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September 18, 2024
I’ve needed to go to the Seattle backyard of Gillian Mathews, former proprietor of Ravenna Gardens, since studying about it at Hazard Backyard and within the Seattle Instances. Designed by Richard Hartlage of Land Morphology (whose private backyard I just lately visited), its fashionable type, lush plantings, and unique artwork actually spoke to me. So earlier than heading to Seattle for the Puget Sound Fling, I reached out to Gillian to ask if I would go to. She kindly stated sure and one thing alongside the strains of, “I received’t be there that day, however make your self at house, and be happy to have lunch within the backyard if you would like.”
Did I need?? Sure, I actually did!
On a sunny day in mid-July, I arrived at her charming bungalow within the View Ridge neighborhood with a sandwich and drink and made myself at house. Oh, but it surely was laborious to take a seat and eat when a fantastic backyard was begging to be explored. Prepare for ALL the images.
Again backyard for dwelling and eating
Let’s begin the tour within the again backyard, the place I went trying to find a eating spot. You enter from a slim facet path into an open house paved with darkish grey gravel. 4 steps up, a eating patio beckons beneath a crisscrossing metal arbor. A gabion wall of slate-gray stone retains the slope, from which a scupper pours water right into a metallic trough. A trio of wire spheres makes an ethereal sculptural assertion with out cluttering the openness of the house.
I learn within the Seattle Instances that that is an outdated sheep trough from England. Floating glass spheres add a touch of orange — an appetizer for the orange chairs on the eating patio.
Let’s head up the steel-and-gravel steps, previous a scrim of tall grass…
…and onto the eating patio, laid out on a diagonal with the home. Underneath the daring, minimalist strains of the metallic arbor, low gabion partitions enclose a eating desk with orange chairs. An outsized lantern isn’t wired with electrical energy however may be illuminated with a candle.
Boxwood requirements add lollipop shapes, underplanted with purple flowers and Angel Wings senecio.
Orange flowers echo the orange chairs and rusty metal arbor.
Past, a row of stock-tank planters provides house for a reducing backyard, with a few Adirondack chairs tucked again there for stress-free.
Behind the inventory tanks, one other retaining wall holds the slope, with shade-loving vegetation filling the uphill mattress.
Apricot strawflower
Cornflowers
Heading again down the steps, you see a fern desk in a shady spot towards the home — very Pacific Northwest.
These ferns are planted in a mound of rising medium held along with stones and branches on a metallic desk. They’re inexperienced and thriving in the midst of July. All I can say is, a Seattle summer time is much, far totally different from an Austin summer time.
Whereas analyzing the fern desk, I seen a footed magnifying glass perched atop a small column.
It invitations you to lean in for a a lot nearer look — a captivating contact.
Subsequent to the fern desk, concrete and metallic pipes are repurposed as planters and a perch for a wire sphere.
There’s a spirit within the woods, reads a terracotta plaque of a ghostly face and moths.
Terracotta fruit in a wavy metallic dish. Gillian’s artwork is beautiful.
Just a few steps lead as much as a deck alongside the again of the home, from which you’ll see the eating patio and listen to the trough fountain. A backyard mattress and deck planters provide separation between backyard rooms, plus plentiful texture and colour.
An enormous beaked yucca is the star, with purple eucomis and different fascinating vegetation as supporting gamers.
A mesh chair provides almost invisible seating.
There’s one other desk right here too, beneath the swish branches of a purple Japanese maple.
Succulent planter on the desk
Gillian’s deck and a ground-level patio are utterly embraced by potted vegetation. You’re immersed within the backyard even when sitting right here.
The deck and patio operate as additional dwelling house for the small home, with doorways opening instantly onto them.
Yet another angle
A metallic chest shows a group of terracotta potted vegetation.
On the wall, an outdated crib mattress bedspring supplies a inventive strategy to show tillandsias.
On this shiny noonday go to, it was good to step into the shade of the arbor-enclosed patio.
A comfortable couch and chairs overlook a shade backyard glowing yellow-green.
Succulents in a wavy bowl planter evoke an undersea coral reef.
Japanese forest grass, hosta, and different shade lovers add rounded types together with a twiggy sphere.
Ceramic leaves stand amid actual ones.
Is that this a metallic kiwi chook? He’s cute.
Trying again towards the deck
A crinkly fern and its shadow
A number of potted vegetation. I ponder the place Gillian strikes all of those within the winter.
Extra!
Facet backyard
OK, let’s head out by way of the side-garden path. Tall metal containers alongside the home are planted with espaliered apple timber. Galvanized wall planters staggered on the fence deliver the backyard as much as eye stage.
Entrance backyard
Streetside, the backyard hides the home behind a tapestry of rounded shrubs, columnar evergreens, and scrim-like grasses and flowers. A beneficiant stroll widens on the avenue to welcome guests.
The home sits above a retaining wall of spherical boulders, which was right here when Gillian purchased the home in 2015.
Trying up, you see an orange entrance door — a preview of the colour to come back within the again backyard.
Trying lengthwise alongside the curbside backyard — what a welcome!
Seedheads and wealthy foliage colour
Just a few flowers
Verbena bonariensis
Hardy geranium
One other interesting combo
On the entrance porch, potted vegetation and some weathered gnomes add character.
A succulent basket and picked up twigs and branches deliver nature to the entrance door.
Like most of us who don’t dwell on an acreage, Gillian has neighboring homes and automobiles she in all probability doesn’t need to take a look at when she gazes out the window. The backyard is in fact a pleasant distraction from that.
However she additionally makes use of metal screens…
…and troughs of tall horsetail reed to cover unwelcome views.
How a lot nicer to look out at a wall of greenery.
Beneath the porch, a gravel path runs by way of the sunny backyard…
…to a shady nook by the facet fence, the place a pair of Adirondacks makes an inviting hideout for 2.
A star-shaped topiary in a container is an surprising however fabulous point of interest.
The backyard view, engaging in each route. Thanks, Gillian, for welcoming me into your lovely backyard even once you couldn’t be there!
For a glance again at my go to to Ravenna Gardens, the boutique nursery that Gillian based and operated for greater than twenty years, click on right here. Developing subsequent: my go to to the Chihuly Backyard and Glass museum in Seattle.
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Digging Deeper
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