WRITTEN BY VALERIE EASTON PHOTOGRAPHED BY BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER

	The little living room, or Mexican sala, offers shelter from dreary Seattle weather, with peacock chairs, plenty of candles and salsa music on the CD player.

Hare's love of all things Mexican led her to transform a precipitous, bark-laden hillside behind her Laurelhurst bungalow into a stuccoed, tiled and luxuriantly planted outdoor fantasy land replete with potted palms, lanterns and lizards. Now an open-air kitchen, a cozy sala, generous dining room, fountains and fish ponds are arrayed up the hillside. Undeterred by the climate, Hare has created the ultimate outdoor-entertainment area.

Suspend disbelief for a moment and let go of the chilly dampness of a Northwest day. Out in Hare's back garden, behind the blue-trimmed, bronze-painted house, dinner is being served among waves of brilliantly flowering vines and annuals, and a mariachi band is tuning up. Well, maybe not the band, but there is water music from the splashing fountain, and something fragrant is sizzling on the grill. "It all started with my desire for an outdoor kitchen and turned into an odyssey," says Hare of the garden that evolved organically over years of collaboration with Mexican artisans and stone masons. "You can't believe how much earth was moved back here in little red wheelbarrows." It took a three- to four-man crew more than three years to build the hardscape; in the process, the crew mixed 70 tons of concrete by hand and carefully broomed it for texture.
 

Authentic details crafted by Mexican artisans, like this lizard door handle and wrought-iron metalwork, further the south-of-the-border fantasy life of the garden.

Despite starting out with a hill of beauty bark and an old garage covered with ivy, Hare was determined to complete the garden before her daughter was born. Now her daughter is 12, and Hare is putting the finishing touches on a garden that has changed her life. "I love it — I just put on music and get out there. It makes me feel so much better about living in Seattle," says this lover of warm weather. All that's left of the old garden is an aged cherry tree bedecked in clematis and lanterns.

It all began when Hare, tired of competing with her chef husband, Paul Michael, for use of the stove, decided to build her own kitchen outside the back door. Thus started the daily plotting over morning cups of coffee with the Mexican crew. She brought home a sink from Mexico and tiles from Santa Fe, and the men set to work. There was never a plan, just creative collaboration and a vision of an inviting place to cook and entertain. The new kitchen is paved in tile fragments set into stone and stucco. Countertops sport marigold-colored tile; Mexican blue tile fronts wooden cupboards. A professional stainless-steel grill is built into the counter and an egg-shaped smoker sits next to a pink-flowering hibiscus.
 

	Coleus, ferns and a deeply toned taro (elephant's ear) fluff up the tile fountain at the garden's lowest level.

Of her inspiration, she says, "We vacation in Mexico, and I travel to the French and Spanish Riviera for work." A representative for a clothing line, Hare travels a lot, and that's reflected in the garden. The curve of canvas arbor partly shading the top terrace was inspired by structures she'd seen in Cannes. Metalwork speaks of the Southwest, while the multicolored lanterns, chandeliers and lizard door handles are from Mexico. Lemon-yellow and French-blue linens cover pillows and decorate the tables on the terrace, where the gregarious Hare has served a sit-down dinner for 45.

High up on this top level of the garden, soaking in the scents of jasmine and honeysuckle, you expect to look out to the shores of an exotic lagoon. It's a bit surprising to look up from a candle-lit dinner and recognize the familiar lines of Husky stadium and the less-than-balmy water of Lake Washington.
 

The entire back garden grew from the idea that Hare wanted an outdoor kitchen so she didn't need to compete with her chef husband to cook inside the house. Now yellow and cobalt-blue tiles enliven the outdoor kitchen equipped with a sink carried home from Mexico and a professional-quality, stainless-steel grill.
The steep, bark-covered hill behind Milari Hare's Laurelhurst bungalow has been transformed into a Mexican party garden. Waves of hot-colored petunias, lantana and verbena mimic bougainvillea, and the dramatic foliage of castor bean and banana trees adds to the staged equatorial profusion.

This equatorial confusion is cleverly staged, for Hare deliberately submerges her guests in what she calls "a fiesta garden of fun and crazy colors," an antidote to the temperate climate she's determined to leave behind in imagination if not reality. The little sala offers sanctuary from the worst weather. Peacock chairs flank a round table; a nearby chest holds carved animals and a host of candles. The intricately beamed ceilings and elaborate sconces speak of Mission architecture, while the lively Mexican music on the CD player inspires salsa dancing.

The south-of-the-border theme is emphasized by Hare's choice of large-leafed and vibrantly colored plants. "I love big, architectural stuff," she says of the gunnera's buffet-plate-sized leaves, willowy cannas and bronze flax poking out of jade-colored pots. Silvery cardoons, rosemary and windmill palms add vertical counterpoints to the curvaceous slopes, slanting walls and wandering steps.

Paths lead off from the paved areas, overhung with a rich and wild assortment of fuchsia, coleus, castor bean (Ricinus communis), New Guinea impatiens, gingers and elephant ears (Colocasia esculenta). Roses, hardy grasses, dahlias and rudbeckia tumble together in a riotous, rule-breaking gypsy mix of color and texture. Verbenas, geraniums and petunias glow in shades of purple, orange and hot pink. Hare, who dresses in brightly printed, high-style dresses and colorful spike heels, needlessly explains, "I'm not a pastel person."

In this garden, where even the hoses are bright pink and turquoise, it is as if the plants join in to defy the realities of the climate. They redefine themselves as tropicals, for the magenta petunias sprawling across stucco steps appear happy to pose as bougainvillea to satisfy Hare's desire for hot atmospherics. Hare explains her 12-year quest for a fiesta garden by saying simply, "I didn't have any real plan but exuberance."