Dindia's garden is for enjoyment. The table and chairs in the upper terrace are situated to take advantage of morning sunlight and a backdrop of shrubs.

"I call my gardening style structured chaos," Dindia says. Maybe so, but to most eyes her large, Mediterranean-style garden appears to be botanically coherent, well-organized, beautifully tended and luscious when seen in the ripe days of summer. She has planted her family's three-quarter-acre lot with hundreds of trees and shrubs that would be at home in the Mediterranean region yet do well in the Northwest climate. Her passion for the gardens of southern Italy and France, joined with her hard work and creativity, have made this an ideal spot to entertain friends, to eat, to talk about whatever comes to mind.

This year, the conversation may well turn to Dindia, and how in 10 years this once-novice gardener turned a shaggy lot into the grand-prize winner in the 10th-annual Pacific Northwest Competition for Home Gardeners. Her reward is round-trip airfare for two to London and the 2003 Chelsea Flower Show, including admission to the exhibits and five nights' lodging.

About the Judging Nearly 120 gardens were entered in the 10th -annual Pacific Northwest Competition for Home Gardeners, which is sponsored by The Seattle Times' Pacific Northwest magazine and the Northwest Flower & Garden Show, in cooperation with the Arboretum Foundation. There were three rounds of judging. The judges — all volunteers with strong gardening backgrounds, trained and guided by staff of the Arboretum Foundation — rated each garden using a scoring sheet and point system. Factors included overall design, plant use, diversity of plant material and so on. Gardens that made the first cut advanced to second-round judging, where new teams of judges viewed and assessed. The top 15 winners each received $100 gift certificates from Swanson's Nursery. For the final, third round, judges were Bill Williamson, a landscape architect; Susan Harrison, a certified member of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers; and Pamela Harlow, a commercial perennial grower. These judges were escorted by Arboretum volunteers Gerry and Herb Holley. It takes about 70 Arboretum Foundation volunteers, each donating up to 10 hours of their time, to judge the competition. Contest coordinator was Janet Endsley, who will talk about the top three gardens at the Northwest Flower & Garden Show, Thursday at 3:45 p.m. in the Hood Room. Feb. 19-23. Check the show schedule for times.

Dindia's world within a world starts at her front gate. A path mulched with sand-colored marble chips curves close to the south side of the house, where a sweep of lawn edges a perennial border that blurs into larger shrubs. Heat-loving tomatoes, climbing squash and cardoons are planted in a raised bed near the house wall. Pomegranate and pineapple guava shrubs bloom here but don't set fruit in the short growing season. Just past the silvery cardoons are white roses, herbs in large, terra-cotta containers and a neatly clipped ceanothus hedge that divides house from courtyard. A passion-flower vine covers an arbor next to the house and trails blooms that swing in the breeze.

	A bee is attracted to the artichoke-like flower of a cardoon, the standout in a small tomato garden planted last summer at the south end of the house.

Dindia's use of color is restrained, for the most part, with blues, grays and greens predominating here and throughout the garden. She strives for consistency; repetition is her ally. "It's easy to tip the balance, to do too much," she says. "It's important to have repeats." For added interest, pink, purple and white blooms emerge here and there in spring and summer, from favorites including Astrantia major, alliums and bear's breeches (Acanthus ). In May, the saturated orange of daylilies plays off the deep blue of the ceanothus hedge.

The north-facing slope opposite the house includes a number of deciduous shrubs, among which asters and Verbena bonariensis sprawl freely. Dindia refers to this as the wild-frontier side of her garden.

Wax myrtle, ceanothus, a 12-foot loquat tree, a weeping pear and edgeworthia form part of the canopy visible from the house. 'Fred Boutin' lavender, accenting the north stairs to a breakfast-nook deck, is an attention-getter.

One is never far from a table, chairs and garden room; three well-defined seating areas provide space for relaxing with a cup of coffee or glass of good cheer.

Food traditions are strong on the Italian side of Dindia's family. Her grandparents had a produce business in the Little Italy section of Portland, where she was introduced to the chemistry of family, friends and food. When she was younger, she lived a year in Italy.

Dindia and her husband, Terry Storms, settled into their ranch-style rambler in July 1992. She had good aesthetic instincts and quickly set about taking classes, joining plant-related organizations and seeing as many gardens as she could. The first couple of years, she consulted with a friend, landscape designer Doug Bailey. She walked the nurseries with her son and daughter, Gus and Gia Storms, when they were kindergarten age and younger, and joined a friend on a self-guided garden tour in France and Italy.

Patience was something she already had. For about a year and a half, she focused on rebuilding terrace walls, removing overgrown shrubbery and importing soil. She and Storms added tons of soil and compost on the steep slope and around the house to improve clay conditions.

"You learn it's all about the soil," she says, adding that she's committed to gardening organically. There have been years when she's shoveled 30 yards of compost a season. "It's backbreaking, it's not exciting, but it's where the payoff is."

Her goal was a year-round garden with interesting textures and leaf shapes, which necessitated removing a couple of dozen rhododendrons.
 

	Janet Dindia designed this metal gate to have the look and feel of gates in the Italian or French countryside, then had it fabricated locally.

The house's previous owner — who had lived there since 1954, built the first terraces and planted the rhododendrons — recently marked her 90th birthday with a tour of the Dindia garden and loved it.

At last, Dindia says, her garden is well-established. Much of the lower area gets no supplemental water during summer and survives nicely, but that was a struggle for a time. "If I were to do this again, I'd look into something other than the laser-drip system for irrigation. They're just not right for this size garden. Pop-ups are better."

Her husband is very supportive, helps with grunt labor "and is a good person to bounce ideas off of." Together they pulled up a concrete patio and reused the material to build hillside vegetable beds and to function as pavers. In 1997-98, they built rock walls; in 1999 they finished the last part of the path at the edge of their lot, down near a public-access trail.

Now, the house is oriented to the garden, rather than vice-versa. Plants share the hillside with the occasional raccoons, Townsend moles, horsetail and quack grass — a smorgasbord of challenging species. You have to make peace with some of that, she says.
 

Janet Dindia and her husband, Terry Storms, cultivate a welcoming atmosphere in their Mediterranean-style garden. Dindia's planning and effort created a world within a world on Mercer Island.

Dindia, who is a Master Gardener as well as a member of the Arboretum Society and the Northwest Perennial Alliance, recommends these groups for amateur and serious gardeners.

She's looking forward to her winner's spoils, not having been to England in 30 years. This will be her husband's first visit there.

Dindia quit her career as a manufacturer's representative a dozen years ago to be with her children, and now imports table linens and other textiles she finds during her annual travels to Italy and France. She likes their beauty and usefulness.

She might say the same about the fig tree that grew from a cutting given her by a Mercer Island friend. The original tree has been productive for two generations.

"I waited 10 years for this," she said last August, after finally eating fresh figs from her tree with Italian prosciutto. The context, the connectedness, are as sweet to Dindia as the figs. Friends, an arbor festooned with ripe grapes, the breeze smoothing the wrinkles out of the trees, "This is what it's all about, all the hard work in the garden," she says. "We feel so blessed to be here."
 

The stairs from the lower to the upper terrace are softened by a grouping of plants that do well in Mediterranean gardens, including euphorbias, lavenders and senecio.

Much of this prize-winning garden has been planted on a once-steep hillside. Terraces and stairways, such as this one leading up from a vegetable garden, are as aesthetically pleasing as they are physically challenging.

A mirror over a small table enlivens a blank exterior wall. The tablecloth from Provence, France, is an everyday fixture here and reflects the gardener's interest in attractive, utilitarian textiles.

 

The lower terrace has the atmosphere of an old-country villa, with a small water garden, grape arbor overhead and sand-colored marble chips underfoot.