splendidly messy

A staid garden gets interesting with color, texture and unruly grass

Vines and potted annuals add color and interest to the columns and expanses of brick terrace along the back of the house.

It's rare that a garden designer is asked to mess up a garden. But when Kevin Harvey began gardening for Merrill Wright about five years ago, his charge was to soften her lakeside property, loosen it up, introduce some wildness. "I loved the site more than the house," says Wright of the imposing home she describes as French formal mixed with international style. The white pillars, expanses of glass and stretches of terrace have even been described as Hollywood Regency.

"Merrill wants the lawn long and a little messy, and the borders full and colorful," says Harvey of the garden that used to feel uncomfortably severe with its junipers and formal rose beds.

Kevin Harvey dealt with the scale of the house and garden by planting generous swathes of shrubs and perennials. Here, crimson flag flowers beneath hydrangeas shaded by pruned-up old rhododendrons.

Another problem was the palette of pink and white, which was far too sweet for someone who doesn't like pastels. Also, as with many older Seattle gardens, spring-flowering trees and shrubs put on a show, but later on in the summer there wasn't much color or interest. Wright wanted the garden to bloom into summer and autumn, and she wanted to get rid of all that pink. She asked for a livened-up entrance, late-summer flowers, vines to envelop the house and help alleviate the formality. And that is what she got.

The entry was a problem because it's on the street, where pavement runs the length of the house. The effect was austere, and clipped boxwoods and sickly espaliered fruit trees only made it worse. Harvey removed some of the plantings and added hefty pots stuffed with flamboyant Canna glauca. The canna's smooth, paddle-shaped leaves are a fine contrast to the spiny, shrubby little lonicera planted at their base. Harvey also filled cream-colored lattice boxes with coral bark maples underplanted with fluffy skirts of Stipa tenuissima. The brick of the entry is played up with red nicotiana and geraniums. "The intention is as much color as possible," Harvey says.

Merrill Wright bought her house for the waterfront site rather than its formal "Hollywood Regency" style, which has been effectively softened by generous plantings and a lawn kept long and tousled.

The recessed brick of the entry creates a greenhouse effect, allowing annuals such as lantanas and mimulus to bloom early and bounteously, and even winter over in the protected warmth. Climbing hydrangeas add their tracery and flowers to the walls of the house, with glossy sarcococca for winter leaf and fragrance. Pots of sedums, evergreen nandina and plenty of leathery bergenia add to the year-round display.

It's when you walk around the house to the water side of the property that you realize the age of the garden. Trunks of mature birch trees shade your passage beneath rhododendrons pruned up to resemble trees. In the back garden, you're hit by the full effect of Harvey's foray into color and texture. Where the rock

The recessed brick entry creates a greenhouse effect where coleus, geraniums, lantana and nicotiana bloom abundantly and even overwinter.

walls below the back terrace used to be buried beneath pink roses and azaleas, the beds now glow hot orange-red with crimson flag mixed with the bottle-brush blooms of pennisetum. Ebony-leafed snakeroot throws up wands of fragrant white flowers. Dahlias, sedums, roses and asters now grow around and between the mossy rocks. The vibrant shades of the flowers contrast theatrically with the blue of the lake and green of the lawn.

Much of the back garden is grass, which is pleasingly tousled and filled with clover because Wright doesn't want to use a weed-and-feed product so near the water. The effect is the antithesis of golf-course perfect. "It looks like a messy patchwork, and I like it," she says of the naturalistic, organic lawn.

By summer's end, Joe Pyweed (Eupatorium maculatum) has grown tall enough to frame the view of the lake, its ruddy flower heads bowing gently toward the bridge.

Across the lawn from the house, a thickly planted border creates an effective foreground to the wide-open water view. The roses, perennials and grasses growing between lawn and lake thrive in the windy, dry, hot and exposed conditions. Here Wright has her late-summer and autumn-blooming garden.

The new plantings, pots and vines effectively blur and soften the generous if severe proportions of the house. "Kevin has added so much," says Wright, "he's so good at mixtures of color and texture." And the garden is rid of pastels, for now, anyway.

"Merrill does love hot colors," says Harvey, "but she seems to be softening a bit on the pinks."

Extending color in the border
Hardy fuchsias bloom in the borders and containers to keep the garden colorful well into autumn.		• Bristly little dark-leaved Aster lateriflorus 'Prince,' Sedum 'Autumn Joy' and Phygelius x rectus 'Salmon Leap' flower into October. • The hardy geranium 'Anne Thomson' weaves everything together. More heat-tolerant than the better known wanderer 'Ann Folkard,' this geranium blooms long and hard, its golden foliage a fine contrast to its purple flowers. • Silvery teucriums offer some cooling effect on the fuchsia-colored Rosa 'Othello' and the lipstick-red Rosa 'Taboo.' • The red twig dogwood Cornus alba 'Elegantissima' has green-and-white leaves in summer. In winter after the leaves have fallen, the dogwood's ruby stems brighten gray winter days.

Brightening the terraces
• Crimson flag (Schizostylis coccinea) is mixed with pennisetum. • Ebony-leafed snakeroot (Cimicifuga simplex 'Brunette') has wands of fragrant white flowers. • Dahlias, sedums, roses and asters keep the colorful show going among the terrace rocks. Crimson flag are long-blooming South African perennials that range in color from palest pink to rich red. Mingling with the bottle-brush blooms of the little ornamental grass Pennisetum alopecuroides 'Hameln,' crimson flag puts on a display from July until Christmas.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle free-lance writer. Her e-mail address is valeaston@comcast.net. Mike Siegel is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff photographer.