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" VIEW MORE PHOTOS     As you hike up the 30 steps to the front door where visitors often turn to ogle the view gold-, red- and lime-colored plants intertwine around your feet and explode from planters on landings where you stop to catch your breath. On one of these, glass fishing floats bob in a pot of water amid rustling, seasonal blooms (purple agapanthus, red geraniums and verbena). A few steps up, on eye-level pedestals, round dish gardens of succulents show off jewel-toned leaves like semiprecious stones. &amp;quot;We wanted the walk up to the house to be inviting and fragrant, full of life,&amp;quot; says Casey, who remembers being bored by the slope&amp;#039;s generic plant mix when she and Jim, a financial advisor, moved here. Once they decided to redo the space, they turned for help to Glenn Withey and Charles Price, garden makers known for using rich colors that glow in Seattle&amp;#039;s misty light. Armed with the Margards&amp;#039; wish list, Withey and Price scrapped the dark greens of existing rhododendrons, azaleas and boxwoods for a medley of gold, burgundy and orange plants. To complement the yellow-brick house, they introduced golden Italian cypress and repeated the color in scented, variegated daphne (Casey&amp;#039;s choice), yellow acanthus and strap-leafed &amp;#039;Golden Sword&amp;#039; yucca. To go with the small-scale Japanese maples Casey loves, they wove in burgundy &amp;#039;Plum Passion&amp;#039; nandina, red barberry (&amp;#039;Helmond&amp;#039;s Pillar&amp;#039;), purple smoke tree (Cotinus coggygria) and dramatic orange-blooming, crimson-striped Canna &amp;#039;Tropicanna.&amp;#039; The succulents were for Jim, a New Mexico native who misses desert plants but settled for sedums and house leeks that can take the Northwest winters. When the front was finished, Withey and Price were ready to move to the back, where the lot continues its uphill climb outside the kitchen. This large, airy room had been renovated for the Margards by architect Louise Durocher and served as a hangout for the couple and their children, Kelly, 18, and Chris, 15. But disappointingly, the view from its new windows was a seven-foot-high retaining wall and weedy grass. So the Margards asked their architect to help them rethink the space. Her first step was to regrade the slope, and then she built three new levels: an enlarged patio adjoining the kitchen, which features a fountain and sculpture Durocher created, and a pair of upper terraces with round, stone-paved seating spots. At Jim&amp;#039;s request, these echo the shapes of kivas, circular, underground rooms once used ceremonially by Native Americans of the Southwest. Edged with dry-stacked sandstone walls in shades of chocolate, buff and violet, they&amp;#039;re now enclosed with Withey and Price&amp;#039;s cascading, drought-tolerant plants, including yuccas and palms reminiscent of the desert. Other choices (salvia, rosemary, acanthus and olive trees) are from the Mediterranean, where the Margards have traveled widely. Oil jars from Crete accent the plants&amp;#039; gray and green leaves, while more dish gardens display hotcolored succulents. There are herbs and berries near the house, kitchen-close for the picking. Now on bright weekend days, scattered benches and chairs draw the family out to enjoy a view they never had before from the highest point on their favorite hill. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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