Bainbridge artists George Little and David Lewis are friends and neighbors who have advised on the garden. They designed the new brick pond and concrete gunnera-leaf fountain alongside the vegetable garden.

I first saw this waterfront garden at a patrons' preview day for the Bainbridge Island garden tour. Drinks were being served on the terrace, and a woman on stilts strutted about, shimmering in full peacock regalia. I wondered if part of the garden's elegance was due to the occasion, the refreshments, the sheen of peacock feathers. But when I visited on a quieter day, the garden was even more impressive because the view was fully revealed, water music drifted faintly through the trees and I could appreciate the subtle patterning of sun and shade.

The garden, now owned by Gary and Karla Waterman, has a long history. Dogwood and mature stands of rhododendron planted in the early decades of this century still shade the long curve of meandering driveway. Still more striking than the scale and sumptuousness of this place is the fact that neither designer R. David Adams nor the Watermans felt the need to remove all the trees or resculpt the land. Several grand old Douglas firs remain in the front garden, their sturdy bulk lending scale to the house and wide-open view of Puget Sound and the Seattle skyline. Plantings have grown up so thickly that a lavish gazebo and spacious vegetable garden, complete with its own large pond, are hidden until you follow a path through the woods to emerge into sunlight, nasturtiums, beans and squash.

A refugee goldfish from the larger pond found a haven from otters in this pot.
Perennials like this summer-blooming crocosmia brighten the garden.
By midsummer the vegetable garden's eight raised boxes are overflowing with nasturtiums, squash, potatoes and peas. Runner beans climb the artful wooden fence at the back of the garden, obscuring its diamond-shaped patterning.

Karla Waterman grew up on an acre of land in Edmonds, and although she lived in Chicago for 15 years, always missed the natural look of our Northwest landscapes and the smell of salt water. When she attended the University of Washington, she appreciated the naturalism and big trees at the Washington Park Arboretum, and now serves on its board.

The Watermans bought their island property in 1984, and lived in an old summer cottage there for several years until they decided to start from scratch on a home. They broke ground in 1986, hiring Adams to design the interiors of the house and the landscape at the same time. He put in a watering system along with a 10,000-gallon cistern. Arizona sandstone terraces were installed around the house, and tall wooden boxes built to hold vegetables in a sunny corner of the property. The contours of the garden and driveway today reflect this original design, but now the plantings are far more colorful and varied than the original rhododendrons and ferns. What began as a typical Northwest shade garden has evolved into a lively tapestry of perennials, annuals and grasses, fountains, ponds and bountiful vegetable garden.

About six years ago, Karla decided she wanted to remake the property into her own garden. "I move things around a lot," she admits, crediting the help of a year-round gardener in relocating nearly every plant except for the rhodies. Years ago in Chicago, Karla sold Mexican imports, and put flower baskets together as an accent to the furniture. When people started wanting to buy the blossom-filled baskets, she began designing them. Her experience shows in the colorful planter boxes that line the deck rails and the rings of plantings that surround the tree trunks.

"I've listened to what people have suggested, and done the design mostly myself," explains Karla. She has redone what she calls the "Three Tree Garden" several times. Clusters of stout firs are ringed with curvaceous beds full of golden oregano, hardy fuchsias, euphorbias, astilbe, coleus, lupines, blue oat grass, heuchera and lady's mantle. Lilies, daisies, dahlias and cannas border the open, sunny lawn. A boulder-sheltered hot tub has a view of the Space Needle and Mount Rainier, the wind's chill softened by a palm tree and exotically planted water pot.

On the other side of the house, at the entrance, visitors meet a sweet-faced lamb crafted by Seattle artist Betz Bernhard. The brick pathway that leads from driveway to front door was fashioned from an old wall that was on the property. Brick paths and stairs lead around the house, bordered by pulmonaria, hosta, astilbe, hydrangea and hellebores. This cool, shady route is narrow and intimate, giving not a hint of the expanse of view to come. Around the corner and out on the sweep of lawn, the panorama of water, mountains and city is glorious.

If you head downhill through the woodland rather than around the house, you'll reach an equally charming destination. The path leads to a white-curtained gazebo, and on to the vegetable garden and new brick-edged pond with a gunnera-leaf fountain created by Bainbridge landscape designers Little And Lewis. A stream on the property has been captured to flow from an upper pond down to this lower pond, where it falls from the gunnera leaf and from there recirculates through the cistern beneath the gazebo. Water lilies and cannas thrive in the pond, as do goldfish, frogs and koi. Eight raised wooden boxes hold sugar peas, potatoes, carrots, squash, radishes, cabbages and nasturtiums. Old posts have been refashioned into a new fence inspired by Karla's trip to the Getty museum in Los Angeles.

White lattice and gauzy curtains trim the gazebo above the 10,000-gallon cistern, which captures a natural stream on the property to use for watering the gardens. The new rectangular brick pond is in a sunny spot alongside the vegetable garden.

Another route around the garden leads to yet a different experience. If you're able to resist the lamb's smile and turn back toward the driveway, you can hear the muffled but steady drip of three new Little And Lewis columns hidden in a woodland glen in the island between the two drives. Previously a dense sea of salal, the island is now a pond surrounded by primroses, campanulas, hostas and baby tears. This shady little room is walled and carpeted in green. The pond was dug deep enough to protect the fish from marauding herons and raccoons, and the effect is of a tranquil hideaway. The dripping columns are topped with a cascade of creeping jenny, a birdhouse decorates the fat old stump, and a wooden bench made as a Scout project by J.D., one of Karla and Gary's three sons, provides a place to rest and gaze into the water. Deeply green, informal and half-hidden, the quiet pond and planted columns form the secret heart of this grand garden.

Valerie Easton is manager at the Miller Horticultural Library. Her e-mail address is vjeaston@aol.com. Barry Wong is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff photographer.