Whidbey Island painter creates a pastoral, art-full garden

photographed by Mike Siegel

PAINTER AND teacher Patti Gulledge White claims she's not much of a gardener, yet her art-filled garden on Whidbey Island is about as heartfelt as they come. "I take pride in how the garden flows," says Gulledge White, who welcomes visitors to her garden with neatly raked pathways and cozy outdoor rooms. She focuses on how it feels to be in the garden without wasting a minute on remembering plant names.

In 1973, Gulledge White moved to the island from California and bought an old parsonage built in the 1930s. The little building came with nearly an acre of land and a view over the pastoral Maxwelton Valley. She remodeled the parsonage herself while working on the garden as she found time. Twenty-five years ago, when she got together with her husband, Jeff White, she was still at the rhododendron stage. He jokes that he's helped transplant those same rhododendrons dozens of times in the years since.

Three years ago when White designed and built his wife her "Valley View Studio," he sited it in the midst of her beloved garden. Here she can look out over the garden while she teaches or works on her Andrew Wyeth-inspired landscapes.

Over several decades, Gulledge White took a unique set of skills and circumstances and turned them into a quiet, shady respite of a garden. She founded the first recycling center on the island while she was teaching sociology at Edmonds Community College. "I had salvage rights," she says of all the discarded objects she dragged home to turn into garden constructions. She brought a dump manager's resources, a painter's eye for detail, and a self-described "maniacal capacity for hard work" to the task of making her garden. "It's pretty much a shade garden," she says. "It looks like how I paint — pretty simple, not too complicated."

Many of the island's famous artists are represented in Gulledge White's garden; among them, glass artists Richard Marquis and David Levy, and sculptor Kirk Prindle. She trades her paintings with other island artists for pieces that lend structure, color and intrigue to the scene.

It pays to have friends with plants. Many of the island's expert gardeners have shared their special plants with Gulledge White. She loves the layers of history accumulated in garden beds and borders. "All these gift plants make it kind of like a Grandma's garden," she says of the garden's casual, cottagey feel. "I've been an aspiring little old lady all my life," she adds with a laugh.

Little old lady isn't what comes to mind when you see the paths Gulledge White carved through the hillside's underbrush. She's transplanted a bamboo hedge, planted dozens of ferns, dug up and moved a mammoth fatsia. The couple carries stones home from the beach to create piles and rivers of rock.

"I'm never happier than when I'm working in the garden," says Gulledge White. "It quite literally grounds us."

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.