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Northwest Living Valerie Easton

Little And Lavish

Pockets of choice plants, well-placed pots and artful accessories invite delight

A POETRY WALK leading deep into a shady grove is the first of many delights packed into Gillian Mathews' pocket-handkerchief-sized property. The words "In the garden everyone can be an artist without apology or explanation" are written on stepping stones beckoning you toward a gravel terrace furnished with lanterns, birdbath and lipstick-red Adirondack chairs beneath the trees. You've entered one of the atmospheric garden rooms wrapped around Mathews' old Madison Park bungalow.

Mathews has lavished a watchmaker's eye for detail and an advanced color sensibility on outdoor rooms for entertaining, dining and quiet retreat. As you might expect from the founder and owner of Ravenna Gardens, she hasn't skimped on accessories, decking out the place with arbors, water, mosaics, comfy furniture, pots and more pots, and even a planted chandelier. She's squeezed a vegetable garden against the garage wall, and garnished a minuscule birch grove with black Japanese stones and a fountain. These cozy, eccentric spaces unfold, room by room, as you stroll around the house.

The garden is saved from being purely decorative by its layer upon layer of choice plants. Yet even with treasures like the purple-leaf mimosa (Albizia julibrissin 'Summer Chocolate') and spires of siren-red Lobelia tupa, Mathews keeps the overall garden picture in mind. Some plants, like a smoke bush clipped into a fluffy popsicle shape, have been rigorously pruned so they won't overpower the diminutive garden. "I've stuck mostly to terra cotta and rust-colored pots," she explains of her selective editing.

Mathews is expert in gardening her property's full volume of space. Pots display plants from ankle to eye level. Pebble mosaics, patios and pavers cover the ground. Overhead, vine-laced arbors and tree branches meet to form canopies. Houses often dominate a property, but Mathews' bungalow recedes into the foliage-rich garden. She chose her home's sage-green and deep-red paint palette to match leaves and tree bark. Especially from the street, the property gives the impression of a leafy bower that just happens to contain a little house somewhere inside.

Despite its artistry and flamboyant plants, this is the practical garden of a busy businesswoman. Dwarf boxwood hedges frame vegetables one year, dahlias the next. Mathews displays her sedum-filled collection of funky containers on an old metal fish-gutting table. She created the graveled terrace in the front garden because the trees and shrubs are so thick there nothing would grow beneath them. An old conifer, pruned rhododendrons and a golden locust meld their branches to form a natural umbrella, sheltering the little outdoor sitting room from rain.

Mathews has been working on her garden for only about six years. She primed its luxuriant growth by first improving the soil, hauling out a half foot of clay. The next step was to rototill in loads of compost and manure. "The parking strip is my big mistake," she admits — she left the clay soil intact out by the sidewalk. "I needed somewhere to put plants, and I just threw them in there," she says ruefully. No apologies or explanations needed, as the poetry path reminds us, for this owner obviously and thoroughly enjoys being an artist in her own garden.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer. Her e-mail address is valeaston@comcast.net. Jacqueline Koch is a Seattle-based photographer and writer.

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