When Fran and Ben Michaelson transformed their one-acre-plus yard into a soothing, leafy garden, it all started with a coat of paint.

“Before we did anything, our landscape architect, Shelley Rentsch, recommended painting the whole house to cover the unappealing red-brick exterior,” says Fran. “She wanted the house to interact with the garden as much as possible.”

Now the 5,200-square-foot Annapolis house, which views the north side of the Severn River, is a peaceful gray-green, a natural tone almost the color of lichen, chosen by Rentsch.

With the house color remedied, it was time to get started on the landscape. The couple’s desires were (relatively) simple: The plants had to be drought-resistant, the lawns should be minimized, and they didn’t want to use excessive fertilizer or pesticides. Rentsch proposed several different schematic landscape plans and a master plant list suggesting a broad palette of trees, shrubs, groundcovers, and perennials that filled the bill. “Initially, it was ‘design by deletion,’” says Rentsch. “We figured out what existing site elements, such as miscellaneous walls and post-mature plant material, to remove. Once it was all cleared out, we could focus on the improvements.”

In the front yard, Rentsch removed the existing foundation landscaping of overgrown shrubs and, in their place, designed a woodland garden using plants such as witch hazel, oakleaf hydrangea, and summersweet. To buffer the front of the house from the street, she added willow oak, paperbark maple, and American yellowwood to the existing population of shade and flowering trees, which ranged from dogwood to magnolia to crape myrtles. A graceful, bordering bluestone path was also added, leading from the driveway to the house’s massive, mission-style oak door. “I wanted a woodsy feel in front,” says Fran, a retired tutor. “Varying whites have always intrigued me, so the palette is whites, creams, and ivories.”

A tiered landscape was developed, incorporating three levels, each offering a different purpose and scene. “In this case,” says Rentsch, “the site topography generated and inspired the landscape design.”

To encase the top level, they installed a terrace and bluestone coping around the existing pool. A bordering garden was also added, thick with the blues, pinks, and silvers of lamb’s ear, evening primrose, blue aster, pink cinquefoil, catmint, and Russian sage. The addition of low-maintenance pink blush carpet roses on the slope side of the pool deck contributed a touch of colorful harmony to the garden. Rentsch convinced Fran to scatter large terra cotta pots around the poolside terrace and front walkway and fill them with sedum and petunias. “She called them the ‘finishing touches’ in the garden, and I resisted at first, but she was absolutely right.”

Located on the second level of the garden is Ben’s bonsai collection, which includes at least thirty-five miniature maples, junipers, wisteria, azaleas, and Korean hornbeam. When they bought the house in 2001, Ben installed a two-tiered, thirty-foot-long wooden shelf to display the miniatures; Rentsch added a border of smooth river stones. Ben, a retired real estate attorney, started cultivating them twenty years ago after Fran gave him one as a gift. They’re building a greenhouse this spring for winter storage of his collection.

The biggest challenge in the couple’s two-year landscaping project was what Fran calls the “scary slope” next to the house, which abuts a deep ravine. To tame the sixty-foot drop, they had broad steps with stone risers and lawn treads built up to the swimming pool and added weathered-stone retaining walls along either side of the steps. The lower slope was then transformed into a meadow, which they planted with wildflowers, while the meadow edge was planted in a bottlebrush buckeye, purple-blossomed butterfly bush, elderberry, and other shrubs that attract wildlife. “We get a lot of butterflies and birds, black snakes, even a family of foxes,” Fran notes. “The first spring, the meadow burst into yellow and white. Now it changes from year to year, going through different phases each season.”

Altogether, they planted more than fifty trees and more than two thousand bulbs, including tulips, hyacinths, narcissus, anemones, and white Asiatic lilies. “I learned that it was worthwhile to go ahead and spend money on a landscape architect,” says Fran. “We ended up adding a wider variety of plants to the garden because of Shelley’s wealth of knowledge about plants. She comes back annually to survey her work. It’s like checking on the kids to see how they’ve grown.”

“Fran is very wise and understands that gardens will and should evolve,” adds Rentsch, “and that the design process is not static and is best when guided over time.”

Out near the pool, Fran bends down to pluck a downy leaf from a patch of lamb’s ear and rubs it to her cheek. “I love being in the garden,” she muses. “My husband is amused that I don’t like to be away from home in the spring. I want to be here when things start popping.”

Vicki Meade writes from her home in Annapolis.