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VAA GARDEN TOUR PROFILE: LINDA WEISS AND RON GAWITH
A garden to live in On Maury Island, one couple has created outdoor ‘rooms’ By JANICE RANDALL For The Beachcomber
Follow a long and winding drive bordered by Northwest native salal, towering alders and lush mounds of sword ferns. Scattered metal spheres add artistic interest, and soon the entrance opens to an expansive meadow on the left below the Maury Island home and garden of Linda Weiss and Ron Gawith.
Grevillea blooms in the garden.
Seeking to downsize, the couple purchased property on Vashon’s west side and planned to build there until they discovered the perfect house and property in the Point Robinson area. The couple moved from their shady Cedarhurst-area home, which was on the 2000 Garden Tour, to their current sunny property in 2004. A blank slate when they arrived, the weathered cedar, one-story, many-windowed contemporary house is now flanked by a white flowering Oleria hedge and blends beautifully into the arid landscape. Of their five acres, the south-facing quarter acre is fenced to protect plants from over-zealous deer. Architectural in style, the garden boasts outdoor rooms suitable for a lifestyle that includes frequent entertaining. The garden design’s cornerstone, an inviting outdoor dining pavilion with sturdy metal dining furniture, is defined by 8-foot-high, meticulous gabion walls (welded wire structure filled with rocks) and boasts Gawith’s famous wood-fired pizza oven. Grasses, yucca plants and native shrubs accent many varieties of tropical ivy, and a row of eight fruit-bearing fig trees provides a favorite pizza topping. Vigorously blooming climbing roses outline the fenced perimeter. Bamboo, sedums and euphorbia rise from various levels of rockwork. “Ron studied sculpture in college and loves creating levels and rooms,� Weiss said. And a water feature graces the outer
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Linda Weiss stands next to one the gabion walls in the garden she and Ron Gawith created. The walls add a sculpted feel to their many-roomed garden, a place where they often entertain. edge of the dining area where Weiss floats glass balls and grows colorful begonias. “This house was much what we had hoped to build. There wasn’t anything around it to start, which was perfect for us,� Weiss said. “It’s always been about entertaining and eating outside, and the gabion walls radiate heat.� Their large vegetable garden in semiraised beds, primarily Gawith’s purview, greatly benefits from early starts in the greenhouse. They grow everything from fava beans, summer squash and lemon
cucumbers to tomatoes, kale, chard and raspberries. He loves to cook and adds much of the garden’s bounty to his pizzas. Outside the front door and the graveled entranceway, there are beautiful container plantings and defined areas for many Australian and New Zealand droughttolerant plants, including hummingbirdfriendly orange flowering Grevillea, eucalyptus, varieties of boxwood and brilliant yellow-flowering acacia. “The textures and silver-green color palate have always been among my favorites,�
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Vashon’s 2013 Home & Garden • plants • building supplies • garden art • home loans • water features • furniture • flooring • garden tools • landscaping • rock walls • horticulture