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Drought? Bring It On

With gravel, rock and plants that rarely thirst, an arid slope flourishes

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BARRY WONG / THE SEATTLE TIMES Narrow strips of lawn edge the house in front, giving way to the stone, gravel and drought-tolerant plantings like the big clump of Euphorbia 'Red Wing' and the yellow-blooming Jerusalem sage (Phlomis fruticosa) on the left. BARRY WONG / THE SEATTLE TIMES Red yarrow (Achillea millefolium 'Paprika') is just one of the many silver-leafed perennials grown large without supplemental water. The quick drainage and hot sun on the south-facing slope so suit this hardy perennial that it's formed a huge clump in just a couple of years. BARRY WONG / THE SEATTLE TIMES The rosemary-draped stone walls look as if they're dry-stacked, but they're sturdily held in place by mortar kept well back so it doesn't show. The ornamentation, an old stone piece salvaged from the Music Hall Theatre and bought at auction, adds instant age to the new garden. BARRY WONG / THE SEATTLE TIMES Buff-colored gravel paths wind their way through healthy clumps of groundcovers, sedums, euphorbia and a purple-blooming annual salvia grown from a packet of seed Shelagh Tucker scattered when she first planted her garden. BARRY WONG / THE SEATTLE TIMES The Tuckers' new Mediterranean-inspired front garden updates the classic lines of their 1930s-era Carkeek Park home. BARRY WONG / THE SEATTLE TIMES Giant silver mullein (Verbascum bombyciferum) is one of the more striking architectural plants for a dry garden. Here, its yellow flower spike and ghostly foliage are shown off in front of a blue-blooming ceanothus. BARRY WONG / THE SEATTLE TIMES Landscape architect Phil Wood designed low stone walls to retain the slope, and a round stone patio as the centerpiece of the south-facing, drought-tolerant front garden. Due to all the hardscape and careful plant selection, the new garden keeps its shape and color all winter. BARRY WONG / THE SEATTLE TIMES A circular pond defines the space just inside the back garden gate, echoing the shape of the patio in the front garden. BARRY WONG / THE SEATTLE TIMES A white picket fence and arbor draped in the rose 'New Dawn' mark the transition between Spain (the arid front garden) and Devonshire (the green and flowery back garden).

DESPITE HER BEST efforts at thatching and irrigation, Shelagh Tucker's lawn turned a discouraging brown in summer. Her front garden faces south and slopes down to the street, so water ran off, and the sun baked both rhododendrons and grass.

Despite the common belief that our climate is akin to rainy England's, in reality our skies are mostly dry from July through September. So Tucker decided to go whole hog: She hired landscape architect Phil Wood to design a drought-proof Mediterranean garden in front of her Carkeek Park home. While the backyard remains as green and flowery as an English countryside, the front landscape is a stylish expanse of stone, gravel and abundant plantings that get by just fine without any supplemental water.

The lawn went first, tilled under and topped off with a foot of compost. Wood designed a round, stone terrace softened with a carpeting of thyme. Handsome, low, rock walls define gradual elevation changes. Tucker worked with Wade Bartlett of Rock Solid Landscaping to lay paths and place each boulder.

"Because I'm from England I'm fond of light-colored gravel," says Tucker of the pale pathways. "Everyone there uses limestone and has gravel driveways." The cream-colored gravel warms up gray days while setting off the plants happily seeding themselves in it. The larger rocks are Montana sandstone in the same buff color.

Planting was left to Tucker, and she went to work with a whole new palette of plants, many with gray or silvery leaves like Russian olives and eucalyptus. Tucker installed an irrigation system to get the garden off to a good start, but has found that months go by without her needing to turn it on. "I do have a little drip on the Styrax japonicas," she points out, noting that these trees evolved in Japan where rainfall is more evenly distributed throughout the year than it is here.

Beth Chatto's "Gravel Garden: Drought-Resistant Planting Through the Year" (Viking Studio, $35) is Tucker's bible for this new style of arid gardening. "Chatto says just to pull plants out if they don't do well," Tucker advises. Because the sloped garden drains so freely, most of her new plants have wintered over successfully, and she hasn't needed to put that advice into practice. Plants are seeding and growing so prolifically that all too soon Tucker will be spending her time cutting back and pulling out.

Tucker has learned to leave plants alone in autumn when they're drought-stressed. "I've found the less you cut things back in the fall, the better they do," she says. She doesn't fertilize, leaving old foliage to melt into the gravel to enrich the soil.

A gravel pathway leads beneath a rose-laced arbor into a back garden that seems a world away. A glass conservatory adds elegance, and a fountain bubbles in the round fish pond, designed by Wood to echo the shape of the front patio. Curvaceous beds filled with clematis, roses, peonies, hostas and hydrangeas complement the 1930s house in a very different manner than the less conventional front garden.

"The new garden is so much less labor-intensive than the traditional borders in the back," says Tucker. She's been pleased to find there is no dead season in her Mediterranean-style garden, and last June she realized she hadn't watered out front in 18 months.

In all the transformations, Tucker's husband asked for just a bit of front lawn. Two little strips of grass near the house afford a pleasant place to sit and look out over a textural array of Mediterranean plants grown luxuriant on a Northwest hillside.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer and contributing editor for Horticulture magazine. Her e-mail address is valeaston@comcast.net. Barry Wong is a Seattle-based freelance photographer. He can be reached at barrywongphoto@earthlink.net.