Creating a Living Tapestry of Flowers, Colors, and Texture
Late summer brings a special brilliance to this home in Seattle's Washington Park hillside neighborhood. While only a year old, plantings in this botanic-level design have filled in with astonishing vigor, weaving together layers of texture, color, and form. Every view reveals a new combination of hues, textures, and subtle contrasts.
Corrugated steel planters retain soil for large shrubs and small trees, including Japanese Stewartia, Buttercup Winterhazel, and ‘Natchez’ Crape Myrtles. Tall ‘Honorine Jobert’ anenomes lend a soft barrier where the hillside meets the path, providing dramatic late-summer interest while screening the view of neighboring homes.
The dried Schubertii alliums are bright starbursts against the deep green foliage of the hydrangeas, hellebores, and maidenhair fern.
‘Tuff stuff Ah-ha’ hydrangeas are turning a deep mauve in late summer. These showy shrubs were vibrantly blue earlier in the season, making these eye-catching specimens wonderful additions near sitting areas.
Cascading waves of Japanese forest grass flow over a dark gray granite wall. The design preserved existing rockery walls on the hillside as a budget-conscious decision, taking advantage of the infrastructure already in place and blending it into the narrative of contrasting hues.
The owner has planted a stunning array of dahlias in raised beds, their vivid colors brightly set against the dark laurel hedge beyond.
At the top of the hillside garden, a bench faces a view to Lake Washington over a floriferous hedge of ‘Bobo’ hydrangeas. The panicles are taking on their gorgeous pale pink hue as the season progresses.
Fiery pink fuchsias mixed with chartreuse geraniums are strikingly bright against the dark metal pergola and rockery.
At the front of the property, a range of Japanese maples have been selected for a variety of colors and textures. This ‘Koto no ito’ Japanese maple stuns with bright red samaras and leaves blending from blush pink to pale green.
Throughout the property, the Owner’s love of colorfully saturated palettes is embraced with an immersive garden experience that will continue to delight throughout Seattle’s seasons, increasing in its plant-forward verdancy as it matures.