Above: The back wall became an elegant waterfall backdrop for lacquered-concrete ponds and a new hot tub. Left: An eyesore concrete garage and back wall made Tim Sloane's yard less than inviting. COURTESY OF URBAN REFINEMENTS

A couple years after moving into his house on the north slope of Queen Anne Hill, Tim Sloane decided to put in a hot tub and create a low-maintenance backyard to match the look and feel of his home's sleek, urban interior.

Early plans called for placing a hot tub on top of the concrete garage at the south side of the yard. But when Rick Knight of the Seattle landscape design company Urban Refinements arrived to arrange for the tub's installation, he factored the weight of a filled hot tub with the age of the garage and the likely fallout from an overhanging cedar tree. He and partner Ariel Asturias quickly drafted a counter-proposal to make the hot tub more private, practical and accessible, while integrating it into the yard as a whole.

The biggest obstacle — an imposing concrete wall at the back — turned into a centerpiece. It was stained black and transformed into a waterfall, flowing into black-stained and lacquered concrete ponds that wrap around the northwest corner of the yard.

"I never would have thought of staining the concrete black," says Sloane, a business consultant, "and that wound up saving a lot of money, because they put in such a great base. It made everything else be real easy."

The existing slope of the ground had made the backyard almost unusable. "You couldn't really sit out there with friends before," Sloane says. "The yard was at such an angle, you'd keep falling out of the chair."

Fitness news you can use Tub time In the industry, "hot tub" refers to a wooden tub; what most people now buy is technically called a "spa." Consumers, though, still tend to call them all "hot tubs." • Web sites with helpful information about shopping for hot tubs include spahelp.com and www.angelfire.com/mi2/hottubs/. • Olympic Hot Tub's Web site (www.olympichottub.com) is not only helpful but also entertaining, with lively consumer input on whether one should hot tub in the nude. New spas include the Solana, a triangle-shaped indoor tub that fits through a standard door and into a corner and plugs into a 110-watt outlet. Popular accessories: Aromatherapy potions in Awake, Renew, Refresh and Lighten fragrances ($12.95 each), and, post-tubbing, Head 2 Toe shea-butter balms for hands, feet, stress and sleep ($12.95 each; 206-286-0700). Olympic still offers exercise equipment for hot tubs — rubber tubing with suction cups ($29.95). • Marquis Spas of Independence, Ore., carries a Watercolors light that changes hues to incorporate chromatherapy into hot tubbing. Marquis' Ultimate Escape spa has specialized jet designs, including some for carpal tunnel therapy, and an Alcove Whirlpool nook with 19 dedicated jets (800-223-6303; www.marquisspas.com).

Knight and Asturias countered with a multi-level approach. "We wanted it to be like walking into a comfortable living room instead of onto a lawn," says Asturias, "for them to be able to live from the perimeter of the property."

At ground level, Roman stones softened the impact of the black wall, replacing what had been a primary digging area for the household's two whippets, Butch and Freyja.

Left of the waterfall and up a few steps, the hot tub is sunken slightly for easy access. A Hot Springs Sovereign model, it features Olympic Hot Tub's Moto-Massage jets, which move up and down to give a full back massage.

Up more steps is the garage's rooftop deck, privacy increased with a 2-by-2 screen wall. Woodland brown Synthetic Trex decking is soft on bare feet, doesn't get slippery with moss and keeps the predominant cedar from overwhelming.

Dense planting throughout by Wendy Welch Garden Design denies the dogs dirt for digging; the evergreen groundcover Cotula 'Platt's Black' between the pavers is sturdy enough to survive their run of the yard. Welch used black bamboo in several places but yellow-and-green Phyllostachys aureosulcata spectabilis to brighten up a corner on the rooftop deck. She filled rustic pots, originally Chinese soy bowls, with dangling wire vine (Muehlenbeckia axillaris), several grasses including pheasant grass (Stipa arundinacea) and, in the 4-foot pots, 12-foot Japanese maple (Acer palmatum).

All the plants are irrigated — including those in the pots. "I did not want to do any garden work whatsoever," says Sloane.

The $60,000 project, finished last summer, transformed a bleak, barely usable backyard into an inviting outdoor living space.

"I've known people who've purchased hot tubs and never really used them," says Sloane, "but I'm out there every single day."

Urban Refinements (206-932-4676; www.urbanrefinements.com)

Wendy Welch Garden Design (wendy@w-link.net)

Molly Martin can be reached at 206-464-8243, mmartin@seattletimes.com or P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111. Barry Wong is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff photographer.

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