Thoughtful landscape design by Fischer Bouma Partnership connects the Ericksen Community to the neighborhood and delivers a housewarming gift to its future residents. [Photo: Jeff Bouma (left) and Jeff Peterson (right)]
No building exists in isolation. It belongs to a neighborhood and the natural world. Charlie Wenzlau, the architect for HRB’s Ericksen Community, has managed these relationships carefully. He tucked the parking in back, out of view of pedestrians, and placed the jewel box foyer prominently in front. The simple modern design, with its sky and stone palette and wood accents, integrates easily with surrounding homes and office buildings, as well as the PNW landscape across the seasons.
The next to welcome Ericksen to the neighborhood are landscape architects Jeff Bouma and Jeff Peterson of Fischer Bouma Partnership, the firm behind Town & Country, the Oliver, the bird marsh and meadow at Bloedel Reserve, and other beloved island places. Bouma created a formal landscape along Ericksen Avenue, incorporating ornamentals, like Japanese maples and climbing hydrangea, and planting the street trees typical of historic neighborhoods, in this case maple, to break up the façade. The site slopes steeply, placing Ericksen below street level. Beach strawberry and Pacific mist manzanita will mature into a lush green carpet that will prevent erosion, and tall ornamental grasses add some variation in height closer to the building. A mass of daisy bush will fill the corner, offering yellow blooms in summer.
After paying his respects to the neighbors with a well-designed streetscape, Bouma created a housewarming gift for future residents of the Ericksen Community—an intimate garden along the terrace outside the vestibule, which won’t be so visible from street level but which will greet residents as they come and go throughout the day. It will be “their front door, their front porch, their front yard,” emphasized Bouma. A rain chain will channel water from the roof into a basalt dish boulder, and a flagstone stepping path will wind through the garden with a more “refined plant palette” of Japanese maple and camelias.
The Ericksen Community meets the Evergreen Sustainable Development Standard. There will be a rain garden planted with hearty rushes, and the majority of the plants, which include sword fern and Oregon grape along the south side, will be either native or regionally adapted and require minimal irrigation. In the rear, which abuts SR305 and a ravine, invasive blackberry will be removed, and cedar and Doug fir will join a heritage bigleaf maple to form a noise buffer and create a more forest feel. These plants are also less expensive, helping the project adhere to a tight budget.
The lot is small, noted Bouma. “So it was important to make those spaces pedestrian scale, whether you’re walking by on the street or through the site or parking in the lot, filling every little small space we can with something that’s got texture and color and interest to make people’s days a little bit better.”