WRITTEN BY VALERIE EASTON PHOTOGRAPHED BY JACQUELINE KOCH

	Janet Endsley's shady back garden is rich with the texture and bloom of ferns and astilbe.

When Endsley retired from a demanding marketing job 10 years ago to raise her daughter, she also began to garden. No longer satisfied with evergreens and grass, she dismantled the basic landscaping that came with the house. "We're talking nothing but dirt," she says of her efforts to tear out the rhododendrons, crabapples and viburnums she found too big and boring.
 

Endsley groups her favorite hostas and heucheras in a constantly changing tapestry of pots on the back patio. Tulips signal spring, followed in summer by the hostas and heucheras, as well as coleus and other shade-loving foliage plants.
Endsley's love of purple and yellow foliage plants shows in this border's edging of Heuchera 'Plum Pudding' and Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola.'

"One of the best things we did was plant trees early," says Endsley. Her nearly half-acre suburban garden is now given scale, structure, dappled shade and seasonal change by its maturing trees. The limbs of four katsuras (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) overhang the front door, with an echo of two more across the driveway. The heart-shaped leaves of these graceful trees come on bronzy-purple, morph through olive to a bluish-green in high summer, then blaze in shades of butter yellow and apricot in autumn, when they smell of brown sugar laced with cinnamon.

Three Himalayan birches (Betula jacquemontii) skirt the property line, their handsome, peeling white trunks punctuating sweeps of border plantings. Endsley bermed up the front garden, in part due to fond childhood memories of rolling down hills, and to relieve the flatness of the lawns that flow one into the other. She carved curvaceous beds out of the lawn, planting a mix of foliage plants with year-round interest. Dwarf conifers, hebes, sedges, euphorbia and Heuchera 'Plum Pudding,' her favorite dark-purple foliage plant, fill the streetside bed, making a walk down the street a changing experience as the season unfolds.
 

	The "Sissinghurst White" side garden is a study in pale with white-trimmed hosta and the lacy flowers of climbing hydrangea, set off by the pink-striped Clematis 'Dr. Ruppel' interlaced with the purple blooms of Clematis 'The President.'

Endsley's taken advantage of one of the few sunny areas in the front garden to orchestrate a cascade of blue and yellow foliage and flowers along the sidewalk. Anchored by blue-blooming ceanothus and the autumn-flowering Caryopteris x clandonensis, the border's cool tones last for months, with catmint, blue iris and the profusely flowering violet Geranium 'Magnificum' sprawling along the ground. Yellow yarrow (Achillea 'Moonshine'), sunny-toned daylilies, the soft chartreuse leaves of lady's mantle and the English rose 'Graham Thomas' brighten the border. This ruffled yellow beauty is about the only rose Endsley grows anymore in her precisely cared-for garden. "I've just about given up on roses," she says. "I'm constantly annoyed by them."

The vividness of the blue and yellow border transitions into quieter, shady beds beneath the birches. Edged in pink primroses, the deep border is luxuriant with 50 varieties of hosta interplanted with dark heuchera and the flowing yellow-and-green-striped Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola'). Endsley calls the combinations of gold, purple and pink in this border her "little Monet moments," pointing out the mingling of pink-flowering, steely-leafed Rosa glauca with the deep purple-brown foliage of a smoke bush.
 

White azaleas overhang the koi pond, with the frosty tones of the little conifer Picea abies in the foreground. The 4 1/2-foot-deep pond was built by Woody Morris Waterscapes on Whidbey Island.

Such color combinations are skillfully manipulated throughout the garden, often by using key favorite plants again and again. Her short list of plants that deserve repetition include hostas, Corydalis flexuosa 'Purple Leaf,' which is the earliest corydalis to bloom, the fragrant hedging lavender Lavandula x intermedia 'Provence,' the yellow Japanese forest grass, and that Heuchera 'Plum Pudding,' which makes an appearance in every border and many of Endsley's potted plantings.

The color play continues through the garden gate at the side of the house, where Endsley has ensconced white-flowering plants. She deliberately left an empty spot wide enough for a koi pond, installed four years ago when her daughter was old enough for the 4½-foot-deep pond to be safely added. Only white flowers are grown here so nothing competes with the glowing gold of the 11 koi that laze in the glassy water and loop beneath the rushing waterfall. Glaucous needled Picea abies sets the pale tone for foliage, complemented by white-flowering azaleas, muscari and pulmonaria. The fence and gate are draped in lacy-white climbing hydrangea. A weeping blue Atlas cedar is squeezed into the sunniest spot. "I'm enamored with dwarf conifers," says Endsley. "All you have to do is be patient, they don't need anything else."
 

	Endsley's garden is distinguished by a careful selection of trees; in the shady front border Himalayan birch shade the near-black foliage of Cimicifuga simplex 'Brunette,' yellow daylilies and the magenta flower heads of Spirea 'Magic Carpet,' backed by the yellow rose 'Graham Thomas.'

The back garden is sheltered by a nature preserve of hefty cedars and big-leaf maples. Endsley has added birdhouses and a spreading Cornus kousa to soften the transition between cultivated garden and forested woodland. The patio behind the house holds groupings of containers.

As Endsley's passion for gardening has grown, she's fed her interest by participating in the Alderwood Garden Club and serving on the boards of the Northwest Perennial Alliance and Arboretum Foundation. She opens her garden for fund-raisers and tours, and spends hundreds of hours every year visiting gardens and compiling the Open Days Directory for the NPA.

Ten years down the garden path, Endsley is remodeling her garden once again. The plan is to remove overgrown evergreens to create space and sun for a cutting garden. The major project is to rip out fussy perennials, replacing them with small shrubs such as spireas, caryopteris and yet a few more dwarf conifers. Whatever changes Endsley instigates, it is certain that her colorful, layered and intricately planted garden will continue to stand out as an oasis of seasonal change among the groomed lawns of her neighborhood.

Tour Mill Creek gardens

Janet Endsley's garden will be open to the public for the Mill Creek Garden Club Tour, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. July 17. To get a reservation form, contact the club, c/o Sharon Mulhall, 16212 24th Drive S.E., Mill Creek, WA 98012 or e-mail sgmwilcox@comcast.net.