hare sought solace in helping an old friend landscape his property. "This garden really healed me," says Hare of Cory Suvan's property in Cedar Park. "It was the first time I had a totally blank canvas."

The plantation style of Suvan's old white house proved an ideal backdrop for Hare's flamboyant way of garden making. As she puts it, "All my gardens are fantasies of being somewhere else," a vision reinforced by the home's broad, rattan-furnished veranda overlooking Hare's display of big-leafed foliage plants.

Before Hare could get to planting her take on a Caribbean resort, there were blackberries to clear, black plastic to pull up and beauty bark to truck out. Along with semi-truck loads of compost, Suvan hauled in a bunch of big old rhododendrons. "Those were the last plants he ever put in," Hare says of her friend of 20 years and — you guessed it — new husband. Suvan and Hare were married on the veranda, overlooking the new banana grove, outdoor dining terrace and grotto bar.

The old white house has some exotica in its own history. Suvan, who delivered newspapers to the house when he was a paperboy, believes it was built in 1931 as a retreat for Washington state governors. He remembers the orchards and barn housing six horses when Cedar Park used to be out in the country. It's rumored that Kurt Cobain wrote music in the guesthouse when the property was owned by Nirvana drummer David Grohl.

So how has Hare transformed what was a typical Northwest hillside into a private tropical resort? She started with the welcoming old house with its patio at the entry and deck that runs the entire width of the home's view side. She furnished both with rattan pieces outfitted with turquoise and cobalt-blue cushions, hanging baskets and pots of fragrant jasmine. She's carved out terraces, laid pathways, put in a pond and created various destinations to get people outside.

"Chartreuse is my beige," declares Hare, who doesn't bother with pastels in her clothing or her garden. Instead, she's planted plenty of her favorite magenta and orange flowers and foliage, set off by red banana trees, tree ferns, dusky New Zealand flax, big sweeps of bright impatiens and ornamental grasses. She's chosen roses like 'Judy Garland' and 'Elizabeth Taylor' for their strong fragrances, and her coleus of choice is 'Big Red Judy.'

Lately, Hare has been cultivating glass artists as well as plants, filling the garden with the glint of colorful glass pieces to emphasize her color scheme and carry the garden through the seasons.

But in the end, it all comes back to plant addiction. "My sister and I are in Plants Anonymous — we meet at Swansons, Fred Meyer and Home Depot . . . We make the rounds," Hare admits. "I tell Cory that if I buy one more plant he needs to do an intervention."

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