Heidi Walther Garden Design

Based on a true story. And many exchanges with my clients and my hair stylist 😉

Here’s a thing I learned from Piet Oudolf in a masterclass: if you got the texture mix of your plant composition right, it will look good in b/w. Since you’re not just relying on colour. So sometimes I put the b/w filter on my photos as a check up.
What do you think — did I do a good job?

Tree mythology. My husband’s occupational therapist admired our huge mountain ash which she said reminded her of the stories her Scottish mother used to tell her. In Scottish-
Celtic mythology, a rowan tree is to protect the house and its inhabitants from evil spirits. Therefore you would often find it in people’s front gardens or near the house.
Our mountain ash certainly attracts all the birds. It’s quite the magnet. In terms of protecting us — I think our rowan tree needs to do a better job!
Take good care of your mountain ash. Those Celtic spirits are not to be messed with 💚

To me, gardens are nature brought to a human scale. And because people take center stage in my designs, they also take center stage in my garden photography. Here are a few of my favourites over the years 😍
Thanks to all my friends and clients who were posing proudly for me in their gardens. (Except pic #2, which was taken in , but too beautiful to leave out)

Kitchen garden goals! Today’s Quickstart consultation brought me out to Snoco to meet Lynn, who has the most idyllic retreat. She originally asked me for ideas to revive her pollinator garden, and we ended up talking about August rain, tromboncini (last pic), competitive gardening between spouses (Lynn wins IMO!), natives, grasses and much more. Thanks Lynn for the homegrown tomatoes! 🍅🍅
Book your Quickstart consultation through my website
👉 www.heidiwalther.com 👈

This is how my designs typically evolve. Auxiliary lines drawn at 90 or 45 or …degrees from all corners of the house will eventually reveal the future layout if you draw enough of them. Can you see it in pic #2? The lines also give you an indication of the proportions of the house, so the various garden areas end up neither too small nor too large. Then you draw your shapes, overlapping for a strong bond, and where they overlap is space for a possible path.
I was first introduced to this method by the legendary John Brookes. ✨ The result is very modern, mid-century modern, in look and feel.
This is Concept 2 of 2. See my previous post for Concept 1. Which one would you choose? ☺️

I don’t usually design meandering “organically” curved paths, but for this large backyard design I was inspired by all the RHS gardens I didn’t get to visit this year. There are redbrick paths branching off into narrower gravel paths, there’s a winter border and there are mixed summer borders, a small “pavilion” with a water feature, a “secret” contemplation garden and connected lawn areas for my clients’ dog to play on. Plus a secondary entertainment area with firepit.
This is Concept 1 of 2.

This is Rebekah in Seattle, who was my client for a garden consultation today. Yes, I offer my „QuickStart Your Yard“ consultations also on selected Saturdays because I know many of you are at work Mon-Fri.
To book a 90-min-consultation, visit
👉 www.heidiwalther.com 👈 and go to the calendar via the „QuickStart Your Yard“ page. I look forward to meeting you for a good talk in and about your garden!
Rebekah and I talked about new pergola options, the right plants for a sunny slope, drainage, how to trim a willow, future dog play areas and much more. It was fun, thank you!

Happy International Cat Day! Here are Jenna and Mette in our (their) garden.
If you have outdoor kitties, keep them safe by building them a , or at the very least, cat-proof your fence 😻 Let’s talk about it in a garden consultation.
👉 www.heidiwalther.com to book 👈

When they say things will look worse before they look better, could this be what they mean? From plan to construction site, this rain garden in W-Seattle is taking shape, no matter the challenges along the way.
Thankful to my fantastic self-building clients 💪 for keeping me updated on their journey. It will be wonderful when it’s finished, and I can‘t wait. Neither can my clients I‘m sure! 💚

Your landscape designer loves to delve into garden (design) history, and in the US there’s no greater name than Olmsted. Olmsted Sr. of Central Park, of course. Olmsted Jr., John Charles, made it to the PNW, and did you know he was active also in Seattle? Oh yes he was!
Follow to find out how and where he left his mark in Seattle‘s parkscape. They have a few upcoming events as well, check them out!
📸

Texture texture texture!

Your landscape designer is a fan of garden history, and sometimes this includes experimental horticulture. Imagine my delight when I found a website dedicated to a thing called “Atomic Gardening”. In the 1940s, at the start of the Atomic Age, the world believed in progress through technological advancement and radioactivity was widely experimented with. So it was only a matter of time until someone zapped the tomatoes to try and create “superplants” with enormous crops. What could possibly go wrong?

Paige Johnson (who I sadly can’t find on IG) put together www.atomicgardening.com. I urge you to browse this entertaining site and learn about the science, the successes and the ladies and gents of the Atomic Gardening Society (of course there would be a society, right?) and their fruitful endeavours. I couldn’t find evidence of glow-in-the-dark tomatoes, which seems a shame.
📸 all from www.atomicgardening.com

Beautiful day in Tacoma, WA‘s best kept secret! Thanks Susan , fellow designer and APLD member, for showing me your town and some of your projects. Such an inspiration.✨ See the penultimate picture:
🤷🏻‍♀️ Challenge -
you have a bland concrete block wall in a small yard, and various structures in different materials and finishes.
💡 Solution -
paint the wall, and in the paint pick up all the colors present in your yard. It makes for a colorful backdrop and brings all the elements together in a harmonious way. The planting along the wall is best kept fairly monochromatic.👍💚

A little reminder to my fellow landscape designers — you can take time off, travel, enjoy the summer… WITHOUT having to visit botanical gardens and famous parks, studying every plant display or researching the USDA hardiness zone of your destination. Give yourself permission to switch off completely, or as much as you can. Then reboot your design mojo once you’re back at the drawing board.
☀️Happy Summer!☀️

Last look back at the wonderful beach where your landscape designer spent the last week. Now I’m back in the PNW and hey!, I brought Summer with me! In an extra large case in check-in luggage. ☀️🧳☀️
Enjoy! 😎

It’s not how fancy your plants are, it’s what you do with them.
Your landscape designer is still in Carmel, CA, and enjoyed this understated plant grouping for part shade. White always lights up a shady spot. 🤍💚🩶

Welcome to Carmel by the Sea, a beautiful little town in California where Clint Eastwood briefly served as mayor in the 80s. (This happens to be the only piece of trivia I knew about Carmel before I visited, and remains the only piece of trivia I know about Clint Eastwood.)
I spotted a very distinctive residential fence style on my walks, thought I’d share them with you. It’s a cross between a palisade and a picket fence, if I had to describe it. Very fitting to this coastal location and attractive new as well as seasoned.
If you have more insights into this style, please share below!
Enjoy the 🌱thirst traps🌱 I snapped around Carmel in my stories 😉💚

One of my unofficial hobbies is street photography, by which I mean snapping unsuspecting people in public places doing everyday things. It’s one of my favourite pastimes, people watching, taken one step further. Plus, this type of photography keeps you on your toes because you don’t want to miss THAT PERFECT MOMENT. I have so many memories of shots I should have taken…
It’s also a way of studying people and their interactions through the safe barrier of my iPhone lens. (Does this sound creepy? Hope not, it’s all in good faith!) I only ever use my phone to take photos, can’t be dealing with the tech wrangling that comes with fancy camera equipment.
One thing I’m not sure of is whether the pictures are better in colour or b/w. Why do so many street photographers publish in b/w? What does that add? Maybe you can help me decide looking at these examples. I appreciate it 🙏

Still one of my favourite design projects of last year - featuring a raingarden, kitchen garden, natives, raised beds… and my self building clients just told me that construction is about to begin!
Good luck guys! 💪👷👷‍♀️🪚🦺⚒️

This glamorous deutzia welcomed me back home for the past few weeks after each of my husband’s radiation sessions. It’s not ours, it’s just en route. There you go - plants can bring you life-affirming joy. Amongst so many other things 💚

I have been wearing my trusted rain jacket for far too long this year. Hoping to retire it to the back of the closet soon! Come on sunshine!☀️😎

“A w**d is a flower growing in the wrong place.” — G.W. Carver
And one person’s w**d is another one’s wildflower. 🌱🌻 You have my permission, if you’re seeking it, to pull out or leave in the ground all the flowers in your yard, if you decide they are in either the wrong place or the right place.
I ask merely two things:
🌱 Remove invasives (best not plant them in the first place of course). The biggest w**ds I see in the PNW are running bamboo, English holly and ivy, all still available to buy in garden centres. Go figure.
🌱 Don’t use pesticides!
**ds

What better way to spend an overcast Saturday morning than a garden consultation? Thank you Doris and Marc for having me over to talk about curb appeal, deck appeal, kitchen gardens and yard-eating laurel hedges. I also got to see chickens and baby bunnies, and hung out with Willow and Bailey (pic 3).
You can book your own ‘QuickStart Your Yard’ session through my website🔝

An insightful article into an issue we overlook too readily — the carbon footprint of the hardscape material we’re specifying and using in our designs. After all, it’s not enough to pat ourselves on the back for using native plants. The environmental impact of concrete, steel, imported hardwood…, often exceeds that of any plant material.
I have struggled to find actionable information on this, and I’m so glad there is now a tool that allows us designers to compare the footprint of various commonly used materials.
🔗 CarbonConscience.SASAKI.com
takes a bit of initial time and immersion, but what a great start to making an informed decision during the design process.
Let me know if you have used this tool and what your thoughts are!