Third Place
	Eileen O'Reilly-Miller and Kip Miller are avid plant collectors who delight in what they call "legitimate play." Their North Bend garden is a result of their avid curiosity, creativity and hard work.

Their 6-year-old collector's garden has placed third in the ninth-annual Pacific Northwest Competition for Home Gardeners. The couple's prize is a trip for two to Victoria, B.C., including admission to Butchart Gardens and two nights' lodging, or $500 in cash, in addition to a $100 Swanson's Nursery gift certificate awarded earlier for placing among the top contenders.

This garden of rarities bursts with hard-to-find or just plain eye-catching plants. The variegated species alone are impressive and include Tricyrtis hirta 'Variegata,' the variegated toad lily, as well as buckthorn, willow, meadowsweet, figwort and rhododendron. They add pointillist dazzle to the landscape.

In one tableau, a robust variegated Brunnera 'Aluminum Spot' shares space with a rhododendron 'Dormouse.' Nearby are dwarf mock orange (Philadelphus dwarf 'Snowflake') and greater woodrush (Luzula sylvatica Marginata).

This late-summer, bird's-eye view of the Miller / O'Reilly-Miller garden outside North Bend shows a river-rock path that winds past a greenhouse and down to a lawn and waiting hammock. The big trees are much appreciated but require frequent cleanups after storms.

Its neck snaking above its neighbors, Lilium 'Scheherazade' sends a flower spike up about 8 feet. One of the newer Orienpets lilies (a cross between Orientals and Trumpets), its blossoms are burgundy with a white edge.

Japanese maples and grasses, both decorative and rare, blush or blanch with the seasons. Tropicals, such as canna and coleus, snap with color. Various geraniums come and go in service of visual harmony.

The bones here are lawn and playhouse for the couple's children, Alexa and Madison; earth islands for rare plants; plus trellises, a greenhouse, garden-shed structures and a rainwater-storage area.

Miller's woodworking expertise is evident throughout. Their house is in a development with covenants, so they work within broad design guidelines that have not hampered the imagination. The blueprint is simple. A few steps off the driveway, a river-rock path along one side of the house leads through a steel arbor draped in clematis, past shade-loving foundation plants and into the private main garden. Here the path splits. One way winds through planting beds to the playhouse nestled in boulders, and, a little farther on, to a glass-and-steel greenhouse. From here, flagstone steps angle down to the lawn.

The other path winds through raised beds and past access points for pruning and watering. It dead-ends at the lawn. Perhaps a third of an acre is solid with perennials and small trees, buffered by native salal at the perimeter, which in turn blends into the woodland backdrop.

Contest judges viewed the main garden with great interest, noting rarities with affectionate pats of leaves and the occasional "ah." The couple were inspired, in part, by a display garden at Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo. Seeing that garden in a setting amid large trees helped them better visualize their own habitat. Things happened quickly after that. Miller built the playhouse first. Then came sketched plans, 60 yards of earth molded into elongated, irregular-shaped islands behind the house, electric- and water-line installations, buying expeditions to nearly every interesting nursery in the Northwest.

	Kip Miller built this playhouse for his children before tackling the rest of the unplanted garden area. He incorporated existing boulders into his construction plan.

"We raked rocks until we were blue in the face," O'Reilly-Miller recalls, because along with their views of nearby Mount Si and the sound of rushing river water, the property came with a crop of glacial till and boulders.

They've been gardening the all-organic way for years, avoiding pesticides and using seaweed-derived fertilizer to keep plants looking their best.

Though deer and elk are often seen munching on neighbors' shrubs, this garden, so delectable to judges' tastes, has somehow been spared by ungulates. Miller suspects the cobblestone paths deter them. A wide natural buffer zone between garden paths and trails in the surrounding woods probably helps, as well.

Townsend moles, whose digging ways can turn peaceful folk into trappers, are seen as a force for good here because they sift compost through the glacial till.

The couple's biggest continuing challenge is fierce wind that gusts down their valley, quickly drying plants and bringing hemlock limbs or whole trees crashing down. Yet they have lost only a handful of exotics, and those to winter cold.

Favorites are difficult to choose, but O'Reilly-Miller singles out the Floribunda rose 'Showbiz,' for the simple appeal of soft, red color, ruggedness and clean leaves. Miller admires Cimicifuga racemosa 'Brunette' and Cimicifuga racemosa 'White Pearl,' both black snakeroots, for their lofty, branched flower spikes that command attention and oblige as foils for more colorful perennials.

Miller is a retired safety professional who describes himself as the family logistics engineer. O'Reilly-Miller works for a software company. Both enjoy the exercise and family togetherness their garden provides and consider what they do "legitimate play."

"This is like a second childhood," Kip says. "You can get dirty, make mistakes and have fun."

Above: Crocosmia bring a festive splash of hot color to the garden. Their sword-shaped leaves are attractive, the blooms blaze in a vase and hummingbirds find them enticing. Left: Flowering hostas, fuchsias and daylilies are among the plants that line a flagstone path winding past a birdbath. At certain times of the year, robins are the most frequent bathers here.

Dean Stahl is a Seattle writer, editor and lexicographer. Mike Siegel is a Seattle Times staff photographer.