Moose Ridge garden has kept its atmosphere of tranquility despite division into distinct rooms, perhaps because of its vast scale, plenty of room to wander about and the carefully preserved feeling of "big sky."

	Dominique Emerson is a plant collector specializing in unusual trees and shrubs, such as the cinnamon-trunked, paperbark maple (Acer griseum). The birdbath is surrounded by a froth of the late summer, blue-blooming shrub Caryopteris x clandonensis.

They began by carving trails through the trees, then building the barn in 1992 while contemplating where to put the house. Emerson started right in, buying plants at half-off sales in autumn, planning to propagate them to fill the empty land. "When you're gardening in the large, you need to start with trees and shrubs," she says with the voice of experience. "I took classes at Heronswood Nursery (in Kingston), learned to propagate, and studied English landscape gardens."
 

A formal pond next to the house defines the shape of the patio while adding a crisp edge to the naturalistic borders around it.

Where to start carving gardens out of so vast a space? The couple first planted an orchard hedged with rugosa roses, then built a raised rock garden to showcase smaller versions of Emerson's beloved trees and shrubs. They were inspired by nearby Frogwell, a garden designed by the late Holly Turner; they could relate to the scale of the property clothed in choice and plentiful trees.
 

Robinia pseudoacacia 'Twisty Baby,' which grows to 8 feet tall with crooked stems and curly foliage, is one of Emerson's favorite contorted plants.

The challenge was choosing where to cultivate and what to leave naturalistic. They wanted to save the plentiful elderberries and to garden as little as possible at the margins. Before pouring the foundation for their new home, the couple dug out and root-pruned more than 200 huckleberries, moving them to a holding area for later replanting. Once the house was built, they concentrated on blending it into the garden. Raised concrete beds and a formal pond create a smooth transition from house to patios and the greater landscape. The beds around the house act as heat sinks where salvias and herbs flourish, and tomatoes seed themselves.

Just five years after completion, the house is coated in plants such as towering cardoons that love all the heat. Garden designer Terry Welch, who consulted on the garden early in its development, suggested mounds to separate the more detailed planting areas around the house from the wilder areas. Now a ceanothus hedge skirts the patio wall, stopping the eye and blooming bright blue in May. Barberries, smoke bushes, dark phormiums and ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius 'Diabolo') are planted close to the house to play off its berry-colored trim. Mixed with the purple-foliaged plants are fantastically twisted plants such as hawthorns and mulberries, which Emerson especially admires.
 

Robinia pseudoacacia 'Twisty Baby,' which grows to 8 feet tall with crooked stems and curly foliage, is one of Emerson's favorite contorted plants.

Wagner and Emerson work as a team. He concentrates on creating separate spaces while contemplating the kind of questions that rarely trouble an urban gardener, such as, "What is a meadow versus a pasture?" She, while trying to figure out what he means, works to develop graceful transitions between the garden rooms.

The garden stretches away from the house in a series of distinct rooms, reached by crossing lawns, skirting borders or wandering along paths. Allées of deciduous trees such as katsura, Zelkova serrat and even alder make an event out of moving from one part of the garden to another, as do design elements such as an arch of hornbeams.
 

	Eight acres of deer fencing allow sumptuous perennial borders to grow unscathed, as in this planting of Acanthus mollis, phormium, sedum and clumps of silvery artemisia.

The desire for an enclosed area led to a formal, fenced Japanese garden, complete with double koi pond, waterfalls, bridge and teahouse. A stand of dawn redwood shelters a stone lookout furnished with wooden rockers. There are woodland trails lined in native plants, perennial borders and a walkway planted in a tapestry of thyme. Then there's the Texas garden, which Emerson describes as "the story of my childhood." A red star atop a metal pole, pines, driftwood, stumps, junipers, cistus, crape myrtles and a pile of rocks excavated on the property form this quirky homage to her past. Surrounding a hot tub off the bedroom pavilion is a white garden filled with pale narcissus that bloom beneath the white birches in spring, followed by white stock and lilies in summer. Still to come is a gaming field and more touches of art and sculpture.

And what about maintaining such a large, complex garden? The couple, both computer scientists by training, installed a drip system with 48 zones. They stick to the idea of "gardening in the large," avoiding fussy plantings and concentrating on trees and shrubs. They cut down on work by installing new plants in the autumn to be watered in by rainfall, bark everything to keep down the weeds and make 40 yards of compost every year to improve the soil. While she started out studying propagation, Emerson is turning her sights toward mastering the shears. "As plants grow larger," she says with a sigh, "the whole next step is learning pruning."

Valerie Easton is a Seattle free-lance writer. Her e-mail address is valeaston@comcast.net. Jacqueline Koch is a writer and photographer living on Whidbey Island.