BEN HAMMONTREE LIVES large in a small garden with an artist’s eye and a plantsman’s skill. Like many garden professionals, Hammontree spends his days tending established, sometimes grand landscapes before coming home to frolic in his own growing space.
Seven years ago, when Hammontree moved to South Park, a neighborhood with a mix of industry and homes in South Seattle, he was less interested in the “simple house” than he was the land it sat on. Where others saw a burned-out lawn surrounding a humble home, Hammontree saw a blank canvas where he could make his mark.
The gardener immediately began by tearing the lawn out and reinventing the outdoor space. Today a fern pine (Podocarpus gracilior) privacy hedge in the sunny front garden screens a view of neighboring warehouses. Hammontree, who loves to prune, has left the evergreens deliberately shaggy, snipping stray branches as he sees fit.
A collection of planted containers further encloses a gravel courtyard where Hammontree has created a quirky installation of reflective glass balls placed among scattered green and orange paddle plants (Kalanchoe thyrsiflora) which he plants in the ground each summer.
Meticulously pruned but informally sited boxwood orbs repeat the spherical motif and lend heft to the courtyard during the months when the succulents hang out in a small indoor sunroom. In a stroke of “awesome hot pink,” Hammontree can’t wait for ‘Zephirine Drouhin’, a cherry-pink Bourbon rose, to engulf the front of the house. “I grew (the rose) many years ago — it’s an animal,” he enthuses.
At the back of the house, densely planted beds define three intimate gathering spaces creating a verdant wonderland that he fondly refers to as “South Park Costa Rica.” Hammontree claims that for him, garden rooms and secret growing spaces make the garden; “You never know what you’re going to find.”
Garden room walls made up of finely textured columnar yew (Taxus baccata ‘Fastigiata’) and Azara microphylla contrast with the boldly oversized leaves on several Ashe magnolia (Magnolia macrophylla var. ashei) and a tropical looking loquat (Eriobotrya japonica). Near the back of the shallow lot, shrimp pink new growth on a Chinese toon tree (Toona sinensis ‘Pink Flamingo’) creates a singular splash of color each spring before the tree’s pink plumage transitions to white and finally to green. “It’s one of my favorite trees in the world, it’s huge and it grows like a weed,” Hammontree says.
In addition to a place of refuge and recreation, Hammontree’s garden also functions as nursery where he tends his plants but is always willing to dig them up and pass along for one of his professional projects. Which might explain why the gardener likes to plant in multiples.
Hammontree’s hydrangea collection, which numbers around 20, includes several panicle hydrangeas (Hydrangea paniculata) as well as many unknown varieties. Whether he’s shopping at a nursery or a big box store, if Hammontree finds a hydrangea with a pleasing bloom, he’ll bring it home.
Having grown a collection of lemon cypress (Hesperocyparis macrocarpa ‘Goldcrest Wilma’) — “I think there are 13 of them” — from 1-gallon pots, Hammontree plans to start shaping the now substantial golden conifers into topped off cylinders of various heights that might one day provide a stunning feature in a client’s new garden.
Hammontree, who is “really into ferns” these days, recently taught a class for the Hardy Fern Foundation where he used a chain saw to create planting pockets in the woody stump of a dead tree fern (Dicksonia antarctica), creating a vertical column of ferns and miniature hosta with cheeky names, such as ‘Mini Skirt’ and ‘Stiletto’. Hammontree, who dressed for the occasion remarks, “It was a hoot! But what happens in the garden, stays in the garden.”
Hammontree’s garden is infused with a palpable spirit of joy and delight. “This is truly a garden of love and life,” he says, which is also an apt portrait of the creative gardener who tends it.
Lorene Edwards Forkner is the author of “Color In and Out of the Garden.” Find her at ahandmadegarden.com and at Cultivating Color on Substack.
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