On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens blew up. And Robert Erickson began planting trees.
 

	These large limestone stepping stones are leftovers that Robert Erickson recycled from a client's masonry project. A compact putting green in the background serves as a welcome mat for the entryway.

Since then, he has devoted near-volcanic energy to subtracting lawn and adding more evergreens, along with a few deciduous varieties, including Japanese maples. In 1981, he rented a Bobcat and built up a privacy berm along the east side of his lot, then installed a large drainage system. Later, he began the massive undertaking of removing 30 big alders to make room for his growing collection.

His house in Mukilteo, near the end of a cul-de-sac, has seven Italian cypress in a row by the front walk and a pocket-size forest in back where, not long ago, builders logged big trees, rolled out a subdivision lawn and held the native woods at bay. His all-consuming hobby has given his family a sylvan backdrop for their daily life — even if it has raised heck with his golf game.

Now, his quiet sanctuary is public knowledge. This formal, Asian-influenced conifer garden captured third prize in the 10th-annual Pacific Northwest Competition for Home Gardeners. His reward includes a trip for two to Butchart Gardens, in Victoria, B.C., with two nights' lodging, or $500 cash.

His wife, Vicki, was so convinced that her husband's garden had special qualities that she entered it in the contest on his behalf, correctly figuring he would be too modest to do so himself.

Erickson's evergreen-scented world fills his average-sized city lot — and a fair amount of airspace. He has 40 good-size trees, plus a large number of perennials and woodland shrubs serving as filler and accent plants. He sometimes goes for the bold statement, including ligularia, which he likes for its brash, daisy-like blooms.
 

Signs of Erickson's handiwork are evident in this view from the family's back deck. Weeping sequoias bracket the seating areas.

There are soothing water features, curving paths mulched with crushed rock or defined by flagstones, and a tile-paved trail that curves around the up-sloping property to follow a fence line that divides the Erickson garden from a schoolyard. He even sacrificed the backyard grass he'd used as a putting green to add a peninsula-shaped planting bed and water element.

So much broad-shouldered greenery packs such a small space that he finds it helpful to assess his garden in terms of a grid. Think of a painter who views a landscape through a frame of outstretched thumbs and index fingers: Here are spruce, weeping sequoia, Atlas cedar. Over there are Japanese red pine, Cornus kousa, Alaska cedar.

Erickson has skillfully incorporated garden rooms in his design, each near the sound of moving water. On the patio close to the house, a frog symphony can be heard in season from a nearby pond. "The pond went in in 1996, when the Sonics went to the championship against the Bulls," Erickson recalls.

His planting scheme ensures color from the crocus of February through the poppies of summer. His taste for dramatic understory plants in his forest extends to gunnera and rhubarb, for their outsized leaves, and bright red-orange flowers from a crocosmia. Deer ferns add stitches to this quilt, as does liatris, another Erickson favorite.
 

	Robert Erickson assumes an atypical pose in his Mukilteo conifer garden, where he is most often seen with a pair of pruners, a rake, a weeding tool or a shovel in his hands.

"I'm tired of the peonies," he says. "It rains and they're trouble."

Most of his trees require judicious pruning, quite a lot of it in the cold season. Fortunately, he is a skillful pruner who learned to do it with a knowledgeable friend, Junji Miki, at his side.

Among the few original backyard plants are a half-dozen rhododendrons. "The rhodies get a little out of hand," Erickson says. "They're my least favorite."

Erickson has always favored trees, as opposed to perennials or shrubs. His parents maintained their own garden at the family home in Richmond Beach, and there were woods nearby to explore, so they're familiar touchstones in his life.

He became a student of gardening mostly through observation. He is a highly skilled tile-setter and stonemason, which has taken him to some of the finest estate gardens in the area. There, he's lingered and learned.

"I also go to a lot of nurseries, not that I need to buy anything," he says. "And I love the design of golf courses. The turns, the curves, the way they use the water."

Sure enough, out front, by the sentry cypress, what appears to be a lawn is actually a putting green. There, when he's not gardening, he can chip a ball or two while the wind sings in his trees.
 

Drapes of weeping sequoia limbs add a soft backdrop to the hard surfaces of a stone table and gray patio pavers.

Erickson favors understory plants with oomph, including this gunnera, resplendent with a summertime flower cluster.

Sometimes, a dash of color is just as essential as bold leaves, as this crocosmia demonstrates.

 

Randy Merrill of Mount Vernon, a friend of Erickson's, made this whimsical sculpture of an old-time train. It now boasts a garden-friendly patina of rust.