This meticulously planned and planted Queen Anne garden changes for the seasons in colorful echoes of a restored Victorian home.

Believe it or not, this sultry Victorian on Queen Anne was once a humble 1906 house clad in white vinyl siding, a “pretty” pink, yellow and blue garden skirting its foundation. Then Brian Coleman, a Seattle psychiatrist with a love for old houses, discovered a passion for historical restoration. “We added a turret, carvings of sunflowers and cast-iron griffins, along with new siding in a fall palette of deep greens, gold and burgundy,” he says. “The garden had to change!”

American poet, Phyllis McGinley, once wrote, “The trouble with gardening is that it does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession.” Coleman tells me his passion (obsession?) for tending was sown early, alongside his mother in the family’s garden in Olympia. My how it’s grown.

Today, the ornate house and garden are a celebration of color and finely crafted detail. The shallow front yard is a mere 22-feet wide with steeply sloping beds that meet up with the sidewalk on a busy residential street. Manicured box hedging and variegated holly columns provide year-round heft to the landscape along with a windmill palm, topiary forms, yew hedges and a golden hinoki cypress. Then ready, set, plant. And by plant, I mean play, adorn, and festoon the landscape with seasonal compositions that echo colorful detailing on the house.

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GROW in The Seattle Times