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Pacific Northwest Magazine Dean Stahl

A Puzzle That Pleases

In graceful patterns, color plays and calm reigns

SECOND PLACE

WHEN CHARLOTTE Behnke contemplates her garden from the breakfast table, she mentally moves pots, hedges and groundcovers to improve the composition.

"I like form, shape — rectangular playing off round, vertical against horizontal. The whole process is like a thousand-piece puzzle, but if the basic elements are in place, it works."

Judges for the 14th-annual Pacific Northwest Competition for Home Gardeners decided that her garden in Seattle's Madison Park neighborhood works so well that they awarded her second place in this highly competitive amateur-gardener contest. She won round-trip airfare and admission for two to the March 2007 San Francisco Flower & Garden Show, with two nights' lodging.

She and her husband, John, bought their house in 2000, spent months sketching plans and seeking advice, then remodeled it the next year. Both house and surrounding garden were completed in 2003.

The resulting landscape is incorporated so well with the house that a visiting contest judge commented, "This isn't so much a garden room as a room garden."

Shrubs, trees and terraced brick planters have replaced what had been a rolling, grassy area at the front of the house. In the months before workmen poured concrete terraces and patios there and in back, Behnke stockpiled her foundation plants, including variegated Portuguese laurel, pink-blooming Camellia sasanqua, laurustinus, variegated holly, Japanese snowbell (Styrax japonica), lacecap hydrangeas and boxwood.

She had in mind a rhythmic, layered structure that would be as pleasing to the eye as music is to the ear, and serve as a privacy screen.

Now, passersby see layers of boxwood and blue-blooming hydrangea under spreading snowbell trees. Visitors ascend a wide, graceful stairway entry to a garden gate, where a cozy seating area is set off by art tiles in concrete and, in the warm season, colorful annuals, perennials and vines on an arbor.

The back garden opens onto wide terraces defined by low masonry walls, where wire vines (Muehlenbeckia) cascade from urns over brick. There are perennial beds and sausage vines (Holboellia coriacea) on trellises. Numerous large ceramic pots are planted with soothing combinations that are sometimes juxtaposed with head-turning surprises, such as a container spilling over with chartreuse-colored sedum circled by black mondo grass. Elsewhere, masses of potted zinnias brighten the foreground, while tiers of shrubs stair-step into a dark-green backdrop that disguises fences and neighboring houses.

Amid so much to see, structural elements provide many places for the eye to rest. Off to the side is an alcove with an outdoor fireplace. Nearby, water pours into a shallow pool from a time-polished stone lion head. A short way down a walk is an herb and vegetable garden bordered by evergreen blueberry shrubs. In this, the last section to come together, colorful tufts of bee balm, heuchera and coleus have been planted amid the edibles in seemingly random fashion. It's a place where grandchildren can play and learn — just the sort of whimsical space every garden needs, Behnke says.

Overall, this garden has great variety within continuity — repeating shapes and colors in the larger plants, the calming splash of the fountain, the intersecting brick lines in concrete surfaces, the cheerful flamboyance of pelargoniums and sedums.

The multi-level terraces are ideal gathering places for groups. Here, too, are alcoves where one or two people can sit and enjoy peaceful surroundings.

Behnke says she learned about creating a park-like atmosphere in a small area, and how to best integrate house and garden, by conferring with architect John DeForest and designer Bradley Huson. DeForest was responsible for the seamless remodel of the house. Huson, trained as a landscape architect, consulted on the integration of house interiors and landscaping.

"I'm a good sieve," Behnke says modestly. She started gardening in preschool, thanks to a great aunt, and never really stopped. Her family had a garden that spanned four city lots in Renton. Behnke enjoyed a career in event planning for a major hotel group, and had a business, for a time, on Bainbridge Island growing plant material for the dried-flower market.

The Behnkes have opened their gate to several organizations for private events and are appreciated in the gardening community, and elsewhere, for their decades of service and generosity.

Behnke is quick to say she has benefited from others. She has read through a library of gardening books, attended every horticulture-related lecture she could and visited gardens around Europe as well as in this country. She has "a pool of information" in her head, but it is the looking — as she puts it, the unconscious second look — that results in a fresh approach. She is especially thankful for her art training with Northwest painter William Cumming, who led her to see the interconnectivity of pattern, plane and color in a deeper way.

Ultimately, of course, there is no secret formula for creating an excellent garden.

"You could think of a garden as like a wedding," Behnke says. "You have old things, new, joy and happiness, beauty, deepening attachments, eyes open for ideas.

"Finally, you are able to rest, to relax and to share."

Dean Stahl is a Seattle freelance writer. Mike Siegel is a Seattle Times staff photographer.

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