Unifying a Bainbridge Island Waterfront Landscape: A Designer’s Own Garden

Landscape designer Tish Treherne transformed her own ½-acre Bainbridge Island property from a cluttered mix of meadow and Asian modern into a cohesive, site-responsive garden that frames the waterfront and extends the home’s architecture.

Courtyard: From Chaos to Outdoor Room

Before: Overcrowded, weedy, stylistically confused.

After: Stripped to one magnificent harlequin glorybower (Clerodendrum trichotomum) for shade and fragrance. Elfin thyme (sun) and Corsican mint (shade) fill stepping-stone joints. Gold-toned crushed gravel echoes interior hues. The U-shaped house now reads as a seamless enclosure.

A cedar-trimmed galvanized fence (matching house siding) completes the fourth wall. An empty oversized urn adds sculptural weight. A long succulent planter under the eaves drains fast. Containers—unadorned, smooth forms, one or two plants each, clustered—serve as sculpture.

Waterfront Garden: Grasses, Reused Concrete & Views

Feather reed grass (Calamagrostis × acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’) and a hard-pruned willow hedge frame the beach. A stone path with Erysimum ‘Apricot Twist’ and elfin thyme replaces lawn. Existing reused-concrete retaining wall and steps were kept; a second terrace reused more concrete for continuity.

Adirondack chairs capture the view. Plant palette: Blonde Ambition blue grama, Mexican fleabane, Jerusalem sage, maiden grass, Japanese barberry ‘Rose Glow’, cardoon.

Treherne’s edit—removing, repurposing, repeating materials, and aligning plantings with architecture—turned a disjointed site into a unified retreat.