The garden’s assortment of trees, shrubs, perennials and ground covers provide a long succession of blooms starting in winter and carrying on through the year. “The garden encourages inspection by always having something interesting to come out and see,” Chip Ragen says.
Landscape & Gardens
Life in Abundance
Like a lakeside Garden of Eden, the landscape of this Bellevue home serves up fruit and vegetables—and even shade for salmon—but also beauty for its human inhabitants. The garden was designed by landscape architect Chip Ragen of Ragen & Associates
BY
Lindsey Rowe
PHOTOGRAPHY
Andrew Drake


Stone in various forms provides a neutral background in the garden against which vegetation is the bright paint. Bottom right: The earthy tones of the stone lakeside retaining walls—tan, brown, rust—pick up colors of the house as well as those of the garden; the terrace granite comes from reclaimed 18th–19th-century Qing Dynasty stone in a range of colors from oatmeal to gray to salmon.
While traveling in Venice, the homeowners found some glass-and-metal cylinders and had them made into the garden sculptures that now stand outside their front door. The cylinders atop bronze-colored columns are illuminated from within. Incorporated in the Impruneta pots beside the sculptures are Angelica, Colocasia, coleus, fuchsias, begonias and impatiens. Heuchera ‘Stormy Seas’ serves as ground cover. The honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos ‘Sunburst’) at the lake’s edge was one of the trees Ragen was able to save.
The red of the Crocosmias ‘Lucifer’ and the white of the Shasta daisies (Chrysanthemum maximum, below) repeat throughout the landscape.
On a sunny August day, two schoolgirls and their friends sit by a makeshift roadside produce stand adjacent to Lake Washington, selling ripe, dusty-blue plums with taut skins. The few cars that stop are treated to professional service—plums are carefully weighed on a scale and placed in brown paper bags—as these enterprising adolescents offer up the overflow from their home’s beautiful—and bountiful—one-acre garden.

These kinds of moments are exactly what the homeowners and Chip Ragen, landscape architect and owner of Ragen & Associates, envisioned for the garden: an interactive space valued for its aesthetic qualities as well as its ability to grow fruit, vegetables and herbs.

Ragen had built a garden for the family of four at their previous Clyde Hill home. When the couple bought this Bellevue lot in 1999 to build a new house, they called on him again. Ragen first made sure the garden design preserved the existing waterfront trees—a grand western red cedar (Thuja plicata), gnarled weeping willow (Salix babylonica) and lacy honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos)—which offer privacy from busy lake traffic. Saving the willow was a significant victory, as the former owners of the property had topped the tree, and the new owners assumed it would require removal. Ragen, however, loves what he calls “character trees” and insisted on saving it. “He knew that with some proper pruning and care, it would be a stunning piece,” the homeowner says.

The shoreline posed another challenge. Environmental restrictions required that only riparian flora and native plant materials be used within 12 feet of the lake to encourage salmon habitat. Ragen again turned obstacle into opportunity; he planted small trees such as pine and sumac that now cantilever over the water, creating dappled shade for migrating fish.

The homeowners requested a visually soothing garden with a nontraditional appearance. “I like a soft texture that looks like it happened to grow that way,” the wife says. Ragen used grasses to achieve that softness, and he organized the plantings to match the strong, less-is-more contemporary architecture of the house, designed by architect John Fleming.

“Some of the plantings near the house are very simple, so that when you are viewing the house from the garden, the plants aren’t overly complicated in composition,” Ragen explains. “The more complicated compositions are seen from inside the house looking out.” Even on the bleakest winter day, the family can view something flowering through the windows. “It’s so nice to look out and say, ‘Wow, there’s a little spot of color out there,” the wife says.

A father himself, Ragen values the importance of helping children nurture their curiosity about nature. “One of the best ways to do it is to engage them in vegetable and fruit gardening,” he says. In addition to the Italian plum tree that stocked the girls’ roadside stand, Ragen planted blueberry plants, raspberry vines, a fig tree, apple trees, a pear and a lemon tree—all good for picking.

Each year, the girls choose additional specimens to plant and harvest, such as pea pods, spinach, arugula, strawberries and zucchini. This ritual has nourished their botanical education beyond simple observation of plant growth. Now, when the youngest makes dinner for the family, she raids the herb bed for sprigs of parsley or spikes of chives to artistically plate her dishes. This year, the wife had so many zucchinis that she made loaves of zucchini bread for her neighbors.

“The entire family thoroughly enjoys playing and working in the fruit and vegetable garden, enjoying its bounty and sharing what they can’t consume,” Ragen says.

Even though the garden was finished only recently, in 2005, the effect is of a well-established garden, bursting forth with growth year-round.

Design Details

Landscape Architect
Chip Ragen, Ragen & Associates,  517 E. Pike St., (206) 329-4737

Architects
Architects John Fleming, (now with Callison Architects, 206-623-4646) and Andrew Borges, Rohleder Borges Architecture, 1201 First Ave. S., Ste. 310, (206) 464-7997.