The Art Of The Garden: In beautiful bits, a kaleidoscope of pattern and color takes shape

CLARE DOHNA PLANTS her Vashon Island cottage garden with the same intense colors she uses in her mosaics. Every shade of blue and green, cranberry, plum and sunny yellow glows beneath the towering fir trees. But the plant drama fades in comparison to the mosaic pieces that define and decorate the garden. How could plants, even ones so skillfully chosen and arranged, compete with Dohna's colorful and intricate artistry?

The ancient art form of mosaic has a special relationship to gardens, used for centuries to guide the feet and eyes around outdoor spaces, to embellish, and to provide year-round interest as flowers bloom and fade. Perhaps mosaics fit so comfortably into gardens because of their lively fragmentation that seems endlessly changeable, depending on light and perspective. This mutable quality takes off the hard edge to the point you almost believe the mosaic bits are yet another living element among the plants. Kind of like looking into a kaleidoscope where the colored-glass pieces shift then settle into one pattern after another.

The complex, multifaceted color play of Dohna's work appears as integral to her garden as if it sprung up from the ground. Mosaic-studded "brain balls," turtles, tables, pavers, birdbaths and frogs — each handmade, one-of-a-kind pieces — peek out from beneath leaves, enliven the deck, swim in seas of yellow lamium.

Dohna became fascinated with mosaics when a big pottery piece she'd spent months working on in college blew up in the kiln. She glued the pieces back together and liked the look. After spending 20 years crafting and selling ceramic pins at the Pike Place Market, she was coaxed into mosaic work when Sylvia Matlock, owner of DIG Nursery on Vashon Island, invited Dohna to participate in DIG's annual birdbath show. Dohna made a mosaic birdbath she liked so much she kept it, making another for the show and becoming addicted to putting together the fired ceramic pieces she makes herself. She rolls out slabs of clay, cuts out the mosaic bits, fires them, applies a glaze for color, then fires again at temperatures hot enough to ensure they are frost-proof.

The garden's most startling piece of artistry is a 60-foot diamond-back rattlesnake path that slithers through the back garden. Made to walk along as well as to look down on from the deck above, a barefoot snake stroll is a reflexology treatment if you dare brave the rattler's stone- and mosaic-studded back. Beware the reptile's head — its hooded eyes are disquietingly snake-like, even though Dohna used a tiny child's basketball for a mold. The serpent stretches the length of the house and took Dohna four years to complete. "It withstood the earthquake just fine," she says with quiet satisfaction. Now its serves as centerpiece for the back garden, with raised stone beds shaped around its undulations. Fragrant honeysuckle blooming hot orange curls up the nearby deck pillars.

Now, you may wonder how a house in such a uniquely adorned garden could possibly compete for attention. Or what the house of a snake artist might look like. Every bit as original as the garden, it's an old Everett firehouse — complete with hose tower — built in 1912 and moved to Vashon after being saved from demolition. Dohna and her husband, Eric Weber, have owned the old place for 15 years, trading property with the former owner by "just agreeing that the price was about equal," explains Dohna.

The interior, with its lofty ceilings, old windows and floors, is coated with mosaics and paint in shades of maroon, soft green and vivid blue. The 12-foot ceilings and 9-foot French doors not only draw light in but create lovely acoustics for when Dohna's daughter plays the harp or her son takes out his cello.

A long, tree-lined driveway leads to the front of the house, where a brilliant-blue front door gives a clue to the treasure trove of color inside and around back. A grass and stepping-stone path leads through rockeries planted in old-fashioned perennials, hostas and textural little grasses, with plenty of mosaic surprises along the way — their predominantly blue tones set off by a fluffy bed of yellow lamium groundcover.

Off to the left, the old hose tower rises high above the home's roof. For now, the shaft where hoses used to hang remains a series of open, dangerous platforms. But Dohna and Weber plan to make each of their children a room in the tower, saving the inside peak for their own room at the very top.

"You feel like a bird when you're up there," says Dohna of the tower. A perfect perch for taking in the sweep of this art-rich garden.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle free-lance writer and contributing editor for Horticulture magazine. Her e-mail address is valeaston@comcast.net. Jacqueline Koch is a writer and photographer living on Whidbey Island.