HEMLOCKS AND firs are the most impressive inhabitants of Jim and Paula Umbeck's woodland garden, but rocks are what hold it together.

The Umbecks have rolled, cajoled and levered them into walls, a streambed and paths to form the backbone of their extensive shade garden, which placed second in the 12th annual Pacific Northwest Competition for Home Gardeners. The couple's prize is round-trip airfare and admission for two to the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show next month, with two nights' lodging, as well as a $100 cash prize awarded earlier for placing among the top contenders.

This naturalistic composition on the shore of Lake Marcel incorporates native ferns and more than 100 different hostas, rhododendrons and mosses. Except for large hemlocks and Douglas fir, vegetation here is courtesy of the Umbecks. Jim recently carved the cedar totem pole, which will weather to gray.

Their idyllic garden starts out steep and slopes to a level area along the shore of Lake Marcel, northeast of Carnation. Though there are houses on each side, much of the garden looks like a fantasy campsite, complete with a running stream and a hammock strung between trees. Nearby are Northwest forest staples, including vine maples, trilliums, mounds of salal and great swaths of deer fern, sword fern, wild ginger, bunchberry and mahonia. Filling in are more exotic flora, such as Asiatic lilies, epimedium, giant-leafed Himalayan arisaema, winter cyclamen and a vast collection of hostas.

Flowers are not key elements in the Umbeck garden, although a few colorful splashes from annuals on the house deck are welcome counterpoints to the woodland plants that set the overall tone.

The garden's second unifying element is moss, and there's plenty of it. Moss is attractive and appropriate for the setting, helps cut down on maintenance and holds moisture in the otherwise fast-draining terrain. It's also slippery; there are everyday gardening glissades. Walkers here are alert and agile when negotiating the steepest pathways.

A winding footpath leads from a level parking area down through a mixed-woodland garden to the front door of the house. Because most of the available sunlight filters through to this spot, Paula mounded compost and soil into a berm and planted a mixed perennial garden for flowers near the entry.

The rest of the garden, along both sides of the house and down to the lake, is so in sync with its setting that it's easy to assume it always looked this way. Not so. In 1990, when the Umbecks hired Bellevue architect Jeffrey Taylor to design their house, the lot was a tangle of ivy, blackberries, brush and downed trees.

The gardeners designed and dug their own 50-foot stream, then consulted with a landscaping expert to learn how to add waterfalls. Alpine hemlocks, moss, ferns and hostas soften the edges.


Arisaema (jack-in-the-pulpit) is placed throughout this shade garden. A. speciosum, a native of Asia, is an attention-getter with an especially large leaf.

The couple cleared their way down to the lake, added a building site 65 feet from the water and began to play with the available materials — meaning rocks. Paula pushed in a few stone steps to the parking area and thought that was kind of fun. They added a cobblestone path. Later, they imported two- and three-man rocks to use for more stable stairways and terraces.

After all, they were atop glacial remnants, and rocks went with the house style — an elegant, rustic-around-the-edges dwelling that incorporated recycled barn beams, wide-plank flooring and a cedar exterior. The bottom floor was even constructed around a boulder — a 7,500-pound chunk of mountain granite that Jim rescued from a quarry and had delivered to what would eventually be his living room.

He was born in Williamsburg, Va. — a part of the country, he will remind you, where people know a little something about building with stone.

Jim has taught fifth grade at Somerset Elementary for 32 years and manages a recreation club during summer months. Recently, pupils gave him two Alaskan cedars to honor his devotion to teaching.

"I love a challenge. I love seeing a giant rock at the top of the driveway and thinking, 'There is a way.' There's a feeling of accomplishment when you stand that sucker up and add some moss. That's a good feeling."

Parts of this property are so steep that when the Umbecks moved in they used ropes to belay a refrigerator down a bank and into the house. Every plant — rhododendrons, the hostas and the rest — was carried down the hill.

Corsican mint is on the march, but moss is still a key component in this garden. As the groundcover of choice, it adds color and texture, and helps conserve moisture in the rocky soil. You don't mow, blow or fertilize it. "We don't have a problem with weeds," Jim says.

The couple added an extremely realistic stream that runs 50 feet or so with a 20-foot rise along the south side of the property. They first consulted with Jeff McClelland, of Skagit Landscaping in Mount Vernon, to learn the mechanical aspects of the project. They then laid it out, dug ditches, added a sump pump and planted alpine hemlocks and stream-side plants.

At one point, they collected an enormous pile of rich compost from a neighbor's sod roof. The new owner wanted a traditional roof and let the Umbecks have "the most incredible soil you ever saw," Jim recalls. A conveyor belt moved a mountain of humus to the property line, and the couple happily used wheelbarrows to move it 50 yards, through mud. Aside from this bonus, they probably added another 100 yards of soil to their property, one wheelbarrow or bucket at a time.

Jim put a red cedar log on two sawhorses, picked up carving tools and copied elements from different totem poles by looking at the pictures. This was his first attempt at carving. He stood it up in a patch of sword ferns for the fun of it.

Paula, who is employed by Eddie Bauer, designed the garden without making formal drawings. It's a space they especially appreciate in the wintertime, when stone and ferns turn to sculpture.

"I was never really a garden person," Paula says. "But now, my daughter calls us extreme gardeners. We're out every day, except on weekends."

There have been trying occasions. Once, a runaway rock destroyed a neighbor's 30-foot ladder. And about five years ago, seven large locust trees came crashing down in a storm. It took several loads of topsoil to repair craters along the shore.

Worst of all, moving one rock put Jim in the hospital for a week. "I tore the bicep muscle off my left arm."

So far as the contest is concerned, "We entered on a whim," Jim says. "We thought the judges would give us advice or tips. We never thought of this as a garden. A garden has flowers."

Jim, who is 63, obviously has earned the right to give advice of his own. Here are some parting words of wisdom:

"Four parts water, one part buttermilk makes good moss starter."

"There is nothing like a garden to make you humble."

"You don't stand in front of a rolling rock."

Dean Stahl is a Seattle free-lance writer. Mike Siegel is a Seattle Times staff photographer.