Curators bring colorful style to a piece of Dunn Gardens

IMAGINE A LOCAL designer so skilled that he was invited to consult on the East Coast garden of a garden editor at Martha Stewart Living. Imagine that it's not one but two local designers and you have the formidable team of Glenn Withey and Charles Price.

Now whisk this pair off to a North Seattle landscape designed by the famed Olmsted Brothers. How does such a talented pair express their acute, lively sense of color and design in a garden worshipped for its history?

Withey and Price have shared the post of curator at the Dunn Gardens for the past 13 years. Has living amid all those venerable rhododendrons and magnolias stifled their colorist flair? Not a bit. Tucked behind their cottage is a vivid jewel box of a garden, started by former curator Doug Bayley. The designing duo have since made this space their own — free of the constraints of historic status that apply to the rest of the property.

"Visitors are always drawn to the intense pop of color in the Curator's Garden," says Sue Nevler, executive director of the Dunn Gardens. "I love the geometric layering, the juxtaposition within the Olmsted garden . . . It's an exciting space."

The contrast between their very colorful garden and the green-green naturalism of the surrounding acres is certainly distinct. "There are some very dire color combinations in these pots," muses Withey. "Think of it as a tribute to Mexico," says Price of the hot-pink begonias played off orange lantana.

It's hard to believe that this sophisticated space used to be grassy and sweetly old-fashioned. Just one miniature apple tree remains from the orchard planted by Ed Dunn, son of the original owners. But remnants of the past do ground the modern garden in its history. Withey and Price dug down to reveal water-tower piers that now stand as curious garden elements. They chiseled up the Vermont blue slate from what was a classroom in the house and laid it in vertical strips to add textural interest to Wilkinson sandstone paving. They've paid homage to Ed Dunn's fruit garden by planting an assortment of herbs, wild strawberries and three little persimmon trees (Diospyros), which turn vivid colors in autumn.

But it's layer upon layer of hedging in unexpected materials that's the genius of the place. Withey and Price have cultivated the illusion of depth in the narrow back garden with hedges of colored foliages. The dahlia hedge may be the showiest stratum of the garden, but it's only one of seven soft layers stretching from behind the patio to the very back of the garden. They've cleverly varied plants for textural contrast and to break up any severity of horizontal line.

A solid laurel hedge forms the backdrop and assures privacy from the neighbors. Yews morph into barberries and young weeping blue Atlas cedars that will grow into a drooping blue screen. The layers step down in height as they approach the patio, from fluffy miscanthus grass to dahlias and clipped nandina. Boxwood balls merge with blueberries and spiky horsetails. Native plants like columbines, campanula and ferns blur the edges of paths and terracing.

"I wanted structure, because so much of the garden isn't structural," says Price. The layering manages to organize a great number of plants in an intimate space. And because many of the layers are evergreen, the view out the dining-room windows is drop-dead gorgeous every day of the year.

"The rest of the property is an early-20th-century garden," concludes Price. "I guess you could say this little part is an early-21st-century garden."

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer and author of "The New Low-Maintenance Garden." Check out her blog at www.valeaston.com. Mike Siegel is a Seattle Times staff photographer.