Creating Color & Texture in the Garden 🌲 Talk & Tour with Camille Paulsen

So welcome to our Talk & Tour today. Today we're with Camille Paulson in Seattle, Washington. Welcome Camille. Thank you so much for having me. We visited Camille's garden a couple of years ago, took some beautiful photos of her garden, and so today we're going to talk with her a little bit about, you know, how she put her garden together and some of the things that are so interesting about the garden there. I thought maybe we could start with the front yard, Camille, and kind of talk a little bit. I know you did a lot of work out there putting in a new patio because you lost a tree, and a lot of people can relate to that. So maybe you could kind of walk us through kind of what you were thinking and what came out of your planning. Yes, the front yard was actually a really large Douglas fir that we lost about seven years ago, and otherwise it was pretty much a lot of lawn, which was fine, but we wanted to make it something a little bit more interesting, a little more welcoming to both us and the neighbors. So we considered putting a patio. That was the first thing that we built. It was like a little pergola out there where the tree was, and it just made a cute little seating area that was, and we surrounded it by a little bit of a berm to create a little bit of privacy and beauty. Started planting all sorts of plants that would thrive in the full sunshine out there. So a lot of dwarf conifers and some yuccas, things like that. And then the next year we decided it would be nice to have a little bit of a water feature, and we created a pond, and we were able to have a crew build a waterfall that goes on both sides as well. So the sound of the water was just lovely. Yeah, and I think when you were, you talked about, because this part of the yard where the patio is, it's kind of near the street, right? So it was kind of key to get a little privacy in there. Exactly, I wanted to get a little bit of screening. We have wonderful neighbors, but I'd rather see trees than cars or houses, of course. But we also made it a little bit more welcoming when people drive into the neighborhood to see that landscaping. And we've had people over, of course, our friends and neighbors for a glass of wine out there. So it made a section of our garden that was sort of an afterthought before, it made it more usable, more friendly and welcoming. So we tend to be out there more. A lot of times I think people focus on the backyard, which is where the privacy and the views are, but now the front is kind of an oasis as well. Yeah, cool. And how did you build that berm? Well, when we removed a lot of the lawn, we had it flipped over, the sod flipped over to create a whole layer around, and then added more soil on top of that to build it up a little bit. I just wanted a little bit of height when everything was just kind of flat. And the rest of our property too is on slopes and terraces, so it would have looked a little odd, I think, to have everything kind of flat out front. And again, it added a little bit of immediate privacy with a low berm to have the plants on top of that. And then what kind of plant, I mean, we went from shade to sun, so what kind of plants were you thinking about there? Well, it was a learning process because I was a fairly new gardener to the Northwest, and I started taking classes and workshops and lectures and just learning what I could online to see what we've grown. Of course, everyone makes mistakes, but for the most part, I settled on everything that would thrive in the sun and also would be eventually drought tolerant, so I wouldn't have to water out there so much. So a lot of ornamental grasses, a lot of conifers, even mixing some Japanese maples. It's sort of a very Pacific Northwest look out there with just a few Mediterranean plants as well, like agafas and yuccas, things like that. Well, you have some beautiful conifers there. Oh, thank you. I am a little conifer geek, but now there's so many. I think when people think of conifers, they think of just the bigger gloomy trees that we have, which are beautiful too, but there are a lot of dwarf conifers, so many different shapes and colors and whatnot. It's so fun to create and design with them, to be honest, and it just makes it unique. I think one that really stood out to me was that real undulating one that's right next to the driveway. Now, what is that one again? It's a Picea omerica pendula brunes, which is a weeping Serbian spruce, and we found that actually in the back of a nursery had been abandoned, and it was on its side trying to grow through the hole in the bottom of the pot, and it had this odd shape because of that. It's supposed to really be straight up and then weeping, and this thing was going crazy, and we kind of took pity on it. It looked like a little Charlie Brown tree, but we thought it had a unique character to it, and it would make an interesting living sculpture, and that's really what it's turned into. Yeah, it's very cool. So, let's see. Next, we would move on. Well, you talked about the water feature, and that was really unique that you have this two-sided water feature, and I think you mentioned that when you get a view from the patio and also from the front door. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yes, it used to be just a sort of a mound there by the front entry between that and front yard, and when we decided to put a water feature in, we realized we had room for a pond, and we weren't sure if we had enough room for the height of a waterfall, and we hired a landscaper to come measure, and he came up with a great idea to actually have the flow go both directions, which we would not have thought of, and it's lovely because the larger flow goes towards the front pergola, and it makes a lovely sound, and we planted Japanese forest grass because it's still shady enough underneath the Japanese maple canopy, and then the other side is a smaller waterfall that's a very gentle sound that we can see actually from the front entry and from our dining room, and we can hear it as guests come and go, and we come and go to our front entry. It's wonderful to have the sound of water, so it worked out really well. I was able to plant shade plants on the entry side. Oh nice, yeah, and you have koi in the pond, right? Yes, we do, and we were worried about predators, of course, you know, herons and raccoons, but we had the crew dig four feet deep to make it really deep, and then like flagstone ledges that are built into the edges, and they can tuck underneath there as well, and in the summertime, we have a lot of plants that will be cover like floating hyacinths, things like that, so they've been fine. That's good. Yes, it's fun. They're like little pets out there, so that's good. So if you go back to the patio, I think we have, then you can, that's where you access the, you can access the side yard, is that correct? There's a little path? Yes, there is, and in fact, when we finished the front yard, that was, we loved how it turned out, and so that was the next step, is I realized that there was nothing but a slippery grassy slope on that side yard going down to the, and I just thought, well, it's difficult to walk on, and also when you get a passion for redesigning and landscaping, and you can transform a space, then there's really no stopping it. You kind of look at other areas of your garden and say, hey, maybe I can make this a little more interesting than it was, and we were fortunate too, when we moved in, that we had a lot of mature coniferous and Japanese maples around the property, but otherwise, it was a lot of sort of flat lawn and foundation plants, so we incorporated anything new, really did not look so new when we had the mature trees surrounding it, which was a great help. So for the grassy slippery slope, we did replace that with steps, gentle steps going down, and the side yard was just a patchy grass that wouldn't really grow, it was too shady, and a couple of foundation plants, some rhododendrons under the windows, and just the side of our house, so that's where I focused next, to see if I could bring the focus off the side of the house towards the plants, so we built up one side with a planting bed, so bring plants to the eye level, and curved the paths so you would not see everything in one glance, like where does that path go, you know, I like that kind of mystery when you go into a garden, and then we also realized we had a pretty good mountain view from that side yard that we never appreciated before, so, I'm sorry, I interrupted, that's okay, I was just going to say when I realized that we were kind of doing a little bit of an Asian influence to that side garden with the shade plants, I asked my husband if he could build just sort of a gate or something to signify the transition, and he came up with a beautiful, I planned and built a torii gate, Japanese torii gate, out of Alaskan yellow cedar, and he signed it beautifully to frame the mountain when you walked through it, so I was pretty happy with his handiwork. That's really beautiful, it is a gorgeous torii gate, that's really nice, I want to get back to that, but one thing I did forget to mention, that framing the path, that like as you start to walk that path, you have a couple of gaveons that sort of get you started on that path, and I just wondered if you could explain those real quickly, because I thought they were, first time I saw them, I was like, wow, those are really unusual, so it'd be nice to know a little bit more about those. Sure, I first saw them at a place called Old Goat Farm, which is a local farm and nursery nearby, and I just thought they're fabulous. The owner, Greg Grace, had the gaveons and he had them filled with the river rock, that's really on all of our properties, when we dig into the ground, it pops up, as I think it's part of the glacial till, so it's a great use for those kind of rocks, and he had it like decorative pillars with pots on top, ferns cascading over, and a few like that, and I just thought that sounded like a great idea, so I did buy two of the gaveon cages from him, and he actually gave me some of his rocks, and we filled them up, and they really make a nice entrance, and I usually keep two pots on either side that I replace with different annuals every year. Oh, that's great, it's a great way to mark that transition. Yeah, it does, and the other thing is that when we first filled them and put them, this is all a learning process, again, as a gardener, you'd learn about a year or so later, they started looking like leaning, you know, gaveons of pizza, you know, they just started swaying one way or the other, and they were settling, and obviously they were off, so we had to dismantle all that and put a concrete footing on both sides, then put all that, because there's so much weight, so now they stand straight, and they look pretty good. They look great. So as you're walking down the stairs along the path, then you come to the tour gate, and the beautiful view, I think you mentioned a lot of garden tours have been really awed by that, and I think that it's great, and a lot of the plants that you have along there, can you tell us a few of maybe some of your favorites that are growing along there? Well, probably on the side closest to the house is mostly shade plants. There's a lot of Solomon's seal and hostas and hardy fuchsias, but I also have some conifers mixed in, a white-tipped cryptomeria that's beautiful, a flaky bark fir that's unusual with the gorgeous bark, and then some unusual plants too, the podophyllums and beautiful ferns, and it's just a mixture of what appeals to me, and I try to sometimes do what designers do, is like the multiples, so there's a little bit more flow and evenness rather than one of everything, but I am, you know, I love plants so much that it's so tempting to just say, I've got to have this, and you know, tuck one or two in there everywhere, but it is a type of path to me that you slow down and look at the plantings around you. You don't just go from A to B. It's something to take in at every step, and on the other side, it's a lot of, again, some more conifers, Japanese maples, mahonias, morphine. Yeah, that itself is really interesting too. You've got different shapes in there and sizes, and how did you settle on that? That was a good story. In terms of the plant sizes? Oh, I'm sorry, the path itself, the stones. Oh, yes. Well, before we had a bark path, because I really like the idea of it being kind of quiet, like walking through a forest, it's very quiet and calm, but it seemed like when I looked around the rest of our garden, there was a lot of stone that was existing and some that we've added everywhere, and we wanted to kind of tie that in and continue the stone work around. So, the path turned out to be granite, and it's a mixture of dimensionals that are kind of shaped like more rectangular and square, and then we also, our stone mason went to a local stone product place called Maranacos and found a boulder, a big granite boulder, that he had them slice it into two-inch slabs. So, by using that, it's a lot of continuity. It's really the same stone in multiples all throughout the path. It all came from that same one. So, that's kind of neat, and then on the sides, you know, I wanted that look of, I love mossy rocks. There's something about them that looks aged. The more moss and lichens, the better, and I had a few of them already in our garden that we moved from other locations, but I just went around our neighborhood and started looking at people's yards one day, and it was a nice day, and I just, when I saw a pretty rock that I liked, I rang the doorbell or knocked on the door, and I met a lot of great neighbors that way, and I just asked to see if I could buy their rocks out of their yard, and every one of them said, no, you'd be glad to have it for your garden, and they were just very lovely and generous, and they were excited about the fact that I was putting in a sort of an Asian-themed garden, and that would all tie in and make it look older and more established, so I did write my thank you notes and gave them little orchids in return, but I have a lot of their stones now. Every time I walk through, I think of them, so it's, it worked out really well. They can come visit them sometimes, too. That's right. I told them, open invitation to come see my garden and come through and see where their stones found a new home. Let's see, okay, so once you take the path, you walk down that path, then you're in the backyard, is that right? You have a view of the backyard, and what will we see? Yes, the path keeps going around through all the plantings that, like I said, have more of a, it's a shade garden, a very peaceful kind of shade garden, and then it brings you underneath the deck, and then you're in the backyard. There's a pool in the foreground. If you go up on the deck, then you have an overview of the mountain and valley view, as well as the rest of the garden, so that's a nice place to take it all in, as well, and so if you walk through the pool, then you'll get to what we call our woodland pond area in the very back. There is a waterfall feature coming down the slope, natural slope, into the pond, and very shallow, and a large boulder in the center that was there, and it's just, it's a really pretty place to just, not that a gardener ever relaxes in their own garden, but I do have places to sit there, and sometimes we'll, you know, I'll go for morning coffee. I'm rarely up for the sunrise, but it is really pretty, or just sit out there in the afternoon to take it in, but the waterfall sound is also very nice. And that's down at the bottom of the slope, right past the pool, and kind of your proper living area, right? Yeah, that's correct, it is. So then you go back up the slope, and then you have the pool, and you have some containers there, and... Right, the pool is on basically the same level as the pond in the back, and I do have a lot of cobalt blue containers throughout the pool area, just to kind of tie that into the tile in the pool, and it's kind of fun because I get to plant again, because I love plants so much, but I get to switch those out in the summer, and a lot of tropicals. I overwinter them every year inside our greenhouse, and our atrium, and our house, and pretty much every room I can stuff a plant into in the winter, but in the summer it's kind of nice, you bring them out, large red bananas, and brugmansias, hibiscus, things like that, which are kind of fun. It gives a tropical feel, even though we're here in the Pacific Northwest, but around the pool area. And then further up towards the house, there's the shade pavilion, and that was kind of an, that was a fun story that you shared with me about how that came about. Can you share that with everyone? Right, well, when we first moved in, there was a little gazebo, it was a little Victorian gazebo that held just a couple people, so our girls used to use it for tea parties when they were little, but that kind of rotted and fell over. But we had relatives visiting once from Germany, and I remember thinking the deck was just too hot in the afternoon in the summer. Beautiful view, but it just, everyone was sweltering, so we kept on pulling our lawn chairs over in that far corner on the lawn underneath the Doug Fir tree. And so when we decided we wanted to build somewhere where we could actually relax and entertain and have seating, that was the perfect spot. It was tucked in there, we tried to tuck that shade pavilion into the slope so it would look like it was always there, and we left that canopy of the Douglas Fir. And so from about noon on, the sun goes behind, and it's a wonderfully shady spot, even if it's in the 90s, it feels great. There's always a breeze going through there, so it was a good spot for it. And I think your husband helped design it, didn't he? Yes, we kept on trying to make it, again, slightly more Asian. I came up with the idea of an open bench seating all the way around to keep it clean looking, and more people could sit in there, and it's just more of an open-air pavilion rather than with furniture. So it works out, and Dirk, my husband, designed a little bit of the back also screen, and we had a local artist do a couple little stained glass on the very back with a bamboo motif. Again, it's sort of continuing a little bit of the Asian theme, but it's, yeah, so it's just pretty woodwork and a very warm feeling, you know, not ostentatious or anything. It just feels natural, like it blends into the background and like it's always been there. And then there's a greenhouse. You have a greenhouse, I think, for all those tropicals in the winter. Yes, I went to the Northwest Garden and Flower Show one year, and there was a display by the Northwest Green Panels. They're based in Oregon, and I love some of their designs. So they are the ones who built the greenhouse, and it's sort of attached to our back wall of our garage, and it's really nice. I could start plants. I want to try to start growing vegetables in there, but also I start dahlias earlier and pot them up before I put them in the garden. And in the winter, yes, it's very fragrant with citrus and all sorts of plants in there, and I try to leave a spot for just at least one chair. I go in there and talk to my plants and whatnot, but it's actually a very well-used greenhouse. Yeah, that's great. And it's right there by that raised bed. I think you mentioned there were a lot of tropicals that you grow there. Exactly. I call it, well, friends of mine also call it the great plant migration every spring and fall. So you bring out the plants in the spring to plant them when the danger of frost has passed, and it fills up that tropical bed. There's always a palm tree there. There are some tetrapanics, big tropical leaves, Japanese Aurelia, the Fatsia japonica. There's a lot of plants that are year-round and evergreen, some of them are, but then I supplement them with the butylons for color and like I said, mandevillas, things like that. And instead of buying new ones every year, if they overwinter them, if you have the room, it makes a lot of sense. And then you can have bigger, larger plants, and it just gets this wow. It goes from like sort of flat dirt in there to like boom, instant tropics. So like when you overwinter the bananas, do you just leave them in a pot or do you dig the whole thing up? I dig them up. You know, I have some in pots that we just move. We have a dolly, a plant dolly. And others, I find they grow better in the ground. So it's a little more work, but I do plant them directly in the ground for the season. But they're shallow rooted, so it's pretty easy to dig them back up. A lot of people, I think, store them dry and wrap them in newspaper, keep them in a dark area, and then bring, you know, and cut them off, bring them back. I do keep them growing because I kind of like the look of the jungle in my greenhouse and the atrium in the winter. So that's, so the greenhouse is not the only, it's not the end of your yard. We can kind of make the full loop, can't we? Like if we go out and go around the other side of the yard, what, there's a, there's a lot of shade on that side too, isn't that, is that right? That's correct, which is nice because I'm able to plant ferns along the arbor walk there, and also on the bank up above, as well as hellebores, the lenten roses, so that I can see their flowers up on the bank as I walk by. So that's nice, and some ferns cascading over. But that leads to the driveway, which makes a complete loop. And for years, we just had just a regular mound. It had a few trees on it, but it wasn't that exciting. And I always thought something else should go in that mound at the very end, especially when people come over to see the garden. And one day, I was actually looking for a landscaping company down in the valley, and I was trying to find some stones, and Google Maps really took, told me to take the wrong turn, one turn early. So I ended up in that landscaping area, but with big mounds of bark and all that, and was driving, trying to figure out how to turn around and come back out, when I saw this huge log that was on the side of the road, covered with weeds and blackberry vines and bushes, but it just caught my eye, how it was amazing. It was huge, and it had a lot of frozen burls and moss, so much character. And I just couldn't stop thinking about that log. And my daughters teased me, like, why I was so focused on it. But I did go visit it a few more times, and then I was able to negotiate with the owner of that landscaping company. He had, I think he wanted to get rid of it. So he's like, he couldn't figure out why I wanted this big log. But when he brought it here and got it in place, and then he took a walk around, and I, he saw the ferns I had waiting to go to plant in it. And I think he, he did understand that it is really like a natural sculpture now in my garden, and similar to the fern stumperies that a lot of people have. I just didn't have room for that with all the upturned stumps planted, but I had room for my log. Yeah, it's a massive log, isn't it? You said it was, how much did it weigh? He thought when it was dry that summer, we had to wait until it dried out a little bit, it was about 3,500 pounds. Wow. So it took some equipment, but it was extremely reasonable. And I think everyone was happy. The log is there, I've planted it with ferns and hostas and fun things, and it's just a very natural element now to the garden. So I'm thrilled to have it. I know, some of these things, they just take time, and if you can find just the right piece, it's... Exactly. And I wish I knew, I think it's a big leaf maple, based on some of the walks I've taken in parks and woods around here. But you wonder what the story was, how it got there, or what it could say, if it could talk, you know? Yeah. Well, you certainly have plenty of trees on your property that you'd have a lot of stories. Yeah, that's true. I do love them, and it gives that whole Northwest feel. I think just the hotter we get in our summers too, the more important is to have a little bit of a tree canopy, you know, for shade. And they're just so beautiful. And then if you have a mix of Japanese maples or any kind of citrus trees, there's gorgeous ones, but keep some evergreen on the property. Not just trees, but shrubs, everything like that. It's just, you're not going to ever look at bare planting beds, garden beds in the winter. You'll always have something to look at, and even the deciduous trees have that beautiful structure. So I think gardens should be enjoyed year-round, even if you're in your house looking out, like at the tree behind me, you know? It's just, it's nice to bring nature in and enjoy that. So I try to plant for four seasons. Yeah, well, I think you, yeah, you can certainly have done that. Thank you. So that brings us back to where we started in the front yard, and thank you so much for having us. We appreciated being able to come and see the garden and share it with our readers. It's a beautiful place. Thank you so much. I feel honored to have my garden selected to be featured in your magazine. I look forward to seeing it, and thank you again for the interview. I appreciate that. Oh gosh, no problem. Thanks again.