Prairie Style in Seattle

In 2009, this midwestern couple was looking to set roots in Seattle and found a perfect match with a 1923 Sears Kit craftsman home. With a background in the Frank Lloyd Wright landscape design style, the couple adopted a “bring-the-outside-in” philosophy. As they remodeled the rooms inside the house, they paired the view from each window with an outside “room” in the garden.

The front garden with its patch of lawn is meant to engage community, particularly the porch and seating area, built during Covid for visiting with neighbors. Signature trees are a Japanese snowbell coupled with a ‘Bloodgood’ Japanese maple. Many Northwest-friendly plants create a “fence without a fence.” Notice Japanese maiden grass, sedges, rushes, crocosmia, a poppy garden and an herb garden.

The prairie influence is evident in the back garden comprised of three rooms: living room, where part of the deck becomes a couch in the summer; dining room; and bask-in-the-sun or nap-on-the-hammock room. To prevent water run-off, downspouts are piped into a 14-foot-deep infiltration dry well and accentuated by an active rain chain. Prairie grasses and perennials fill the sun-drenched center of the garden – ‘Blonde Ambition’ grama grass, purple moor grass, coneflowers, iris, and ‘Red Bunny Tails’ fountain grass. Black-eyed Susans complement grasses and blend the food production areas with the meadow. Ferns and hellebores nestle in the pockets of shade. Japanese maples spread throughout the garden include pink petal, coral bark and full moon varieties.

The drought-resistant and pesticide- free plants survive with lots of love from the owners.