A Live-in Garden (continued)
On Vashon Island in Puget Sound, nursery owners Sylvia Matlock and Ross Johnson’s sleek mini-house melds seamlessly into the dramatic foliage of their woodland garden.
Photo: John Granen
As with everything this couple pursues at home and at work, the entry to their property was a creative collaboration. You approach the house by stepping onto a slab of perforated cast iron before passing through a V-shaped portal clad in corrugated zinc. “Ross put to use the elements he had at hand,” says Matlock of the salvaged slab and the commercial steel door, which create a vivid sense of entry. It was Matlock who picked the brilliant chartreuse paint for the glass-paned metal door. Along the graveled entry, Johnson built low stone walls that snake a sinuous line through the garden to retain levels and define spaces. Matlock garnished the fence with a tapestry of vines, planting hydrangeas and huge sprays of leafy ornamental rhubarb along the rockery.
When you step through the chartreuse door, you’ll find an explosion of dramatic foliage textures with rarely a flower to be seen. The sheer verdancy and variety of leaf shape and color is astonishing. A shady canopy of majestic conifers shelters the garden, the rough trunks creating a foreground to the vast view of salt water and mountains. Gravel paths and stone stairs wind through and around the half-acre garden lending this quintessentially Northwest site the intimate charm of a Japanese stroll garden.
An exciting array of unusual plants nestle up against the paths and tumble out of the owners’ large collection of pots. Matlock explains, “I like plants that are big and peculiar,” understating the exotic lushness of the cacti, euphorbias and agaves that flourish here, warmed by the proximity of Puget Sound.
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