FRAMED IN NATURE
A traveling photographer brings inspiration home
 

	ART WOLFE'S 1904 Craftsman-style home sits at the top of a West Seattle bluff, with a wide-open view of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains.

NATURE PHOTOGRAPHER Art Wolfe spends most of his time traveling around the planet in search of the perfect image of African lions or bears in the wilds of Alaska. He is one of the most published photographers in the world today, in part because his wide lens captures animals against the backdrop of their native environment. The natural world that shapes the animals is as much a part of the artistry of his photos as the animals themselves.

Wolfe has shaped his own West Seattle garden and Craftsman house in the same thoughtful, integrated fashion. The house fits into the curve of the slope, as much a part of the natural environment as the rocks, streams, waterfalls and plants that surround it.

Wolfe grew up in West Seattle, only a mile from where he now lives. In 1986, briefly back in Seattle from one of his many jaunts, he spotted the 1904 Craftsman high on a bluff. It was one of the original houses built in West Seattle, close to falling down and covered with ivy. The garden was nothing but nasty grass and old rhododendrons, with a steep path leading straight down the hill from house to carport. Despite the property's derelict condition, Wolfe was taken with the wide-open view of Puget Sound and the Olympics. Ignoring his parents' warning, he bought the property.
 

WATER CASCADES around boulders and collects in ponds and a dish rock, creating reflections of sky and trees and a mood of quiet serenity.

"I never knew where this was going," he says of the Asian-inspired garden that now flows down the slope between the house at the top and the streetside garage below. "Marenakos knows where I live," he laughs. The Issaquah rock company has visited many times to place the rocks Wolfe picks out himself. Vertical boulders used for punctuation, flat, mossy slabs and a series of stepping stones provide passage, retain the hillside and serve as framework for ponds, waterfall and plantings. They set the mood of quiet repose that Wolfe appreciates for the three months of the year (if it were ever at one stretch) he returns to Seattle. "I spend so much time strapped into an airplane seat," says Wolfe, "the garden is mental space for me." Much of his work involves the delayed gratification of waiting for photos to be developed or the stop-and-go of arduous travel. "Pulling weeds in the garden is immediate — it has become almost addictive for me," he says of working in the garden between trips.

Wolfe's inspiration came from two quite different landscapes. Years ago he trekked a 3,000-foot peak in Southern China called Huashan, whose name means beautiful mountain. It is a place revered by the Chinese for its vertical rock and twisted pine trees. While Wolfe's intent wasn't to copy what he saw there, he tried to emulate the spirituality and beauty of its landscape. The garden's boulders, pruned out pines and restrained plant palette capture the hushed atmosphere of the Chinese mountain.
 

	A WRAP OF GLASS doors and a deck that extends out over the trout pond help integrate the old Craftsman house with the new Asian-inspired garden.

An avid hiker, Wolfe appreciates the simple, low-lying elegance of Northwest alpine meadows dotted with a few trees. The meadows in Wolfe's garden fill the areas between ponds and streams with overlapping groundcovers that drape the garden's rocks in textural greens. "I wasn't ever aiming for Japan," Wolfe says, sweeping his arm toward the quintessential Puget Sound salt-water view, and the cascading pines and delicate maples. "I combined two ideas, and the garden was born out of those natural environments." Now, in the short span of walking from the garage up to the front door, you pass by what appear to be ancient mossy boulders and centuries-old weathered pine trees.

The stream of water that links the house at the top of the bluff with the entry far below was the first element Wolfe created. He rented a backhoe and started moving things around, carving out a stream bed. At the same time he was remodeling the house, whose interior when Wolfe purchased it consisted of velvet wallpaper and red shag carpet. A priority was to open the house to the garden. Now the view side of the house is wrapped in double glass doors. The wooden deck extends the living space to overhang a pond filled with darkly spotted rainbow trout. They move through the pond restlessly, appearing as flickering shadows in the deep water.
 

ART WOLFE spends nine months of the year traveling the globe to photograph wild animals in their natural habitats, but he returns as often as he can to his own West Seattle garden, less than a mile from where he grew up.

The side of the house that overlooks a green belt is nearly transparent, so Wolfe can enjoy the view out to the thick tapestry of firs, cedars, hemlocks and big-leaf maples. The glass-enclosed second-story bathroom gives a view of hawks nesting in the treetops; only the sound of a train whistle injects a little modern reality into the scene. The hand-hewn cedar front door opens to bare wooden floors, a glass-topped coffee table supported by slabs of granite like those used in the garden, and dozens of masks and figures Wolfe has collected on his travels.

Just outside the door, the fog rolling in off Puget Sound conspires to create the feel of a timeless Chinese landscape. It swirls around the twisted pine trees and collects in the hollows between the boulders. Moss, encouraged by occasional brushings with diluted sour cream, softens and ages the stones. Wolfe collected moss from old clearcuts, bringing it back to the garden, carefully weeding to keep the native mosses from being overwhelmed by more aggressive ground covers.

In spring, native trillium and bleeding heart lighten the garden, but autumn is when it comes into full glory. The sooty blackness of a burned-out snag and the smooth gray of the stones show off the intense oranges, reds and golds of the Japanese maples, which Wolfe prunes himself. Their filigreed leaves float to the ground to rest on the dark, soft green of ferns and moss. Water swirls down the channels and tumbles around the stones, rushing in some places and falling in others from pond to pond in clear sheets. It collects in still ponds to reflect the overhanging canopies of the maples. The pines consort with the boulders, their needles artfully splayed against the stone, their gnarled trunks curved about the craggy contours. As surely as Wolfe's famous photos capture zebras grazing the plains of the Serengeti and wolves in the wilderness, these Asian atmospherics set against the backdrop of Northwest naturalism bring meaning and beauty to his own home and garden.

Valerie Easton is manager at the Miller Horticultural Library. Her book, "Plant Life: Growing a Garden in the Pacific Northwest" (Sasquatch Books, 2002), is an updated selection of her magazine columns. Her e-mail address is vjeaston@aol.com. Barry Wong is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff photographer.