Oregon Home | 19 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
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