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WRITTEN BY VALERIE EASTON
PHOTOGRAPHED BY BARRY WONG |
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| In Helen Finch's back garden, the symmetry of precisely placed spheres atop rusty pagodas, rectangular planting beds and urns holding spiky cordyline are softened by loose plantings of roses, rosemary and silvery perennials. |
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ALL HELEN FINCH wanted was a garden to see from her kitchen window. A passionate cook, she coveted a few pots of fresh herbs. But it was Finch's fate to have Bailey Boushay House chaplain and garden designer Thomas Allsopp as a neighbor, and a hungry one at that. She recruited Allsopp to help plan her herb garden, and, in turn, she fed him well. Allsopp began eating dinner next door with Finch and her husband, Mike Walsh, and the happy collusion of bartering meals for design was forged. Turns out Finch and Allsopp's tastes for antique foraging, precise little garden rooms and clever classicism are as aligned as their mutual interest in cooking and dining.
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| A floating pair of doors both hides and reveals the Winged Victory statue and tea table in the secret garden. Finch repaints the doors with the seasons; Greek blue in the summertime, pumpkin in autumn and Spanish red to warm chilly winter days. |
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Finch and her husband bought their 1910 house near Green Lake in 1997, and set right in to remodel what she describes as "a cosmetic fixer." The garden was transformed as a natural extension of the house, a grouping of charming spaces in which to relax and eat. While Finch and Allsopp salvaged objects in antique and second-hand stores (see the accompanying list of sources), Walsh built their schemes. When Walsh died last year, Finch took solace in the garden. She's continued to collaborate with Allsopp, developing the garden as a respite from her nursing-management career at the University of Washington and as a magical place to entertain her granddaughter.
| A Source List for Distinctive Objects Old and New |
| Besides estate and garage sales, Helen Finch suggests the following Seattle-area businesses as places to find distinctive garden pieces:
Fremont Sunday Market, 600 N. 34th St., 206-282-5706
Second Use Building Materials, 7953 Second Ave. S., 206-763-6929
ReStore, 1440 N.W. 52nd St., 206-297-9119
The Farmhouse, Country Village, 23634 Bothell-Everett Highway S.E., 425-483-3354
Home and Garden Art, 1111 N.W. 85th St., 206-779-0668
Lucca Statuary, European Garden Ornaments Ltd., 7716 15th Ave. N.W., 206-789-8444
Found It, 6820 Roosevelt Way N.E., 206-517-5047
Piriformis Nursery, 1051 N. 35th St., 206-632-1760
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"Everything's been recycled — that's the fun," says Finch of her low-budget home and garden makeover. Former owners parked their cars in the back garden, so paving had to be pried up and dirt loosened with a pickax. "We planted things that didn't mind too much, like iceberg roses and lots of tough herbs," she says. They moved the pavers from the back garden around the house to install a fountain-centered courtyard in place of an all-too-familiar patch of lawn and cypress hedge. Now a white-painted arbor runs all the way across the front. Tall, rusty urns hold splays of pointed cordylines to frame the view of the deco City Light building across the street, and benches and little tables furnish the comfy outdoor space.
The expanded kitchen and dining-room windows look out over the little slice of Italy, which is Finch's backyard rose and herb garden. The dining room steps out to a deck that is as much a room as any inside the house, furnished with a rug, artfully draped tables and a glider cushioned in colorful fabrics. Deck and garden form a space made for tea parties and drawn-out, wine-rich dinners. "The garden gives me hours and hours of pleasure," says Finch, who now discusses plants as enthusiastically as she does recipes.
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| An elegant old fountain Finch found at a garage sale is the focal point of the new front garden. Formerly a patch of grass, the paved courtyard is now one of a series of little rooms delineated with arbors and architectural fragments. |
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| Finch won her "Banner Island" neighborhood's Golden Trowel Award, which she proudly displays as part of a front-porch vignette. |
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Allsopp designed the south-facing back garden at an angle, an extension of the formal funkiness of the house. Here, Finch grows her culinary herbs along with white roses, lavender and a medley of Mediterranean plants that grow up lushly around the little bistro tables and printed tablecloths. Lambs ears, cardoons, thyme, curry plants and artemisia create a silvery sheen that gilds the garden even when the skies are gray and cloudy.
Allsopp describes his design process simply: "You provide a piece of architecture, then use formal plantings, but don't clip them severely so they're a little loose."
The geometry of rectangular beds and the symmetry of precisely placed urns and rusty pagodas is softened by fragrant rosemary spears and mounds of roses. An outline of arbor is draped in grapes and wisteria for an added dimension and dose of ambience. The pale color of the house is elegantly set off by the gray gravel, red brick and silvery and white plantings. "I wanted happy colors for the house," says Finch of the aqua siding trimmed in cream and peach, as harmonious a combo as the vintage-fabric print that inspired the scheme.
Salvaged architectural fragments, rusted urns and wrought-iron pieces seamlessly blend the new garden with the old house. Finch dragged the metal deck railing home from an old building demolished on Lake City Way. She found most of the pots, the fountain and entry gates at garage and estate sales. An old barber shop supplied the tile for a little broken-tile patio. "I actually bought the Winged Victory from Lucca Statuary — it's the one thing we really paid for," says Finch. The as-classical-as-you-can-get torso is the focal point for the secret room at the back of the garden, reached through gates hung with stall doors recaptured and "revisioned" from a men's room. The nearby old apple tree has been pruned horizontally to form a leafy ceiling for the hideaway space.
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| A comfortably furnished deck for dining and lounging overlooks the formal back garden, set at an angle by designer Thomas Allsopp and edged in an arbor draped in grapes and wisteria. |
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Allsopp and Finch call their neighborhood "Banner Island," a plot bounded by Northeast 75th Street, Banner Way and Banner Loop. Here, 13 households form an island of creative people who share music and art parties. The neighborhood presents an annual Golden Trowel Award for most improved garden. This past year, Finch was the proud winner. As might be expected, she's elegantly displayed the shiny victory trowel as part of a grouping of old and found objects on her flowery front porch.
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| A vintage-fabric print of aqua, peach and cream inspired the color scheme for the 1910 house near Green Lake. |
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| Interior and exterior spaces are an inspired mix of the funky, the comfortable and the classic. The columns were added to the old parlor as part of an extensive remodel. |
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Valerie Easton is a Seattle free-lance writer and contributing editor for Horticulture magazine. Her e-mail address is valeaston@comcast.net. Barry Wong is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff photographer.
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