Freshly Classic
With plinths, paving and proper trimming, Europe comes to Tacoma
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 JACQUELINE KOCH / THE SEATTLE TIMES Stone steps and deer-proof plantings replace a steep, moss-filled side garden. Top right are 16 massed boxwoods pruned into a single cube.
JACQUELINE KOCH / THE SEATTLE TIMES In David and Ingrid Zielke's renovated garden, the purple agapanthus and lawn are original. What's new is the procession of boxwood leading to a door hedged in hornbeam.
JACQUELINE KOCH / THE SEATTLE TIMES The classic formality of the stucco house is emphasized by the precise lines of pyracantha that Ingrid espaliers at the entry.
JACQUELINE KOCH / THE SEATTLE TIMES Water cascades down an urn into a pond at the home's entry. Layered spires of Acanthus mollis flowers frame the entry, with the purple leaves of Cercis canadensis 'Forest Pansy' overhead.
JACQUELINE KOCH / THE SEATTLE TIMES Ingrid Zielke asked for a better view of the garden out her living-room windows and got this European-style garden scene, complete with a gravel circle, stone steps and urn overflowing with verbena.
JACQUELINE KOCH / THE SEATTLE TIMES The Zielkes originally wanted an infinity-edged swim pool, but they're pleased with the broad terrace and wisteria-draped pergola, designed by architect Robert Jacklin, that gives them outside dining space as well as privacy across the back of the house. |
When designer Richard Hartlage saw how Ingrid Zielke had clipped a rosemary bush into a perfect square, he knew he'd finally found that rare thing — a Northwest gardener unafraid of hedging. Then there was the pyracantha trimmed into meticulous ribbons across the front of the house. These pruning feats offered such insight into his German-born client's aesthetics that Hartlage was moved to design a European-inspired garden on a precipitous hillside high above Puget Sound.
"I picked up where someone else left off," says Hartlage, a garden designer with the multi-disciplinary firm AHBL. Ten years ago the couple worked with architect Robert Jacklin to transform the 1929 cottage on their Tacoma view property into a French Normandy-style home. Two years ago, Ingrid and husband David Zielke hired Hartlage to address several specific landscape challenges.
Ingrid ticks off the program on her fingers. First, lose the view of the compost pile from the living room. She wanted the garden to look beautiful from inside the house, too. Next, do something about the steep, grassy hillside that interrupted circulation, and deer from the nearby ravine regularly nibbled on Ingrid's prime plants — even in broad daylight. Then there was the entry, which called out for a water feature.
Hartlage immediately saw how a rectangular pond could fill an awkward notch in the terrace while adding a dash of class the moment you enter the garden. Now a scrim of water glazes the sides of an oversized urn before pouring smoothly into the pond. The vessel's umber curves evoke Provence, yet the pond's geometry, outlined in black mondo grass, is quietly contemporary.
Along with all the bold architectural gestures in the Zielke garden, designer Richard Hartlage paid close attention to the less-showy practicalities of deer-proofing. These plants are surviving un-nibbled:
Barberry 'Helmut Pillar'
Rugosa roses
Sedum 'Purple Emperor'
Hebes
Jerusalem sage (Phlomis fruticosa)
Phormium
Hydrangeas
Allium 'Globemaster'
Acanthus mollis and Acanthus spinosa
On the north side of the house, a steep slope was covered in moss-colonized grass. "Do we even need a lawn here?" asked David, and it was gone, replaced by a stately progression of stone steps softened with hebe, lamb's ears, barberry and silky Japanese forest grass. Halfway up the slope is a circular gravel terrace centered with a grand urn, placed on axis from the living-room windows. At the top of the steps is Hartlage's tribute to Ingrid's love of hedging: 16 boxwoods massed together and pruned into one big cube of leafy green.
The garden's fresh classicism peaks at the top of the stairs, with a parade of boxwood balls leading to a stone-paved patio. This outdoor room, open to sky and view, is architecturally punctuated by squat, square plinths topped with granite spheres. An oversized door floats in a hornbeam hedge, lending mystery to the scene. What's a door doing in the middle of the garden? This bit of architectural play is the screening Ingrid asked for; open it up to find a pile of pots, compost and the wheelbarrow.
The biggest success of all, says Ingrid, has come from the wide palette of plantings, many with the aromatic foliage that deer avoid. The animals stand there and look at the plants, Ingrid says happily, "but they don't eat them."
Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer and author of "A Pattern Garden." Her e-mail address is valeaston@comcast.net. Jacqueline Koch is a Seattle-based freelance writer and photographer.
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