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Nine To Eye

In one West Seattle tour, see a world of good gardening ideas

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MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES By purchasing small, affordable plants and nurturing them for more than a decade, the Repetowskis transformed their small back garden into a tropical paradise made for entertaining, complete with stereo system and gushing waterfall. MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES The enclosed front terrace of the Repetowski home offers a quintessential West Seattle view of water and mountains. MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES The warmth of Puget Sound right across the street creates a microclimate where olive trees, palms, oleander, cardoons and purple flowering kangaroo apple thrive in the Repetowski front garden. MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES A contemporary metal gate updates the entry to Robin Mers' well-established garden, one of nine properties on this year's West Seattle Garden Tour. A sea of yellow Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra 'Aureloa') softens the sidwalk's edge. MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES Tour gardens feature art, architecture and décor, as in this well-placed blue pot among similarly hued hostas in the Mers garden. MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES A shady staircase and path lead from the back garden with a view of Puget Sound to the front shade garden rich in hostas, maidenhair ferns, gingers, astilbe, coleus and Japanese maples. MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES An older shady garden hasn't deterred Robin Mers from collecting cool plants from around the world. This dedicated plantsman has carved out space beneath older trees to pack in more plants.

THERE'S NOTHING like a good tour to satisfy our longings for a close look at other people's gardens. This year's West Seattle Garden Tour offers a smorgasbord of styles in nine distinctive properties, from bungalows tucked away on dead ends to beach-front, palm-laden tributes to global warming.

It's difficult to believe that Patrick Repetowski gardens in the same Zone 8 the rest of us do. Maybe he's just had his palms, bananas, kangaroo apples (Solanum aviculare), phormiums, callas and cannas in the ground longer than we have. "I got the tropical bug in the early '90s," Repetowski says, when he couldn't buy any of these plants locally and had to mail order them.

I kept looking for a greenhouse. But the giant cardoons, brugmansias, gingers, tree ferns and cordylines winter over here with rarely a setback, warmed by both the beach-front location and the extensive paving front and back. Olive trees flank the front steps. Lofty Chinese parasol trees (Firmiana simplex) and Canary Island date palms (Phoenix canariensis) spread overhead. There's even a Meyer lemon tree outdoors, year 'round, and it's bearing big, fat lemons. The trick is that among the tropical extravaganza lies a backbone of hardy plants. A burgundy smoke bush, hydrangeas, ferns and rhododendrons fill in beneath the exotica.

This is a garden made for outdoor entertaining, with brick and slate terraces, hidden stereo speakers, wicker seating and an outdoor-dining pavilion. The waterfall gushing into a pond is the final touch. Or maybe it's the huge heat lamps, or the couches nestled into intimate patios. The whole stage set of a garden is made more personal by rows of raspberries, tomatoes and espaliered Japanese pear apples.

Be sure to squeeze down the narrow side garden for a look at the ingenious eye-level herb garden planted along the top of a stucco wall.

Variety On Display


Nine gardens, several right next door to each other, are on the 11th annual West Seattle Garden Tour July 17. Each reflects the work of a dedicated gardener or two, many have spectacular views, and all offer solutions to gardening dilemmas. Some highlights in addition to the Mers and Repetowski gardens:

• The Babitz Garden is divided into three distinct garden rooms, ranging in style from cottage to Japanese.

• A small Yin sanctuary garden surrounds a Craftsman-style house. Stone, pines, a fountain and bamboo add to the garden's Asian atmosphere.

• The Golmarvi beach-front garden has a Mediterranean aura, with a grape arbor leading to the water, olive and Italian cypress trees.

• With a semi-formal area in front and a lively cottage garden in back, the Hanauer property has met the challenges of a narrow front garden and a steep slope in back. Lavender-lined walkways and clematis-draped arbors frame a wide-open water view back to Seattle.

• A courtyard garden by the water, with a view of Blake Island and the Olympics, features native and drought-tolerant plantings plus two children's play areas.

The Sunday tour is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Proceeds benefit ArtsWest and other West Seattle nonprofits. Tickets, $15, are available at many nurseries as well as ArtsWest, 4711 California Ave. S.W., Seattle WA 98116; 206-938-0339. For more information and a list of participating nurseries, see www.westseattlegardentour.org

Just ask pediatrician Robin Mers where he buys some of the unusual plants packed into his garden, and he'll refer you to www.anniesannuals.com or pull out a catalog from his garden tour of England. Mers grew up plant-obsessed, with parents who were florists. He collected Japanese maples when he lived in Texas. Just think how crazy a guy like him would go when he got a chance to garden high on a west-facing bluff above Puget Sound, in a house inhabited by good gardeners since the 1940s. Fabulous plants are stuffed in everywhere. Passionflowers and clematis clamber up trellises, arbors, rails and tree trunks; the deck is hardly visible beneath the pots.

Earlier owners planted a fine assortment of enkianthus, pieris, azaleas, evergreen huckleberries, magnolias and camellias. Mers excels at dealing with mature shrubbery, trimming up the big old plants to reveal lichen-encrusted trunks and gracefully arching limbs. Carpeting the ground are hostas, ferns of all descriptions, gingers, anemones, daylilies, astilbes and shiny swaths of flowing Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola'). Mers has even dangled a fuchsia basket from a venerable camellia. Mers' collection of Japanese maples has only mushroomed since his move, and their filigreed leaves in shades from chartreuse through oxblood lighten the many foliage textures displayed in this plant collector's garden of Eden.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle free-lance writer and contributing editor for Horticulture magazine. Her e-mail address is valeaston@comcast.net. Mike Siegel is a Seattle Times staff photographer.