For a former chef and an ER doctor, a garden is a lifetime—and a lifeline.
Landscape Architect: Bethany Rydmark
Team Landscape Designer: Abigail Leonard
Carpentry: José A. Villegas
Patio Installation: Raúl González, Red Valley Landscapes
Kevin and Danielle Ward moved into their home in 2014, a time when there wasn’t much to choose from on the Portland real estate market. The house they found, a 2,400-square-foot home in the Mocks Crest neighborhood of Northeast, came with a small yard that couldn’t exactly be called a garden.
“There was really nothing there,” says Kevin Ward, a longtime pastry chef at the Heathman Hotel and currently a stay-at-home dad. “Just a sun-burnt rhododendron, a larger sweet gum in the back and a whole lot of blackberries.”
The house had been a flip, so the couple started their early years as homeowners with an interior remodel, working with Guggenheim Architecture + Design Studio (then Fig Studio), to build out the second story. They left the garden for later.
In the meantime, the couple traveled extensively, picking up global influences that would find their way into their garden. When they were ready to tackle that space in 2019, they knew what elements they liked: outdoor spaces that feel wild and produce food, gardens that grow and change with the gardener and the times, and places that have the peacefulness of rural settings.
Like so many design relationships these days, Kevin Ward first connected with landscape architect Bethany Rydmark through Instagram. With Rydmark’s team, they set out to create an overall plan.
“He tapped me on the digital shoulder,” Rydmark says. “Kevin already had these evocative themes—the connection to Denmark and Italy’s Puglia region, and his background as a food person who loves growing things.”
The challenge? How to create an overall design plan that met their needs for a fun and functional outdoor living space, a living meadowscape and a sense of privacy while maintaining a connection to the neighborhood.
By then the Wards had become a young family, so they also wanted to create a play space for the kids, install buffers from southern sun and rain, and to accommodate raised vegetable beds.
Rydmark is known for her elegant landscapes designed to be lived in and lasting, with every design emerging from curiosity about the natural world and sensitivity to the larger ecologies of sites.
“Even a tiny space is full of possibility,” Rydmark says.
Kevin, Rydmark shares, is a more involved client than most. As a former chef, he has a deep relationship to growing his own food and a hosting spirit well known in the neighborhood. He grew up in Eastern Pennsylvania and worked landscape jobs throughout high school and college, often on expansive private gardens where the sky was the limit, or on tree farms and organic vegetable farms.
“Kevin jumped right in and was deeply involved,” Rydmark says. “He really took the bull by the horns and started running.”
The first thing they did was remove the entire front lawn, replacing it with a no-mow pollinator-friendly native meadow with multi-season colors and textures, featuring native wild grasses. Through it, they introduced a meandering cross-path to add some organic lines.
“That was a fun contrast to the simple box nature of the home,” Rydmark says. “We put all sorts of beauty all around it.”
Rydmark connected with José A. Villegas to build out the family’s dining area, a cold frame, the shed and the play structure. The team kept the view of the neighbor’s shed at the back of the yard, which opened up more possibilities than having a plain fence line. The change in materials, space and scale creates a completely different feel to the backyard.
“You feel connected, but you also feel removed,” Rydmark says. “There is a little mystery to it.”
Both side yards accommodate paths to the back, where design lead Abigail Leonard planned for zones for outdoor living and a kitchen setup including a pizza oven. Near the back of the property, a small eco-lawn becomes a perfect spot for romping or a picnic.
The produce garden allows for the family to supplement their meals. This year there’s garlic, snap peas and other snacking vegetables.
“Our girls like to play farm-to-table restaurant,” Kevin says.
Overall, the family’s garden achieves a sense of play and wildness not often found in urban settings and a living space they use all day long. It’s a place to drink coffee in the morning at 5 a.m., water in the late morning, for his wife to reset from long nights in the ER and for the neighborhood kids to play all day in the summer.
“I feel much more grounded in places like this,” Kevin says.
About that front-yard meadow… The Wards’ neighborhood is home to mostly manicured front lawns, but their neighbors are always curious about the wild, sometimes 3- to 4-ft. grasses as tall as their youngest child. “We wanted to create a planted landscape that looked like a painting,” Kevin Ward says. There, he annually switches out grasses based on whim and what changes, since some natives, like fireweed, crowd each other out. “I get tired of certain colors,” he says. “And some plants are bullies.”
