Light on the Hill — a tea house garden in river rock and maple

A hillside garden built around a timber tea house, where the stonework carries the grade and the planting softens every edge of it.

The ground falls away from the tea house, so the garden is held on a wall of rounded river rock laid by hand. The stones are set face out and tight, which is slower than block and is the reason the line still reads true right across the slope.

Stone first

Above the wall the beds are mulched and planted; below it the lawn runs clean to the wall foot with no fussy edging in between. A carved stone lantern sits at the turn of the path, and a single large boulder is set into the wall itself so the two materials belong to each other.

Then the planting

Japanese maples carry the garden, underplanted with low evergreens, grasses and ferns. Species were chosen for how they colour through a Southern Oregon autumn as much as for how they read in May.

Light last

Low-voltage fixtures are set back into the beds and up into the maples, so what you see after dusk is the canopy and the stone rather than the fittings. The tea house eave is lit from below, which is what gives the garden its name.