Into The Primordial Mist

With stagecraft skills, a magical mystery tour is made

SECOND PLACE

FLAMES SHOOT from an otherwise quiet pool in Dan Corson and Berndt Stugger's garden in Seattle's Ravenna neighborhood. Standing under giant parasols of New Zealand tree ferns, it's easy to think of swamp gas and dinosaurs.

Actually, while planning their primordial environment of ferns, mosses and carnivorous plants, Corson and Stugger realized it would look like the kind of place where volcanoes might emerge. A gas line, fittings, timer and — voila! — one did.

Such close attention to bold design, coupled with their collectors' trove of unusual and lovely plants, earned the men second prize in Pacific Northwest Gardens: A Competition for Home Gardeners. They won airfare and admission for two to the March San Francisco Flower & Garden Show, with two nights' lodging.

Among judges' enthusiastic comments: "This collectors' garden has over-the-top theatrical style without being kitschy. (The gardeners) meet a high standard."

Because their lot has both full-sun areas as well as deep shade under mature trees, Corson and Stugger created two distinct gardens around their vintage two-story home. The entry area by the sidewalk, which gets plenty of light, has raised-bed planting strips and hardy specimens such as coneflowers and Grosso lavender (Lavandula x intermedia 'Grosso'), a hybrid that produces long flower wands that spill over the walks. Nearby are 'Wickware Flame,' an orange-red heather, hardy geraniums and other low-growing ground covers. A mimosa tree's lacy foliage and frothy flowers wave overhead.

In what had been a front lawn and an RV parking pad, the gardeners planted curving bands of yellow-blooming sedum to alternate with black mondo grass — an audacious swirl that suggests a Paul Signac painting. They massed golden Japanese forest grass in the back row.

Corson and Stugger experimented with three varieties of yellow plants before they found a sedum (Sedum rupestre 'Angelina') that could emerge strong from winter and add just the right blast of color against dark grasses. An upright boulder stands above these ribbons of color as a kind of totem. Japanese blood grass and foxtail lilies hug its base.

While renting a house in Wallingford, the men drafted plans for their ideal garden long before they bought this property in 2001. The first day they walked around the 1909 Craftsman bungalow, they already knew the basic garden layout.

"Then we figured out themes. Once we had that, we started looking at plant selections," Corson says.

Along the south side of the lot, a stream seems to magically appear from a spring to tumble and bubble, pool and run to the back of the house, where the wannabe volcano roars. Corson and Stugger created their water feature to emerge from the remains of a concrete garage foundation in a natural-seeming way.

Moisture-loving plants, including rushes and coltsfoot, soften the stream bank. Vines scramble up scores of tall bamboo and screen the neighbor's house, enhancing the rain-forest effect. Bamboo poles are positioned on rebar stakes so they can be removed when the house next door needs painting.

Because this mostly tropical-theme garden begins in sun, at the street, and progresses to full shade, there are transition plants, including kumquat, Brugmansia 'Charles Grimaldi,' variegated Japanese ginger 'Dancing Crane' and a huge tetrapanax (rice-paper plant). Farther down the shady path are hardy Schefflera taiwaniana (seemingly too tender to survive outdoors, it turns heads), variegated creeping Jacob's ladder and thumb-size bog plants. The waterway is even stocked with tree frogs.

Key to the success of this microenvironment is an applied understanding of space and scale, as well as how people move through gardens.

"Arrange segues by looking for commonalities — plants with the same color, or those that evoke a similar spirit," Corson advises. "We have learned to interplant. One fades, another emerges. Curved paths bring a sense of mystery."

The men knew this garden would need a maintenance strategy. "We put in an irrigation system after the plants were installed, plus foggers and sprinklers for nine zones," Stugger says. "Tree ferns are on a zone — every two hours they get misted. The planters also are on a zone."

When not in the garden, Stugger, a native of Austria, works as a program manager for Microsoft. Corson is a professional artist who designs and builds sculpture for public spaces and devises theatrical sets.

Both were inspired by what they'd seen on vacations abroad, including a visit to Cornwall, England, where they walked gardens with enormous tree ferns that had been brought in as ship ballast in the 1850s, Corson recalls.

Hence their own tree-fern garden deep in the back of their city lot, which they overlook from a back deck. This came about last year, when they built a retaining wall, shoveled in a soil-and-mulch berm along the fence line and planted the large ferns, which they imported via Vancouver, B.C. They added a cozy seating area; Corson exercised his stagecraft skills and devised the fire feature. Now, they have summertime parties here that are theatrically lit: Candles drift in the pool, more candles hang like fishing lures from long poles overhead, the volcano flame whooshes up and ferns cast colossal shadows.

As Corson says, it's magical.

Dean Stahl is a Seattle freelance writer. Mike Siegel is a Seattle Times staff photographer.