Harmony happens when garden is integrated with home

WITH ITS white-marble roof jutting out over gleaming walls of metal and glass on the edge of a fjord, the new Oslo Opera House has been described as having a pitch-perfect relationship with its snowy, icy surroundings.

Isn't that an intriguing image? And a goal for gardeners, because the peace and serenity of home is easily shattered when indoors and out are not in harmony.

It's not that gardens and houses need to match, any more than your purse needs to match your belt needs to match your shoes. The trick is in the mix. Perhaps the best public example is the imposing Getty Center in Los Angeles, where conceptual artist Robert Irwin's sensual and floriferous garden offers a sharp contrast of intimacy and enclosure. The critics panned Irwin's garden as a bunch of P-Patches. But it's been hugely popular with visitors who love the familiar, fragrant plants and comfortable sense of scale.

Landscape architect David Pfeiffer, designer of the mostly native-plant garden in this issue, views the challenge holistically. It's a matter of integrating a client's energy, who they are, with the site, topography and the house, he says. "Don't limit the idea to house and garden — it's bigger than that." Pfeiffer demonstrated this larger vision by designing a low-maintenance garden of native and ornamental plants that suits its steep site and complements the bold, clean lines of Geoff Prentiss' architecture.

The classic tome "A Pattern Language" by Christopher Alexander offers advice on synchronicity between house and garden: "Make the boundary ambiguous so that it's impossible to say exactly where the building stops and the earth begins." Crime writer Elizabeth George aimed for this kind of indoor/outdoor fusion in her Whidbey Island walled garden. She asked designer Stacie Crooks for a private, personal space surrounding her sunroom. The garden is paved, the sunroom's glass doors open wide, and George's English fantasy world stretches from the flowery upholstery indoors to the rose-bedecked arbors outside.

While it's a trend to bring the outdoors in, Milari Hare spreads the comforts of home out into the garden with rattan furniture, brilliantly colored cushions and art glass. Hare demonstrates that if specific colors work for you in your clothes and interiors, why not repeat them in flowers, foliage and al fresco décor?

All-of-a-piece homes and gardens are anything but boring when you have a clear, strong aesthetic, as shown by Linda Weiss and Ron Gawith's Vashon Island property. The contemporary look is born of utility: They grow vegetables, cook and eat outdoors. Hefty gabion walls tie the garden to the bulk and scale of the house; concrete floors and counters are repeated in and out for a seamless transition.

Experts suggest you need to live in a space for a while, watch the sun and the rain and get the feel of a property before melding house and garden. Pfeiffer advises you can't be too focused on plants or you'll miss important issues of connection and function.

A lovely riff from "A Pattern Language" touches on why this integration of house and garden is so worth striving for. "There is no way of being partly inside, yet still connected to the outside; there is no way in which the inside of the house allows you, in your bare feet, to step out and feel the dew collecting or pick blossoms off a climbing plant . . . because there is no surface near the house on which you can go out and yet still be the person that you are inside."

May these designers and gardeners who have learned how to travel indoors and out in bare feet inspire your own gardening pleasures.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer. Check out her blog at www.valeaston.com. Erika Schultz is a Seattle Times staff photographer.