EVERY INCH COUNTS

For landscape designer Lisa Bauer, designing a garden is a little like doing a puzzle—there are a lot of pieces to fit together to create a beautiful picture. In a small space like her 3,400-square-foot Seattle garden, every inch is critical. She created a garden with great curb appeal in front and a relaxing family space in back, while still leaving plenty of room to indulge her love of plants. Working all these pieces into a cohesive design in a small space isn’t easy. Let’s see how Lisa did it.

The first piece of the puzzle with any design is adding structure—paths, steps, porches, patios, hedges, trees—all the big stuff that isn’t easy to move or change. Lisa wasn’t a landscape designer when the front garden was installed so she worked with a designer 16 years ago to develop the plan for the walkways and position the trees.

Instead of surrounding the yard as a traditional hedge along the property line, the 2-foot-tall dwarf English boxwoods in photo 1 are staggered—the hedge on the right is