Of all the gardens I visited during the July 2024 Garden Fling in Washington State’s Puget Sound region, I was completely smitten by the Seattle garden of Daniel Sparler and his husband Jeff Schouten. Located in the city’s Seward Park neighbourhood, they call it their “garden of exuberant refuge”, but I would add some more “E” words, besides the ones in my title. Like “excellent”, as in horticultural excellence; “ebullient”, as in cheerful and colourful; and “exotic”, as in featuring plants from many of the far-off places where Daniel has worked or visited, including East Asia, South Asia, South Africa, all over Latin America and the Mediterranean. So let’s start our tour at the front of the house and this collection of pots planted with cordylines, cannas, bananas, agapanthus and other choice treasures.

Daniel is the expert gardener — and writes a column called ‘Horticulturally Yours’ for the Northwest Horticultural Society — while Jeff has built the garden’s many structures and hardscape elements, like the painted concrete posts below. Sculpture is featured throughout this garden and whimsical elements occupy each nook and cranny.

I love this curved, purple wall that acts as backdrop and shelf while separating the patio from the plantings behind it.

Throughout the Pacific northwest, I’m blown away by the magnificent lilies in almost every garden. I realize I almost never leave our lakeside cottage north of Toronto in the summer months, so a July garden tour means seeing a cornucopia of horticultural riches.

Having visited our youngest son and his wife in Tuscany in early June where perfumed star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) grows on every arch and stone wall (in fact, we gave them this vine as a housewarming gift), it is fun to see it here in full bloom against a trellised pergola.

On a bench inside, a mossy Buddha invites a moment of tranquility.

And though I’m sure the garden has no shortage of the real things, a menagerie of toy frogs and lizards surround the Buddha.

Metal woodpeckers climb the stem of the windmill palm.

A gravel path is edged with a long line of moss-covered, concrete columns, many topped by a bromeliad or succulent.

The fun of Daniel and Jeff’s garden is the effort they’ve made in creating so many artful delights for the eye, like this pile of beautiful slag grass in its rebar cage next to a column topped with glass art pieces.

Along the path, a lily offering sits before a Shiva

Whimsical bamboo vases on the trellis hold allium seedheads and a coiled visitor of the non-venomous variety.

A green ceramic ball partners with a beautiful houseleek (Aeonium arborescens).

On the north side of the 1952 brick house which Daniel and Jeff bought in 1992, a path winds past shade lovers arrayed around an interesting mask-decked iron screen.

As Daniel said in a video online about the garden: “My philosophy of gardening is pretty simple. A garden should be authentic. Which means it should reflect as accurately as possible the values, experiences and even the whims of the gardeners.” 

Further along the path we see shade-lovers such as Tasmanian tree fern (Dicksonia antarctica), Chinese mayapple (Podophyllum pleianthum), astilbes, hostas and other shade and moisture lovers.

Isn’t this a beautiful vignette? That’s a shrubby St. Johnswort (Hypericum androsaemum) in the centre with the glossy Chinese mayapple.

In the back garden, dense plantings edge a flagstone patio.

A potted ponytail palm (Beaucarnea recurvata) mulched with polished glass stones tops a concrete post.

Daniel and Jeff built this viewing pavilion in 2007, the perfect place to contemplate the garden, martini in hand. We are fortunate to visit on the one day the white epiphyllum cactus is in bloom. Behind is an 80-foot tall blue eucalyptus (E. glaucescens), the sole survivor of the original 14 species acquired by Daniel in an early fit of “eucalypt fever”. As he wrote in an Oct. 2022 column called “Eucalpytus: Gumming up the Garden”, “Within a few years the tally had withered by two-thirds as several were either slain by sudden, brutal cold snaps (as in November 2010) or deliberately killed by Yours Truly once I awoke to the reality of their obstreperous nature.”

I find the owners of this fabulous 1/3-acre garden holding court in the back. Daniel Sparler, below, is a retired teacher of humanities and Spanish at Seattle’s Northwest School. Apart from his writing, he also teaches Botanical Latin for the Northwest Horticultural Society.

Dr. Jeff Schouten is a physician, associate professor at the University of Washington, and former director of HANC (HIV/AIDS Network Coordination Center) at Seattle’s Fred Hutch Cancer Center.

Back to the garden and its gorgeous plants: of course, there are hydrangeas here, as there are all over the Puget Sound gardens on our tour.

And a nicely-grown tiger flower (Tigridia pavonia).

In the gravel garden is a ghostly eryngium with a very distressed-looking gargoyle and a pair of blue Dustin Gimbel ceramic cacti.

A pot containing a ‘Snow Leopard’ mangave (Agave) sits in the gravel garden surrounded by blue glass art.

And in a place of honour on a table nearby sits the spiral cactus Cereus spiralis ‘Forbesii’.

Breadseed poppy (Papaver somniferum) seedheads form near an indigo-blue obelisk, part of the ‘blue garden’ vibe in this part of the property.

It’s my first time seeing double tiger lily (Lilium lancifolium ‘Flore Pleno’), just one of more than 4,600 taxa that Daniel has amassed in what has been described as a terminal case of “Compulsive Plant Collecting”!

Speaking of plant collecting, I stop to marvel at the shelves of cacti and succulents against the house wall…

…. and occupying a ledge and every step of the stairs, along with the resident dinosaurs.

Bordering the path in the sunny, south-facing side-yard is a pot containing Agapanthus Twister (‘AMBIC001’), my favourite agapanthus. It was selected in 2008 by Quinton Bean of De Wet Aloe Farm in South Africa, a single, bicoloured plant from a complex cross involving A. pracecox subsp. orientalis and A. campanulatus.

A beautiful solanum (S. crispum ‘Glasnevin’, I believe) is in full flower on this side.

Agaves and aloes enjoy the reflected heat from the house.

Jeff has adorned an octagonal concrete post with coloured tiles, creating a fancy perch for the winged griffin and an eye-catching background for the plants at its base, including a pot holding a restio AND a cordyline!

The pendant flowers of Fuchsia boliviana ‘Alba’ catch my eye here.

Daniel and Jeff are rightfully proud of the compost that nurtures their garden, so I stop to pay homage.

Circling back to the front (I think…. it’s a little confusing in a garden so densely planted), I come to the striking, above-ground, concrete pool. Constructed in 2002 to replace a large, naturalistic pond they had built in the 90s that had become too difficult to maintain, this, I think, is Jeff’s masterpiece. The fact that I’m crazy about chartreuse in the garden might be a factor! It’s adorned with its own crocodile….

….. and a flotilla of coloured glass balls.

I’m also a fan of purple accents in the garden, so I love this handsome bench.

A pot of tillandsia on a moss, tile-adorned post would have been impressive, but why not encircle it with a snake and add a lizard, too?

I think I’ve circled around the house again, because the blue glass agave on its painted post is part of that ‘blue garden’ theme.

As is the blue Hydrangea serrata.

Himalayan maidenhair fern (Adiantum venustum) cascades gracefully over a mossy rock.

Scent is important in this part of the garden and rubrum lily (L. speciosum var. rubrum) adds lots of perfume.

A bumble bee forages in a dahlia flower. Singles and semi-doubles like this variety are popular with pollinators, who cannot access the stamens and nectaries of the fluffy doubles that many gardeners like.

Phormium ‘Jester’ pops up behind dark dahlia foliage.

It’s impossible to capture all the amazing plants and vignettes in our short visit, like this big schefflera.

There are bromeliads mixed in, including this Vriesea splendens.

A Rex begonia gets the star treatment with its circle of green slag glass — the honour, according to Daniel, owing to the fact that it miraculously survived the terrible January deep-freeze.

There’s an inner child in all of us and the Garden of Exuberant Refuge embraces that notion fully.

A broken clay pot in a sea of ferns becomes a vehicle for a waterfall of green slag glass.

As I head back to the bus to continue our tour of fine Seattle gardens, my final image in this garden of delights is a perfectly pink lily.

Thank you Daniel Sparler and Jeff Schouten. May your abundant, exuberant garden continue to be a place of beauty and refuge for years to come.

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Like playful gardens executed with polish and horticultural skill? Have a look at my blog on The Giant’s House in Akaroa, NZ, the mosaic domain of artist Josie Martin.