VIKSBERG, Sweden — For nearly three decades, there was little about their surroundings that Elisabeth Krausz and Peter Sjogren found disagreeable when they lived in Ostermalm, an affluent enclave in Stockholm. They were near ornate castles, cobblestoned streets and harbors dotted with pristine white boats.  Elisabeth Krausz and Peter Sjogren live in a narrow triangular house whose three facades are obscured by trellises.  But the couple pined for what they couldn’t see: lush foliage and vast stretches of greenery, which only seemed to exist beyond city limits.  Ms. Krausz, 66, a former urban planner for Stockholm, had fond memories of the gardens of her childhood in the city. “I want a garden,” she recalled constantly thinking.  So in 2006, as the couple approached retirement, they set out to build a house enveloped in greenery. The two-story house is now perched on a sloped and rocky patch in Viksberg, a secluded lakeside suburb on the southern outskirts of the city. The narrow structure bears more than a passing resemblance to the Flatiron Building in Manhattan with its triangular wedge shape. But there is one striking difference: all three facades are obscured by trellises, their pine latticework soaring higher than the house itself.  The couple moved into the house when it was completed in 2008 at the cost of 5 million Swedish kronor (about $800,000). The 1,938-square-foot structure was designed by the Stockholm architects Bolle Tham and Martin Videgard. Mr. Sjogren and Ms. Krausz have known Mr. Tham since he was a young child.  “We conceived the project as a garden including a house rather than the opposite,” Mr. Videgard said.  The house is surrounded by “not one, but three gardens,” said Mr. Sjogren, 67, a former editor of reference books. Behind the house is a manicured Japanese garden with diminutive trees, plants and pebbles encircling a miniature pond. On the sloping side of the house is an unruly garden where raspberries, strawberries and dozens of other varietals are allowed to grow wild. Framing the entrance is the manicured lawn of a traditional Swedish garden, with meticulous rows of roses, rhubarb and fragrant lavender. The interior of the home is a tribute to the couple’s lifelong passions. Off the entrance is a small, light-filled library. The walls are lined with floor-to-ceiling plywood bookshelves that contain hundreds of well-worn volumes of mostly fiction. Mr. Sjogren, a former editor at Nationalencyklopedin, the Stockholm-based publisher of the national encyclopedia, has a penchant for the darkly humorous fiction of the Swedish writer Hjalmar Bergman.  Down the short hallway from the library is the kitchen, where the sand-colored cabinetry and lime-green walls and kitchen island call to mind trunks and leaves of a tree. It is an apt theme in a residence where almost every room contains at least one, if not a dozen, potted plants, from broad-leaved foliage to cacti no larger than golf balls. The adjacent living room has a more eclectic feel. Among the hodgepodge of furnishings the couple has collected during their nearly 50 years of marriage are two glass chandeliers with floral designs, a blond piano by the Swedish piano maker Georg Bolin and angular wooden chairs and a table from the Finnish designer Alvar Aalto.  Rather than buying new furniture when they move, Ms. Krausz said the couple’s philosophy has been “more about taking care of what you’ve got, or more so, inherited.” Sliding glass doors in the living room lead to Ms. Krausz’s favorite landscape: the serene Japanese garden. “In a way, it’s a secret garden,” she said. “If you like to meditate, it’s perfect.”  One of the best vantage points, however, is from the cozy greenhouse, whose glass panels form the narrow tip of the triangular house. Since glass is hardly adequate insulation from harsh Swedish winters, fleece blankets are always draped across the caramel-colored wicker chairs from Svenskt Tenn, a Stockholm-based interior design shop. A wooden staircase leads up to the three bedrooms on the second floor, where there is also a laundry room, walk-in closets, and an indoor sauna. A pine roof deck is notably devoid of any plant life. It isn’t foliage fatigue. In a house defined by greenery, the couple said they purposely left the deck plant-free so nothing would distract from the views of the three gardens below, as well as Lake Malaren in the distance.  Ms. Krausz and Mr. Sjogren speak about their plants in a way that doting parents discuss their offspring. (They have a 41-year-old daughter, Hedda Krausz Sjogren, a theater director and producer in Stockholm.) “They’re unhappy,” Ms. Krausz said, pointing to some trees in the Swedish garden that have seen better days. And marveling at spiraling clematis vines with their bright colored buds trooping their way up the trellises, Mr. Sjogren said jokingly, “somehow, we must make them grow sideways.” Firmly tying the vine to the trellis to nudge them skyward, he added, “we have to help them climb sometimes.”
The narrow, triangular house, built in a lakeside suburb of Stockholm, has all three facades obscured by trellises and is surrounded by gardens.