An Artist's Gardens
Beneath a giant cherry tree, Curtis Steiner curates an eye-opening landscape layered with seasonal moment, design details—and challenges.
Curtis Steiner is an artist and a curator of immersive experiences, whether the space is the jewel-box interior of his former retail store in Ballard, or a well-traveled botanist’s fantasy of a cocktail lounge that is Deep Dive, the bar tucked beneath The Spheres in downtown Seattle.
Steiner’s personal garden, an intimate green space layered with botanical novelties and exquisite details, is no exception. Located west of Greenlake, the landscape is tucked beneath the enormous canopy of an ancient cherry tree. “Really, I purchased the tree, the house came with it,” he quips.
While most of us would shy from garden making under such challenging conditions, Steiner is no stranger to “impossible sites.” That’s how he describes an earlier garden he once tended on a steep slope shaded by big leaf maples. The resulting shade garden was an homage to green with very few flowers. “It was kind of unusual, but I decided I wanted just green flowers,” Steiner recalls.
Steiner came to gardening and designing gardens while living in Vancouver B.C. when he met a garden architect with a beautiful rooftop garden. As his circle of gardening friends grew, so did his fascination with gardening. “I’m kind of insatiable,” he tells me. “A garden is never finished — I’m always being challenged. I like that.”
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