Twin Treats : The Spring Delights of Two Idyllic Northwest Inns : Enjoying the flowers, food and fair scenery at Sooke Harbour House in British Columbia

From the balcony attached to the guest room called the Ichthyologist’s Study you can look out at the elegantly steel-blue water of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the mist-cloaked Cascades beyond in British Columbia.

Alternately, by turning slightly to the left, you can let your eye follow the broad zigzag of Whiffen Spit, rocky and strewn with driftwood, as it snakes out into the mouth of Sooke Harbour.

Best of all, though, you can look straight down. Below you will find no less than a semblance of paradise--a little world of garden paths and rocks and trees of thick, neat lawns and, most of all, of bright flowers and fragrant herbs.

You’ll see thickets of white daisies, burrs of lavender and broom, carpets of nasturtiums and clumps of Japanese chrysanthemums, rosemary, lacy fennel, hyssop, summer savory. Then there are the pompon blooms of chives and garlic, tuberous begonias, flowering kale, fruit sage, hops, beach plantains, rare black pansies, even ghostly-red opium poppies.

Sooke Harbour House, a beautiful, isolated inn on a gentle hillside on the southwestern coast of Vancouver Island about 25 miles west of Victoria, has much to be proud of: its location, its comfortable and handsome rooms, its wonderful dinners, the intuitive professionalism with which proprietors Sinclair and Fredrica Philip run the place.

But what defines the inn most vividly, what gives it weight in memory, is its glorious profusion of growing things.

The Philipses (he is Canadian, she is French) bought Sooke Harbour House about 10 years ago.

They have developed it slowly and carefully, adding a second building to the original white clapboard farmhouse, remodeling the rooms in the latter structure, planting and continually enriching their grounds and gardens, refining (through a succession of good chefs) their cuisine.

What they have is surely one of the prettiest, most idyllic country inns in North America.

This is not some informal, let’s-all-be-friends sort of bed and breakfast place. It has no shared bathrooms, no forced “social hours.” This is a place that leaves you alone--having first ensured, of course, that you have all the amenities you are likely to need.

Its 13 rooms, for instance, have wood-burning fireplaces with comfortable seating areas arranged in front of them.

All have ocean views and balconies or terraces. Many have Jacuzzis or old-fashioned claw-foot bathtubs, and one boasts a private, outdoor, hot tub.

All are furnished with abundant flowers from the inn’s gardens, baskets of fresh fruit (much of that also home grown), a little plate of homemade cookies and a mini-carafe of Australian port. Some also have mini-bars with equipment for making tea or coffee.

Beyond these common features, every room is different. All but one has a name that signals its special character.

The Herb Garden Room, for instance, gives immediately onto a particularly colorful and fragrant plot of herbs and flowers; the Victor Newman Longhouse Room, named after a prominent local Native American artist, is hung with Newman’s prints; the Seagull Room is illuminated by a large skylight, through which its eponymous birds may frequently be seen soaring overhead.

The aforementioned Ichthyologist’s Study, of course, is fish-themed, full of paintings, rubbings and assorted bibelots depicting creatures of the sea both real and fanciful.

The room without a name, No. 1, is one of the most spectacular. Curiously enough, the entrance is through a wide passage that turns out to be the bathroom.

On one side of the passage is an immense Jacuzzi, on the other a porcelain washbasin set into a massive antique dresser. Other facilities are hidden behind sliding mirrored doors.

Beyond the bathroom is a huge, seductive, custom-made bed decorated with hand-carved scallop shells and set into an alcove beneath a window.

Facing its foot, repeating the scallop motif, is a good-size writing desk. (This would be a great place for a poet or a novelist to hide out for a few weeks to put the finishing touches on his or her latest masterwork, or even for a private journal keeper who has some catching up to do.)

A few steps up from the sleeping area, beneath an arched cathedral-style ceiling, is a living room furnished with fireplace, cozy couch, a couple of rocking chairs and one of those tea-and-coffee wet bars. A large window looks out onto the strait; an ample balcony, bordered with flower boxes and equipped with a garden bench, faces Whiffen Spit.

This is the kind of hotel room you never want to leave, and don’t really have to, as long as your reservation lasts.

There is (thankfully) no television, but there is a radio and assorted magazines and books are casually supplied. It’s a catholic selection of left-behinds that recently included paperback copies of Henry Miller’s “Sexus,” Evelyn Anthony’s “Voices on the Wine” and Daudet’s “Lettres de Mon Moulin” (in French). And dinners may be taken in the room.

(A sole demur about room No. 1: It is on the second floor of the main house just above the entrance, and can get a bit noisy with the comings and goings of other guests.)

If you’re the wear-yourself-out variety of vacationer, you’ll find that there’s not really very much to do at Sooke Harbour House, but the hotel is happy to arrange fishing charters, scuba expeditions, horseback riding, kayaking trips (and lessons) and nature hikes, among other activities. A less strenuous amusement is a boat tour of Sooke Harbour.

On their own, guests might also want to visit the homey little Sooke Region Museum in the town of Sooke, full of lumber-trade and Indian artifacts and historical photographs (Sooke draws its name from the T’Sou-ke tribe)--or explore the island’s rugged coastline by car.

But the inn is so tranquil, so engagingly anchored to the landscape and so well-equipped that the temptation is just to stay here, taking strolls and walks rather than real hikes, sleeping late, reading, getting reacquainted with a mate or friend or family member. Oh, and eating, certainly.

If it is axiomatic that restaurants with beautiful views never have good food, Sooke Harbour House makes hash of the axiom. Its food, created by chefs Ron Cherry and Gordon Cowen, is wonderful, varied and inventive.

The kitchen has two trademarks: One is its enthusiastic use of good and very fresh British Columbia fish and shellfish.

Sinclair Philip is a dedicated fisherman and skin diver. Sometimes he brings home his own just-caught seafood to serve at dinner (though he presumably doesn’t fish or dive in the immediate vicinity of the inn, where signs read: “Shellfish Contaminated--Harvesting Prohibited”.

The kitchen’s other trademark is its prodigal employment of the products of the inn’s gardens: Those very herbs and flowers (the edible ones, anyway) that frame the inn so prettily and evocatively are also used with proud abandon both to flavor and to decorate nearly every dish. (Even desserts and breakfast items have flower garnishes.) This device borders on the precious after a meal or two, admittedly, but who cares when the food is so well-made beneath its floriated surface?

The menu changes nightly. Recent flower-scattered offerings have included local oysters, fresh and salty-sweet, grilled, removed from their shells and combined with fresh basil and tiny cherry tomatoes (not the squishy salad-bar kind, but bright red little jewels of flavor) in a light fresh tomato reduction; baby octopus marinated to the point of tenderness in olive oil and herbs and mixed with little wisps of sweet red pepper and Italian parsley.

Then an assortment of smoked trout, smoked and pickled salmon and smoked black cod on a bed of radicchio with a creamy mixed-berry dressing (which works superbly in this context, however unlikely it might sound); home-cured gravlax, each piece curled up like a rosebud, with cucumber salad in lemon-garlic dressing; gloriously plain steamed Dungeness crab, one of the world’s great edible sea creatures, served cold with herb mayonnaise.

And large fresh shrimp sauteed with miso (fermented soybean) sauce and ginger, along with green and yellow zucchini and pieces of potato as flavorful as any classy pomme de terre from France; and delicious baked salmon (which was unfortunately at odds with its English gooseberry and tarragon sauce).

Non-fish eaters don’t have a great deal to choose from at Sooke Harbour House, but what there is is organically raised and unusual.

For instance, roasted rabbit, from the nearby town of Metchosin, in a fresh cherry glaze with beets and fennel, and braised shoulder and liver of suckling pig in a sage and sour plum sauce. The kitchen will also prepare vegetarian meals and other special menus on request.

Desserts are mostly fruit tarts and mousses, and the wine list is particularly notable for such surprisingly enjoyable Canadian wines as 1987 Inniskillin Chardonnay from Niagara-on-the-Lake, and 1987 Sumac Ridge Gewurztraminer and 1985 Divino Pinot Bianco, both from British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. Service is relaxed but highly professional.

Best of all, when you’ve finished dinner, the grounds outside the door are crossed with paths through paradise, and the fireplace is waiting.