A dry wall of various-size stones, softened by a drape of kinnikinnick, edges the long curve of driveway.

The mainly green and white garden is brightened in April by an array of sherbet-shaded tulips and pansies, contained in the simplicity of a mossy stone trough.

Three years later, the garden has matured enough to show off both its geometry and the subtlety of its mainly green and white color scheme. The 14 serviceberries (Amelanchiar x grandiflora 'Princess Diana') that form an allee along a stone-paved arcade have grown sufficiently high to create a vertical grid. Vines climb the house, softening its stucco walls with their tracery, curling along deck railings, and leafing out along the arbors. Nothing looks new, out of proportion, or out of place. The house opens to the garden, and the garden in turn clothes the house in green. The architecture of house and garden is so linked it appears seamless - no small trick on this scale, let alone with a garden only a few years old. The classic design of the house, as well as the mossy trunks of gnarled trees, lend an air of age and elegance. Old apple, pear and Japanese maple trees on the property were dug up, their roots coddled in boxes of sawdust during the two years of construction, then replanted. To ensure the survival of an old oak too large to move, pipes were installed to ventilate its roots.

The approach to the house is down a long slope of curving gravel drive, past a mammoth Atlas cedar, firs, hemlocks, pines and copper beeches. The smooth green bowl of lawn levels out; smaller-scale Japanese maples and apple trees are grouped closer to the house. The naturalistic forms of these maples and clustered bushes of Mexican orange (Choisya ternata) contrast with the strict lines of the pruned osmanthus and boxwood hedges, and the controlled tracery of hydrangeas espaliered against the house.

The secret garden is a couple of steps down from the allee of amelanchiars, its reflecting pond and cool greenness interrupted only by stone pots of tulips. In summer, the pots hold silvery cardoons and helichrysum.

A dry rock wall (built by Lynn Sonneman, a local designer who worked with the owner and Hobhouse since the beginning of the garden), undulates along the driveway and paved parking area. Its intricate pattern of large and small stones supports a raised bed of firs, ferns and salal. This entry side sets the tone of house as backdrop to the garden; stucco walls, trim, stone and shutters are all in tones of neutral beige-gray. The uniformity of color is relieved by the green of ivy trained up the house walls in diamond patterns, and a line of low boxwood hedging between paving and house. A pair of sleek stone greyhounds point their noses toward the double wooden entry door. They in turn are flanked by fluffy umbrella pines (Sciadopitys verticillata) in mossy stone boxes.

Broad stone steps tucked alongside the house lead up to a little wooden gate that opens onto the formal gardens out back. The spread of a white blooming Magnolia stellata presides overhead. In springtime, the steps are hemmed by narcissus, primroses, Corsican hellebores (pale green flowers and toothed foliage), purple freckled Helleborus orientalis, white bleeding heart and the sweet perfume from Viburnum tinus and Osmanthus delevayi in full white flowery bloom. Later in the season, azaleas, hostas, ferns, enkianthus and Solomon seal take over the show. Here, as elsewhere in the garden, plants have been chosen for their architectural qualities of form, shape and texture, rather than color or flower.

The villa-style house, only a few years old, is lent a feeling of age and permanence by mature trees and an ideal siting, in the curve of the sloping property.

Expanses of glass windows and doors run across the back of the house, opening to stone terraces protected by heavy-duty trellises that widen out over the dining area to form an open, vine-laced roof. Wisteria and akebia vines twist around pillars, climbing up to spread out over the trellising. A step down from the terraces is the west garden, a space of lawn and hedged gardens which is itself enclosed by a continual running hedge of boxwood, clipped smoothly at about 4 feet high. The owner worked with friend and designer Ann Smith to find and plant the mature boxwood and osmanthus hedging, as well as many of the other plants.

Narrow stone planters run along the outside edges of the terraces, thickly planted in tones of green and maroon. Euphorbia martinii, whose bright chartreuse matches the new growth on the boxwood hedges, has red stems and eyes. These dark notes are matched with burgundy-leafed heuchera, purple hebes, and several large bronze phormiums whose long spikes punctuate the horizontal lines of hedges and lawn. Stone planters hold sherbet-shaded pansies clustered around orange tulips. In summertime, white peonies, miniature white roses and the froth of hardy geraniums accent the phormium, euphorbia and heuchera.

The heart of the garden lies to one side of the lawn, where two hedged gardens open to one another. The top garden holds the rectangular arcade lined with amelanchiars, which is grounded at one end by a black metal bench and at the other by a large clipped ball of boxwood. The beds beneath the trees are planted in pale narcissus and peach-toned tulips. Single white Japanese anemones and lady's mantle grow up to mask the dying bulb foliage and continue the green and white scheme into the summer. Curved stone steps lead down into the secret garden, completely hidden by the surrounding 6-foot-high hedge of clipped Osmanthus delevayi.

The surprise of the secret space is its simplicity. The slender rectangular room holds a similarly shaped pond of still water. All is green stillness and quiet reflection, the only color lent by the plantings in eight circular stone pots. In the spring a single color of tulip fills the pots, and in summer each holds a statuesque gray cardoon edged with a ruff of silvery helichrysum.

Even in full-blown spring and summer it is clear that the garden's generous bones of broadleaf evergreens continue its elegant appearance through the winter. The pruned and naturalistic evergreens such as boxwood, Mexican orange, ferns, evergreen magnolias, camellia, osmanthus, Hinoki cypress and sarcococca are accented by pots and underplantings of bulbs, perennials and annuals for seasonal interest. The defining characteristic in this most distinctive of gardens is the precision of line and geometry created by the clipped hedging. Yet the architectural nature of the garden never gets in the way of its delights, for it is a garden rich with the fragrance of osmanthus and narcissus, the varying textures of the plantings, and the flight and song of birds, encouraged by feeders hanging from the aged trees in this nearly new garden.

Valerie Easton is a horticultural librarian and writes about plants and gardens for Pacific Northwest magazine. She is the co-author of "Artists in Their Gardens" from Sasquatch Books. Her e-mail address is vjeaston@aol.com.