A Model Of Scale

With paths and pots and plenty of plantings, garden rooms are comfortably united

THIRD PLACE

KATHERINE AND Jerry Heitzman have been steadily improving their five-acre Orting property since they bought it a dozen years ago. "We moved in the first of February, and my daughter wanted to be married here July 31," Katherine recalls. So, Jerry built an arbor, and Katherine planted 1,200 white flowers under towering cedar trees. "We made gorgeous bouquets from our flower garden."

That got things started.

Soon, the Heitzmans began to transform pasture and woodland into distinct settings — a courtyard garden; Mediterranean, rose, iris and woodland gardens; a sunflower garden and a cutting garden. Jerry added attractive outbuildings, including a large pottery workshop and a rustic cabin. They excavated a pond and water garden just off the back porch.

The Heitzmans' efforts earned them third prize in Pacific Northwest Gardens: A Competition for Home Gardeners — $500 cash. This was the third time they had entered the competition and their first to place in the top three. The couple found that setting a goal sharpened their focus and helped them become more skillful gardeners.

They excluded from judging the cutting garden, vegetable garden and a wooded hillside. That left much to consider, although as one preliminary judge commented, "This is a large site brought to a comfortable scale."

Another contest judge saw this garden as "a template for a mix of styles, a tutorial in massing and color placement."

That compression of the panoramic has been expressed in miniature in the large pots that accent the various gardens, each planted with an array of grasses, annuals, perennials and evergreens. These planters light up sedate parts of the woodland garden, for example, where paths wind under mature cedars and past giant splintered stumps, hostas, Asiatic lilies, rhododendrons and blue Himalayan poppies.

The nucleus in this galaxy of garden "rooms" is a light-dappled, "L"-shaped courtyard garden next to the house, which came together after the couple added a great room to their ranch-style home in 1996. A wrap-around deck followed, then the pond, and finally a varied collection of plants under nearby cedars and maples. They recently added an arbor.

This area overflows with Ligularia stenocephala, hostas, blue willows, zebra grass, fatsia, akebia vines, star magnolia, hardy fuchsias and hebes. Nearby are azaleas, a coral-bark maple, gunnera, ferns, Japanese forest grass, lace-leaf maple, variegated willow and even sedums. Together they form an exuberant collection selected for seasonal color and foliage.

One of Katherine's favorite accent trees is the diminutive blue-green boulevard cypress, which does well as a container plant. She also makes extensive use of privet honeysuckle (Lonicera pileata). Cuttings in spring yield dozens to place around borders.

For her many annual planters and baskets, Katherine frequently turns to 'Million Bells' calibracoa, for its refined, petunia-like flowers and repeat blooms. The flowers' orange tints light dark spots, and "I also look for the texture and color in evergreen shrubs and perennials," she says. "The euphorbia 'Red Martin' is an exquisite plant — it's gorgeous, with maroon stems in late winter." She likes to pair this with the shrub rose 'Hot Cocoa' and a tawny carex.

The Heitzmans are hands-on caretakers. Katherine plans, grooms, plants and replants. Jerry built an outdoor kitchen in the courtyard garden, as well as the many columns, arbors and large-scale planter stands that help distinguish one garden room from another.

A garden of this scope requires a lot of maintenance in the growing season. Jerry, a semi-retired commercial real-estate broker, allots about five hours a week to cut the grass with his riding mower. Irrigation is by hose and sprinkler. And, there's the daily grooming. "In the spring and summer, this is what I do," Katherine says.

She offers large-scale gardeners this advice: Develop a master plan, a lesson she learned belatedly. Establish the bones of the garden first — trees, decks and ponds — then prepare the soil and add smaller plants. Be ready to do things over if something doesn't work.

As much as they enjoy their home and garden, the Heitzmans would like to travel, spend more time with grandchildren and focus on making art pottery, so they plan to look for a smaller place, where they can apply what they've learned here.

"We've accomplished a lot," Jerry says. "Maybe it's time for someone with a larger family to come and enjoy this."

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