I’ve wanted to visit the Seattle garden of Gillian Mathews, former owner of Ravenna Gardens, since reading about it at Danger Garden and in the Seattle Times. Designed by Richard Hartlage of Land Morphology (whose personal garden I recently visited), its modern style, lush plantings, and original art really spoke to me. So before heading to Seattle for the Puget Sound Fling, I reached out to Gillian to ask if I might visit. She kindly said yes and something along the lines of, “I won’t be there that day, but make yourself at home, and feel free to have lunch in the garden if you want.”
Did I want?? Yes, I certainly did!
On a sunny day in mid-July, I arrived at her charming bungalow in the View Ridge neighborhood with a sandwich and drink and made myself at home. Oh, but it was hard to sit and eat when a beautiful garden was begging to be explored. Get ready for ALL the pictures.
Back garden for living and dining
Let’s start the tour in the back garden, where I went searching for a dining spot. You enter from a narrow side path into an open space paved with dark gray gravel. Four steps up, a dining patio beckons under a crisscrossing steel arbor. A gabion wall of slate-gray stone retains the slope, from which a scupper pours water into a metal trough. A trio of wire spheres makes an airy sculptural statement without cluttering the openness of the space.
I read in the Seattle Times that this is an old sheep trough from England. Floating glass spheres add a dash of orange — an appetizer for the orange chairs on the dining patio.
Let’s head up the steel-and-gravel steps, past a scrim of tall grass…
…and onto the dining patio, laid out on a diagonal with the house. Under the bold, minimalist lines of the metal arbor, low gabion walls enclose a dining table with orange chairs. An oversized lantern isn’t wired with electricity but can be illuminated with a candle.
Boxwood standards add lollipop shapes, underplanted with red flowers and Angel Wings senecio.
Orange flowers echo the orange chairs and rusty steel arbor.
Beyond, a row of stock-tank planters offers space for a cutting garden, with a couple of Adirondack chairs tucked back there for relaxing.
Behind the stock tanks, another retaining wall holds the slope, with shade-loving plants filling the uphill bed.
Apricot strawflower
Cornflowers
Heading back down the steps, you see a fern table in a shady spot against the house — very Pacific Northwest.
These ferns are planted in a mound of growing medium held together with stones and branches on a metal table. They are green and thriving in the middle of July. All I can say is, a Seattle summer is far, far different from an Austin summer.
While examining the fern table, I noticed a footed magnifying glass perched atop a small column.
It invites you to lean in for a much closer look — a charming touch.
Next to the fern table, concrete and metal pipes are repurposed as planters and a perch for a wire sphere.
There is a spirit in the woods, reads a terracotta plaque of a ghostly face and moths.
Terracotta fruit in a wavy metal dish. Gillian’s art is exquisite.
A few steps lead up to a deck along the back of the house, from which you can see the dining patio and hear the trough fountain. A garden bed and deck planters offer separation between garden rooms, plus plentiful texture and color.
A big beaked yucca is the star, with purple eucomis and other interesting plants as supporting players.
A mesh chair offers nearly invisible seating.
There’s another table here too, under the graceful branches of a red Japanese maple.
Succulent planter on the table
Gillian’s deck and a ground-level patio are completely embraced by potted plants. You’re immersed in the garden even when sitting here.
The deck and patio function as extra living space for the small house, with doors opening directly onto them.
One more angle
A metal chest displays a collection of terracotta potted plants.
On the wall, an old crib mattress bedspring provides a creative way to display tillandsias.
On this bright noonday visit, it was nice to step into the shade of the arbor-enclosed patio.
A comfy sofa and chairs overlook a shade garden glowing yellow-green.
Succulents in a wavy bowl planter evoke an undersea coral reef.
Japanese forest grass, hosta, and other shade lovers add rounded forms along with a twiggy sphere.
Ceramic leaves stand amid real ones.
Is this a metal kiwi bird? He’s cute.
Looking back toward the deck
A crinkly fern and its shadow
Lots of potted plants. I wonder where Gillian moves all of these in the winter.
More!
Side garden
OK, let’s head out through the side-garden path. Tall steel containers along the house are planted with espaliered apple trees. Galvanized wall planters staggered on the fence bring the garden up to eye level.
Front garden
Streetside, the garden hides the house behind a tapestry of rounded shrubs, columnar evergreens, and scrim-like grasses and flowers. A generous walk widens at the street to welcome visitors.
The house sits above a retaining wall of round boulders, which was here when Gillian bought the house in 2015.
Looking up, you see an orange front door — a preview of the color to come in the back garden.
Looking lengthwise along the curbside garden — what a welcome!
Seedheads and rich foliage color
A few flowers
Verbena bonariensis
Hardy geranium
Another appealing combo
On the front porch, potted plants and a few weathered gnomes add personality.
A succulent basket and collected twigs and branches bring nature to the front door.
Like most of us who don’t live on an acreage, Gillian has neighboring houses and cars she probably doesn’t want to look at when she gazes out the window. The garden is of course a nice distraction from that.
But she also uses steel screens…
…and troughs of tall horsetail reed to hide unwelcome views.
How much nicer to look out at a wall of greenery.
Below the porch, a gravel path runs through the sunny garden…
…to a shady nook by the side fence, where a pair of Adirondacks makes an inviting hideout for two.
A star-shaped topiary in a container is an unexpected but fabulous focal point.
The garden view, enticing in every direction. Thank you, Gillian, for welcoming me into your beautiful garden even when you couldn’t be there!
For a look back at my visit to Ravenna Gardens, the boutique nursery that Gillian founded and operated for more than two decades, click here. Coming up next: my visit to the Chihuly Garden and Glass museum in Seattle.
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