My Own Personal Jungle

I study Buddhism, and perhaps some of my ideas about the worth of valuing the present time has driven me to my choice of working almost entirely with hand.  On the other hand, I retain a healthy fear of moving blades and flying balls, which is why I excelled in neither woodworking nor sports.  Anyway, I’m a bit of a hermit and enjoy passing successive days in comparative silence working on my endless list of landscape tasks, aware of the subtleties of the world around me while I saw down small trees with a double-toothed hand saw. Me and my handsaw, pruners, and poler cutter manage most of the vegetation on the property. I do rely increasingly upon motorized wheeled vehicles, such as my power wheelbarrow, rototiller, and two mowers to save my back. However, I still posses a push mower and I am not above edging with shears. The cheap electric string trimmer that I bought last summer has a 10-to-1 ratio of time spent fixing the line feet to time actually trimming something. Its failure seemed almost to prove something to me about the implicit value of work done by hand.

So I work in peace and quiet most of the time. I am, remember, surrounded by 20 acres in a rural community with only a partial view of one neighbor, so isolation is easy.  I work in the rain, in the freezing cold, and in the rare instances of hot sun. I don’t mind at all. I like the feel of my body heating up on a cold day as I take my hand saw to a small sapling. I like clipping blackberry canes with my hand shears. I’ve leveled entire swaths of the nasty vines this way; it gives me a feeling of accomplishment. I patiently cut limbs from a ladder, then carve them into pieces to decompose in piles on the ground, or place them on the fall burn pile.

Anyone who has known me is aware of my signature lack of patience for most of life’s impositions. Yet for this work, I find both patience and peace.

The men in my life seem to have little understanding for this curious approach to otherwise boring tasks. My father’s excavator is a favorite tool for accomplishing most anything, including tree removal that a chain saw could just as easily accomplish. I spend much of my time here attempting to re-educate my father and his associates, showing them how to avoid tearing up the soil, explaining why heavy equipment under tree roots is not advisable, describing how to prune properly even with an electric pole saw (which later died in action while my hand saw keeps going), and emphasizing the reasons why it is important to leave native vegetation intact. I have been called crazy, and had men shake their heads at me as I refuse the help of heavy power equipment. Whether or not they respect me, the well-trained among them now know to inquire as to whether ‘something is planted in there’ before falling a tree or taking on a mowing project. I know this place in detail now; I know what natives grow where, where the rock piles are, the nurse logs, the remnant yews and hemlocks. I protect them all.

My next project:  revitalizing the orchard. My father planted three plum and two apple trees in the late 70’s in an area that was once open but has now grown over with Douglas firs. All are now decrepit, poor produces, and two of the plums are over 30 feet tall.  Besides contemplating their replacements, the recent removal of two firs for firewood has now opened up space for about seven new trees. With this has come the realization that I now have an excuse to buy more plants. I can hardly wait.

Forest for the Trees

Winter is the time to plant and prune. I love pruning, cutting, hacking, and trimming as much as anyone, and it comprises a large part of what I do here. I seek to transform the thickets of tangled vegetation that surrounds the house into an open forest. I’d like to grow herbaceous species such as twinflower, false lily-of-the-Valley, Oregon oxalis (wood sorrel), and bunchberry, and introduce a wider variety of mid-story shrubs such as witchhazel and Viburnum sp. (e.g. high-bush cranberry) to add color in fall.  Herbaceous  understory species are almost non-existent here in part because the forest here has had no natural disturbance, such as fire, that would create open patches where smaller plants could grow.  Instead, the huckleberries have grown to small-tree proportions and along with the blackberries, blocked out anything that might have grown on the forest floor.

In pictoral terms, this is what I have:

And this is what I want:

Connecticut deciduous forest in fall - I love the openness of this forest, with its multistory composition of both large and small trees and large shrubs. Here, fothergilla and witchhazel make up the middle story. I wish to introduce these species for color.

Chase Garden in Orting - here the Douglas fir forest has been opened up to allow for trails and a lush undergrowth of natives including bear grass, kinnikinnick, and sword fern. Rhododendrons comprise a middle layer that on my place is occupied by blackberry, huckleberry, and salal.

It all starts with a hand saw and pruners.  In an hour I can clear out an area of about 400 sq ft.  10 acre – 5 acres open area =  5 acres x 43,560 sq ft per acre  = 217,800 sq ft/ 400 sq ft  per hour = 544.5 hours/8 hrs per day = 68 days.  No problem!

My first adventure in large-scale landscaping from scratch, I built this garden from land cleared for my horse arena some 30 years ago. Two years ago, about 10 yards of fill dirt were brought in by a contractor friend who needed a place to dump it. That winter, I watched the heavy clay soil become a mud hole topped with horsetail. Lots of rototilling and importing of soil has begun to  yield results.

An initial schematic for a 45' x 45' garden.

I rototilled the entire area in the summer of 2010, when the soil was dry and dusty. I made an attempt to rake it flat and in the process removed a driveway’s worth of shattered asphalt – an unexpected yield that I was able to use later for walls.  Using large nails and survey ribbon, I started with a central circle 12′ in diameter, and from that marked out the four corners. I then divided the resulting square into eight sections with four central paths 4′ wide, and four corner paths 2′ wide, each of which ends at the center. In retrospect, I should have included a pathway around the central circle to facilitate equipment access.

I originally planned to use lumber for edging.  My father had quite a few salvaged 2″ x 6″ boards of various lengths that might have served the purpose. However, this would have necessitated a great deal of digging and leveling to get the top edges of the boards even because the area is on a slight slope. I opted instead to follow the existing grade and chose rock that I could lay upon the surface. 

Last summer's inauspicious beginnings

Figuring I could gather enough rock on the property, I opted to construct the sides of each of the eight plots from 2″ to 6″ diameter rock piled together in strips 12″ wide. I quickly ran out of stones of the proper size, somewhat to my amazement. I chose instead to support my local landscape supplier with regular purchases of 800 lbs of rock.  Each stone was carefully hand picked and unloaded, one by one, in a taxing effort that took the rest of the summer. I lined each of the rock borders with newspaper, which so far has worked well to deter weeds. However, while it took considerable time and patience to set the stone properly, more time spent on filling the gaps among the larger stones might have produced a more even result.

 I began my effort at the end of the summer of 2010, and finished around September 2011 with a long winter hiatus when the ankle-deep mud prevented even casual access.  I started setting stone in early spring 2011, and worked on and off throughout the summer. Towards the end, I decided to merge two beds and three paths along the less visible back side in favor of a creating a single large bed for small flowering trees and shrubs. This decision was also driven in part by my flagging desire to keep hauling rock, and the realization that my new job was taxing my available time. At present, three katsura trees (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) line the side of the garden closest to the forest, and in the center is a Magnolia sieboldii (Oyama magnolia).  These will later be joined by a few young dogwood (Cornus florida) and redbud (Cercis canadensis).

The original clay soil was unsuitable for anything but weeds and grass, so throughout construction, I hauled in varying mixtures of bark and compost. In my zeal, I acquired a load of bad barn manure mixed with old paint flakes, likely lead-based. Thus, I have relegated that bed to non-edibles and sworn off of cheap topsoil amendments.  My favorite material is a mix of heat-treated, partly composted manure and bark I buy locally that provides a good boost of nitrogen while conditioning the soil. I also brought in a few loads of garden mix that included mushroom compost, manture, and wood shavings. I topped this with partly composed wood chips from the 10 yards I had acquired from a roadside vegetation management crew.

Battling the weeds was and continues to be an ongoing task. By August, I was putting everything that I could into the beds as I completed them in hopes of supplanting the ever-present creeping buttercup and horsetail. I planted two of the front beds with brilliant zinnias and two kinds of sunflower. They barely finished peak bloom before the rains set in, but provided a preview of the color I hope to install next year. For the long-term, each bed will be assigned various types of perennials and a few shrubs for structure.  To save money, I’ve begun populating several of them with daylilies and redhot pokers gleaned from other areas of the property, relicts of my mother’s time. A few garden sale items fit in too:  phlox and bloodred rumex from a master gardener’s sale; home-grown Jerusalum sage from seed; various herbs saved from neglect outside of a local drugstore. I’ve also planted the front three beds with mixed tulips that I hope to be photographing for next spring’s show, provided that I can save them from a marauding squirrel living in my father’s shed.

Next up will be the rock garden and rhododendron glen into which one of the central paths will lead.  

Heavenly bamboo (Nandina domestica) and heather (Erica sp.) help to conceal an electrical box.

This path will eventually lead through a rock garden and into a rhododendron glen.

Fencing was constructed from scrap and new lumber with concrete form wire. Each will support a young pinot noir grapevine bred from local stock.

 

The barn - winter 2009-10

This spring and summer, I’ve had to watch as my father’s mental decline has accelerated since I moved here two years ago.  Now, he can’t remember doctor’s appointments, seldom knows what day it is, has no memory of my birthday, and confuses the sequence of past events. One day, he lost his way to his doctor’s office. I own his property now, and I work again as a biologist to pay the taxes.

Yet still, I continue to build, plant, create, and with a drive that exceeds ambition and begins to look more like obsession. I love it, simply that. It is really all that I want to do. I trim trees and shrubs to open up the woods, plant, build rockeries, haul literally tons of bark and mulch. With Tom’s help, I maintain the garden, albeit barely. After a 12 hour including a 3 hour commute, I shed my work clothes and go out to work for another few hours until dark.

I’ve gone beyond scribbling designs; they are all in my head and I work with a silent diligence. Patience beyond patience, such as I’ve never had before.

Ownership does not confer security as my father’s care will increasingly demand resources that require my attention, money, and perhaps down the line the sale of this property.

Nevertheless, to have found something that I can unerringly do day after day without question – that is a quest that deserves my devotion. And perhaps it is in my own way a devotion to my mother’s own love of landscaping as well as to my father’s desire to remain here.

We are fortunate, those of us for whom land is a part of our lives.

In the area that was once my old horse arena, I am close to completing my hand-crafted and self-designed formal garden. The magnolia remains unscathed by deer, as does the mixed display of perennials gleaned from other parts of the property. I’ve a plan in mind, but for now, I fill the empty spaces with bits and pieces of plants that I’ve acquired until I buy what I really want – as soon as I know what it is.  In the beginning, the rocks were scrounged from the property, but, operating without an advanced plan (it’s all in my head, you see), I began gathering with no prior calculation of how much I’d need. Eventually, I was forced to begin purchasing what is known as ‘bull rock’, although I consider the rounded stones as ‘river rock’. I used lots of newspaper (Wall Street Journal, Tacoma News Tribune, the Sunday Seattle Times) to delay the weeds and laid all of the rock on top of it using guides to keep my lines straight. In a moment of advanced planning, I surveyed the area so that I have nails marking the corners and center points of the pathways. I’ve filled in the paths with crushed gravel, first about 1-2″ in size, which was free at the time, then withs smaller crushed rock from a local landscaping place. The smaller stuff has been good for sealing the rock bed liners because the dust forms an almost concrete-like layer. I’ll cap the paths with more expensive, colored gravel later on. I have added compost or horse manure to each bed, then capped it wth free bark from the local tree chipping companies. One bed, however, is covered wth bedding from a local stable laced, I noted later, with bits of ancient paint that is probably lead-based, so that will be the non-edibles bed.

There were to be eight beds – two in each of the four quadrants of the outer square that forms the garden. However, I’ve decided to be cheap and delineate only 6 beds, leaving the remaining two in the back for small flowering trees. Each bed will be anchored with a shrub or small tree that won’t outcompete the central magnolia. Katsura will line the back, in time forming a frame of golden leaves in the fall. 

Tom has suggested a hedge along the back and I’ve chose Taxus x media, or Hicks’ hybrid yew, a low-growing evergreen that will fill in while the three struggling katsura grow. The fence panels for espaliered apples and grapes will go up next.

Notice there is no sitting area because I never sit down in my gardens!

 This is my summer obsession while I keep the rest of the place weed free. However, I continue to expand my rhododendron garden, and to develop another woodland garden. Slowly, my dream takes shape, whatever time may bring.

I’m selling a portion of my father’s 20 acres, although it is technically mine now, my father having deeded it to me last week.  With a signature, I have become the owner of my mystical childhood home, even if I have been entrusted to manage it so as to support my father in his decline.  Still, there are parts that will never sell, that no one would want for they are wetlands, and no one wants to own one despite all of the current hew and cry over saving them. Just try to find a buyer for a five acre palustrine wetland. No takers here.

The buyers who approached me want a dry section of Douglas fir forest for a beautiful new house. As I walked the piece last night, I saw not a home site but all of the things that I’ve been trained to look for as a biologist. I found woodland strawberries, yellow wood violets, vanilla leaf, and service berry. There were several varieties of sedges, and miterwort. To my surprise, I discovered a tall red maple that had escaped from cultivation years before and become a leggy specimen wending its way up through the taller trees. Out of an old rotting stump a healthy hemlock sapling grew – not many of these left here. I listened to the rain fall with a soft patter on the wet leaves, long before I could feel it on my face.

I was in despair over the loss of these living things. I had wanted to keep them all for myself although I am dedicated to generating income for my father who suffers more greatly now from dementia. Several of the herbaceous species are indeed quite rare on the other 18 acres which have been heavily disturbed over the years and grow mostly weedy species. My father, a product of a generation who saw the leveling of forests as progress, likes clearing out new places and recently took out a lush patch of woods with trillium and a few other plants now rare to nonexistent elsewhere on the property. It pains me to see this happen. I often feel, as I once did with my career, that I serve other masters besides myself, and if I gave up this habitat for whatever the cost, I would somehow be happier.

How do I educate people about what I can see that so few others do? What if we spent less energy pondering the larger issues of global warming too difficult to see and too complex to grasp, and looked at the ground beneath our feet? Visual connections have greater impact, I believe, for a species such as ours. Care for what you can see and the notion spreads out to other good causes, maybe even an appreciation of the natural world and a cultivation of the habits of good land stewardship.  What if I asked the buyers to walk with me over their new acreage and introduce them to plants they’d likely never see otherwise? Would it induce them not to level the entire lot before building? Might they consider saving as much native woodland and soil as possible?

We are creatures of habitat and devote our days to faithfully recreating the environments with which we are familiar. Planning departments foster a cloned approach to everything, as do builders and road engineers and a host of others with no training or interest in science. Thus, we believe that to build a house we must first clear the lot of every last scrap of vegetation to make room for the heavy equipment that compacts the soil and destroys the roots of the trees left standing. With the house securely built, we recreate our vision of the ideal landscape in the European fashion by hauling in dirt and planting lawns surrounded by non-native species which may or may not survive with the aid of regular gardeners and the judicious application of chemicals. No native plants survive; instead, an enlightened few may restock a few selected favorites from local nurseries.

Here’s my approach: find a place to put the house. Clear only enough room for the access and the home and perhaps a patch of yard. If you want sunny spaces, buy land on ridgetops; don’t level a forest to create a beach.  Protect trees with fencing; identify and protect uncommon plant populations, forbs in particular; discourage soil removal. Minimize the footprint. Watch the contractors and enforce care in using heavy equipment and minimizing trash. Keep the places where the trilliums grow, and maintain habitat for ground nesting birds.

It matters, believe me, it really does. Here in Western Washington where plant diversity is not so great, there are comparatively common species now seldom seen because of ground disturbance. Even my father’s activties are enough to wipe out entire populations of rhizomatous (root spreading) plants that won’t come back without an adjacent source.  Instead, random land clearing creates zones suitable for the weedier species such as trumpet vine, dewberry, and a host of non-natives like Himalayan blackberry. To have biodiversity, we have to minimize disturbance, and we have to do it on our own land. Assuming that a few government parks and reserves will suffice is not enough. Those are mere life rafts in a churning sea of destruction. Everybody has to be in on this.

I don’t know if I’ll have the courage to approach these people and show them what I know of this place. Perhaps they’ll politely decline, or politely take me up on it and humour me with nods and smiles until I get off their land and let them do as they please. Yet it might do me good to acknowledge my own beliefs once in a while, as conveniently as I subjugate them to the needs of others. It could make a difference, if only to me.

I. Materials – low cost goes a long way with 10 acres

fresh wood chips for garden top dressing and covering weedy areas

A.  Wood chips – get to know the local road crews; they want to save time and money by dumping chips from roadside brush chipping operations as close to the work site as they can. I know one crew that keeps a notebook of signed permission forms from residents who want loads. I now possess a small mountain of chips resulting from this approach. Of course, there are drawbacks to consider:

Fresh chips can only be used for top dressing lest they draw too much nitrogen from the soil. Larger piles, if left alone for a few months, will generate sufficient heat to compost the center. My current pile is so large it generates its own heat, which it gives off in the form of fine fumaroles of steam that give it the appearance of a lopsided volcano.

Fresh chips can have fungi and disease, so you take your chances. Most of the material in my pile is from smaller roadside vegetation less likely to have root-rot or canker-carrying madrone chips. Heat within the pile will likely kill anything inside. Last year, the bottom of the pile was nicely mulched by the time that I reached it, and was happily growing a crop of little white mushrooms. Consider also if the local government sprays herbicide, although usually this will break down rather quickly.

            Conifer chips are best, for they break down more slowly.

B. Gravel – in exchange for using my father’s driveway as a staging area, the local utility company gave us 5 yards of crushed gravel perfect for garden paths. Although grey and rather non-descript in appearance, it can be topped with colored materials later.

C. Logs – many people want to give away large, awkward pieces of wood. Last summer, I worked with a Tacoma homeowner to wrestle several hundred pounds of beautiful cedar logs into my truck that he’d left out by the sidewalk for the taking.

half of a utility wire spool about 5' diameter will make a patio table with a hand-cast cement pedestal

D. Crates, pallets, and the sides of large wire spools are all fine building materials for compost piles, chicken pens, and picnic tables. All of these items have come from local hardware and construction material stores that typically allow them to be taken for free. Pallet wood is particularly good if carefully chosen: I have encountered chunks of oak used in their construction. The electrical spool side had been left along a county access road adjacent to a closed-down utility yard. The hole in the center will make a great place for a shade umbrella once I refinish it.

E. Brick – mine came from the demolition of a church in my mother’s neighborhood that piled it up for local residents to take. It has provided material for at least one small patio.

F. Pole timber – all over the place in my case. I do amateur logging with a bucksaw and have all that I need for deer fencing and plant bed lining.

G. Glass – I buy my own in the form of attractive wine and sparkling water bottles, but I have been told that vintners are always looking to give away empties. When broken and thrown into a cement mixer with a little grit, you can have your own ground glass for pots and walkways.

H. Cardboard – I became a cardboard box scrounge queen before I moved here by diligently patrolling local eateries, liquor stores, appliance and furniture stores for boxes of all shapes and sizes for packing. Now, free cardboard works well as a weed deterrent when topped with bark. Newspaper serves the same purpose and is considerably more flexible than cardboard for small areas.

ground cover growing in clay drain pipes, both courtesy of two very generous gardeners

I. Manure – There is always some to be had at local horse farms, composted and otherwise. Goat manure has proved to be quite useful as fertilizer, being pre-packaged into convenient, slow-release pellets, but the cost of the goats outweighed this advantage. I’d rather befriend a goat farmer.

J. Plants – Join any gardening group, or volunteer at a local garden and you will have bequeathed upon you large numbers of free plants. I’ve obtained all manner of trees, groundcovers and shrubs in this manner. Taking a horticulture class in a botanical garden one summer netted me not only plants and bulbs, but free bamboo poles too. Plant salvage events are also great ways to get native plants.

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I have also been known to pick up dropped lumber on roadsides, take curbside freebies (signed of course), and got two free 5’ x 4’ pine shelf sets from a giveaway at a local big box hardware store. I’ve dived into dumpsters for large pieces of free carpet and flooring, and gathered ground granite from roadside slides.

Just as when I did biological surveys, I maintain a search image for my prey. As I drive, I operate under a subconscious directive to look out for freebies, and I do frequent u-turns to check them out, to the consternation of those who ride with me. Having a truck with a camper shell is helpful for this kind of endeavor, as I can usually pull over and pack in just about anything that I encounter.

When my truck proves too small, I drive home and bring my father’s open-bed Chevy. He doesn’t mind, having himself conferred the propensity for gathering on me either genetically or by example. This property harbors the wealth of a lifetime of collecting:  scrap lumber, aluminum sheeting, roofing felt by the roll, pipe both plastic and steel, and a wealth of cans, buckets, cement forms and tire hubs for use as planters. When I get an idea, I need only look through this extensive collection of what some might call ‘junk’ to glean materials for my next project.

II.        Methods

Here are a few lessons that I’ve learned during my time here, some critical, some merely helpful:

A. Always wear goggles when pruning, piling brush, hammering, stapling, or trimming and cutting anything with any sort of tool. Two scratched corneas will attest to days of pain and hours of time spent in urgent care for want of goggles.

B. Use a back support as a reminder not to lift two heavy pallets at once. It would have saved me a week spent unable to bend over, and a future of lower back pain.

C. Weed as you go about other projects. I love to weed in short batches of about 15 minutes before my attention span gives out and I migrate to other things. I also grab weeds as I’m walking by a bed. It saves considerable time and tedium, for I’ve no patience for a full day of such tasks.

D. Pull garden weeds in winter (a Pacific Northwest tip). I’m attempting a no-till approach this spring, which may be more successful than I’d first thought because even tough clumps of grass come up easily by hand when the ground is saturated.

E. Blackberries can be defeated by gentle means. Time and patience and a small pair of hand clippers are all that you need. Seriously. I’ve killed entire patches that way. I trim them as I walk down the driveway (with my goggles) to get the newspaper; I spend time on hot summer days in the cool shade trimming them; I go out in winter when it’s frozen and the vegetation is dry and cut away. It’s a very peaceful activity and highly satisfying when completed. Start with the outer vines and cut them back in short pieces until you can move into the thicket and get the base. A few well-time returns in fall and early spring will deplete the plants’ resources and eventually eliminate them.

F.  Native vegetation can be shaped to look cultivated. This is an option for those of us faced with large thickets of native vegetation that are beautiful yet untamed. I have found that clipping away the lower branches of huckleberries, or cutting back snarled limbs of old-growth salmon berry can produce a more artistic look to the wilderness, and bring the edge of a woodland into continuity with planted beds. I also intend to create spaces in the woods for the occasional colorful non-native, such as hydrangea or dogwood ‘Mid-Winter Fire’. 

A native evergreen huckleberry pruned to show structure.

G. Observe a place for at least four seasons before making substantial changes. This was the advice of an older woman I once knew who owned a small farm.  I keep a lot of images in my head of things that I’ve observed about this property that inform my later decisions for designs. Often, I’ll change my mind many times about what to do with a site as I note the soil saturation, observe the amount of summer shade, or consider how often I visit an area and at what angle I usually view it. Landscaping takes time, contrary to how it is often billed to the public.

H. Have an understanding partner who also loves to garden. I’ve been quite lucky in that regard!

Tom helping me out at yet another plant sale. I've benefited greatly from his generous support and collaboration.

This year will be a good one for the garden; I’ve many ideas that I’ve gathered from my local gardening community, plus a wealth of new knowledge from my classes and readings. As I watch the sky for cloud breaks, I am eager to emerge from my den and start working once more.

The top of the hill at the start of the rock wall project

The highest point on the property – at about 130 feet above sea level – has been known as the ‘top of the hill’ since I was a child. It was part of our parlance for the property, as was the upper and lower gardens, the lake, and the little field. At first, it was a cleared area before the place where the barn – which was originally slated to be the main house – was built, then later became my horse arena, and after I’d grown up and left, became the site of the shed. The area around it metamorphosed into compacted fill topped with weedy grass and briars, until my father had about 20 yards of clay loam dumped upon it and spread out. Now, it is the future site of my biggest garden project yet…the top of the hill garden.

A few days later and a few months to go

Perhaps with time a name will suggest itself, but for now, this hopelessly muddy spot has become the focus of my dreams if only because I must view it from my kitchen and office windows every day. There is nothing pretty about it, not the mud, and certainly not the dull green electrical and phone boxes that sit before it.  As with many things, my attempts at organized logic in the planning of my landscaping has once again taken a backseat to those sites that cry out for a plan, or in this case, a disguise.

So, leaving behind the half-finished rhododendron garden below the deck, the uncompleted backyard by the greenhouse, the yet-to-be formed iris pond before the lake, and the unrestored retention ponds by the driveway, I have put my energies behind those scenes that have proved the greatest mote in my eye. This time last year, it was the disaster in front of the barn, this year, it is the muddy stretch that I see over each morning’s cup of coffee.

This space is not the cheapest of my remodels. The heavy clay topsoil studded with chunks of asphalt driveway and bits of horsetail was free, I’ll admit, but  in retrospect, the damage that it caused will have cost me far more. At this point I’m one 7-foot Oyama magnolia ($50 on sale), 1.5 yards of compost ($16 per half yard), and two loads of rock (about $32 each) into this project. The three flanking katsuras were free, but at about 6” in height, they will necessitate that I live a long and healthy life to see to an eye-catching size.  The wood and wire fence on the north side to hold my espaliered apple trees will run about $100. The future bedding plants are anyone’s guess at this point.

My plan is a 45’ square plot with a 12’ diameter circle in the center, and two sets of intersecting paths: the diagonals will be 2’ wide, the perpendiculars 4’. Rather than using wood, which must either be treated (dangerous) or cedar (expensive), I have chosen native stone of various sizes to line a series of eight triangular beds.  About half of the stone I’ve gathered from the surrounding property, but the loss of the back 20 acres has left me more depauperate than my mother, who had the original 40 acres to scrounge for the rock she used to build hundreds of feet of rock walls. So I cheat with a yard  purchased at a local quarry, hauling each rock  to its chosen place, siting them upon sheets of newspaper to keep down the weeds.

If hoeing your own garden is an exercise in slow food, then setting over 200 feet of low rock wall is an exercise in very slow landscaping. It is a thoughtful enterprise, however, and one conducive to soul-searching and retrospective considerations of times past.  Hampered by the rain and mud, my work has been intermittent, but I already have a hazy outline in my mind of what it will look like. I see the yellow glow of fall katsuras as a canvas for the last bright leaves of the magnolia, surrounded by beds of alternating food and foliage. The foremost beds will be low, perhaps clad in neat rows of green herbs, and flanked by beds of dutch iris. The back beds can be higher, favoring taller perennials of complimentary colors – perhaps a UW Husky theme of purple and gold one year, or of pastels the next. There will be a few anchor points in each bed, perhaps low neat rows of some well-hedged evergreen perennials to soften the rock. The paths will be lined with bright gravel in blondes or perhaps mixed reds to pick up the colors of the adjacent buildings and the bright red pyracantha berries from the espaliered shrubs that will press against the shed wall.

Of course, the pattern of the beds will lend themselves to alternating colors and patterns, and the location is one of the warmest and sunniest on the property. I can envision beds of colored peppers in a good year, highlighted by the red and yellow stems of Swiss chard ‘Bright Lights’:  it will be a veritable vegetable cornucopia. Of course the deer will come, but my high mesh fences, nearly invisible at a distance, should serve to deter.

The key to surviving the cold, grey winters of bare ground and dampened dreams is the vision that wavers before my mind’s eye when I gaze out the kitchen window. I’ve always had a gift for visions, for being able to close my eyes and see a picture before I even start to draw it, or imagine the framework for a study before the planning stages begin. Thus, where others see mud and scrappy woods full of briars, I am walking through my own vision of the future overlaid on the present so that I can smile and keep weeding and trimming and setting rock in the rain and the cold, while others watch and wonder.

Magnoila sieboldii surrounded by deer-proof mesh

Northwest forests have lots of trees but comparatively low diversity. Mutual exclusivity of habitats (cedars like it wet, Douglas firs dry) ensures that only a handful is common in any one location. So it is that learning the names of trees in Washington State takes a day when one might devote a week or more to the many deciduous trees of the eastern hardwood forests. It is perhaps even a greater blow, then, upon learning of the many diseases of trees that manifest themselves in our cool, wet climate.

The list of bacteria and fungi that infect and kill trees is indeed staggering, to the point where I wonder how anything lives here. Add soil compaction, incompetent pruning, and overwatering from lawn installations, and I’m genuinely surprised that anything remains.

I just completed an introductory arboriculture class, and as proof that a little education can go a long way, so it is that I cast a newly critical eye upon the trees of this place, probing them to see if they are besot with some fungi that might explain a lean, a bark split, or an apparent failure to thrive. Everything seems ripe for vertical pruning, since nearly every tree on this property has been affected by roads, wind throw, or tractor operations.

My goal is to save what is left. But what to do with the manifestly ill, and how do I treat the only slightly sick? I am one small woman with a handsaw, and the majority of my efforts are divided between convincing my father and friends not to drive here or park there, and doing my own bit of forestry to weed out the weaker trees and prune the broken limbs.

As I wander the woods, cutting the smallest trees for posts, I have found a few trees that stand out either for their degradation, personality, or comparative rarity.

In the former category is a Pacific madrone (Arbutus menziesii) with a girth at 5 feet of about 6 feet. It is partly hollow in the trunk from the ground up to about 4 feet. Around the hollow, dense, healthy tissue holds the tree up to its full height of about 80 feet. It sustains massive limbs and bright glossy green leaves, but as I poke my head into the hollow, I smell the scent of decay. Looking up, I notice what appears to be a healed-over seam running up the trunk. My father is ready to axe the thing, but I argue for its life. It is, after all, a madrone, known to stand for years even as a snag.  According to a paper that I read on madrone disease, there are three that responsible for most madrone tree deaths:  (Phytophthora cactorum), Arbutus canker (Nattrassia mangiferae) and madrone canker (Fusicoccum aesculi) (see Relationships of Pacific Madrone (Arbutus menziesii) Pathology To Soils and Land Use, Chapter 7 ‘Diseases of Madrone’ by Marianne Elliot at http://soilslab.cfr.washington.edu/madrone/.) Cankers produce a split in the bark that may continue to heal along the edges creating a dark, ragged gap down to the wood surrounded by curled up bark. The stuff spreads by wind-borne spores, so leaving such trees in the woods, or lying upon the ground, gives it opportunity to proliferate. Of course, well-kept trees may pose greater resistance than those that have been subjected to compaction or over-watering, a common problem in lawns.

There are many madrones on the upland portions of the property, and so unusual and beautiful they are that I perish the thought of removing any of them. Few now are the large ones, but the small spindly trees are common and take on a curious array of contorted shades, like this photo of what my father calls the ‘golden arch’ , a tree that has overhung the driveway like this for over 20 years. Another tree just off the edge of the property on what was once a part of my father’s original 40 acres sports seven trunks surrounding a hole where an original tree might once have grown.

Root rot has overtaken this poor hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), and many others on the property. I understand that this disease has begun to occur with increasing frequency among hemlocks in the lowlands, such that even the few seedlings that occur here are likely doomed to be overtaken by the disease before ever achieving the voluminous sizes that they can on the coast.  I nurture the few that I find, but this tree has already lost 20 feet of its top and will need to come down before it hits the garage. The punky, sodden wood around the base of the tree shows the plate-like formations typical of laminate root rot.

Root rot also threatens one of my favorite Northwest trees, the graceful Pacific dogwood (Cornus nuttallii), which provides a relief from the green with long white tresses cast against the Douglas firs in early spring. We have a few, though not enough, and my attempts to plant bare root plants failed last year. I wonder if I shouldn’t plan in areas of root rot, but with two live trees on the property over 30 years of age, I am tempted to again pursue this.

Rangy willows are everywhere, even in the drier uplands. Likely Scouler’s willows (Salix scouleriana), they are tall and rangy with narrow crowns and awkward limbs that grow up then bend out into contorted shapes. I don’t suspect disease but rather a gradual senescence that seems to overtake these trees at a comparatively small size, usually about 10 inches dbh. They love to shed large limbs that hang upon the tree until nearly rotten. This is fortunate since they tend to want to fall into the driveway where they conveniently render themselves into pieces for easy haul-away. I have attempted to hand saw these but they are durable and like to hang up my bow saw so that I have to stomp about and curse until it comes free.

hope this cedar is none the worse for wear after this episode

Finally, there are the cedars, the gentle giants from which I occasionally borrow strips of bark to tie things together. These are relative immune to the diseases that infect other trees in their habitat, but they have large, shallow root mats that are continually conflicting with my father’s road building aspirations.  Meanwhile,  tenants delight in parking and walking across the roots of one that grows in the back yard. Much of my time is also devoted to pleading their cause and encouraging alternative routes around their expansive root systems.

So much of what I thought I’d be doing was landscaping – designing, planting, mulching, creating displays, arranging rock.  I paid little attention to the forest  until I began to spend time here walking past the same trees day after day, reading and studying them until I began to see them in ways that I never had before.  Now, I have begun to focus upon conditioning the forest that makes up the majority of my garden and dictates the success or failure of my own humble efforts.

I keep trying to get the message out to those fair-weather gardeners that there is so much to do during the winter you need never stop thinking about your landscape. Unless you’d rather curl up by a warm fire.

This last freeze for instance (Western Washington experienced rare sub-freezing temperatures Thanksgiving week – we got to 18⁰ F here), I was out in a fleece hat and a few warm layers busily taking advantage of the frozen ground to cut branches and trim native vegetation. For once, I could work in the bushes without feeling like I was taking a swim. The cold was exhilarating, and I got a good workout with my bow saw. The result is one pile of material for chipping, and another pile of Douglas fir poles for use in building deer fencing.

This plastic creation is a propagaton tent that holds stem cuttings for rooting and salvaged Oregon grape. The structure is built from two pallets held up with pots. The plastic reduces transpiration from the developing plants and protects from frost.

Today, it’s raining hard, but I’m proud of the fact that I have a collection of cuttings stocked away in my planting shed along with flats of seed that I’ve collected from various locations. Those who fear the term ‘propagation’ ought to consider the immensity of the savings to be had from the minimal effort that it takes:  recycled plastic containers, some good starter mix (or make your own from peat moss, sand, and perlite), a bottle of rooting hormone, and a handful of twigs from your favorite shrubs. Suddenly, my single Viburnum cinnamomifolium will become 24 if all goes well. I hope to tuck these and a few Hydrangea macrophyllum shoots  into spaces along the driveway to provide color and create a new textural layer to the understory. Meanwhile, those handfuls of seeds that I’ve snatched all summer long from grasses, maple trees, and perennials that I like are now in pots.

Meanwhile, I have a sheet of paper tacked to my window and have been filling in the elements of my grand property plan with pencil. Using a plan map, I have drawn in the existing structures like buildings and driveways, and will fill in with images of my imagined results, small as they will be given the scale of my drawing. But by using my CAD software, I can turn each of these smaller areas into a detailed plan map, and with Photoshop I can create my results in the form of photograph.

Other fun things I like to do to keep in the gardening spirit in winter:

Seed Catalogs – I’ve gone through my Nichols nursery catalog and have a list for purchase. In addition, I’ve already plotted out my garden on a notepad during moments of downtime during the day. In fact, I highly recommend carting a stenopad about to sketch moments of inspiration. For those who want to go further, buy a book on canning (Ball has some good ones) and figure out how many people you are planning to feed and how much of the crop you will need to preserve. That should fill a few winter evenings.

Plant Salvage – Yesterday, I attended my first plant salvage event here in Gig Harbor  organized by the Native Plant Salvage Alliance. A dozen or so of us thrashed about the bushes of a multi-acre proposed development digging every fern, huckleberry, and Oregon grape we could reach. My haul nearly filled my pickup and I’ve been busy ever since potting up the weak and planting out the strong.

Sword fern (Polystichum munitum) from the plant salvage.

Weeding – My garden is much easier to weed when the ground is moist, but I usually like to wait for a few dry days to minimize soil compaction. By spring, I’ll have nothing that I will need to till. This includes blackberry clearing too.

Planting New Acquisitions – I’m still gamely plotting another attempt at blueberry growing despite my battles with deer last year, and I’ve got a good spot in the garden for more lingonberry.

Deer Fencing – My fencing of choice lately has been fine plastic mesh of the sort used to deter birds, and homemade fence posts from small Douglas fir saplings that I cut myself.  With three or four posts and a strip of mesh, I can create enclosures large enough for plant growth and small enough to prevent deer entry. This stuff seems to work as well as the cylindrical cages of stock fence that I was using, plus it is much easier to install, is nearly invisible, and doesn’t topple over in the wind and the rain. It is also a lot cheaper.

Moving Things Around – The more that I learn about horticulture, the more that I realize the results of my poor planting decisions. I take advantage of the winter dormancy to dig small plants and shrubs and put them into roomier accommodations.

Building Up Mulch – In the Northwest we can still see the ground in winter, so any day is a good day to rake leaves and collect dead plant material for the mulch pile. I will also be going to my local horse farm to get manure, although this time I’m getting the fresh stall cleanings from a pile that I hope does not have lead paint in it. I’m willing to wait a few months for it to break down in my compost pile, adding the heat necessary to hasten the process of decay.

Amateur Logging – I continue my attempts to apply my nascent concepts of forestry management to this woodlot by singling out small firs and straggling trees for removal. The strongest saplings go to my pole pile for my fencing needs.

This sample is from a source that underlies at least an acre of the lake. It is pure clay good enough for modeling.

Play in the Clay – The lake is loaded with it. A few scoops from the banks yields enough for a few pottery projects or a good stabilization material for fence posts.

With so much to do, I seldom spend a day indoors.

the dark blue berries the evergreen huckleberry stay on until frost

The permaculture/sustainable food movement has a point when they note that wild berries are better in the long run than domestic ones. The energy that cultivated species such as blueberries may produce large yields, but at the expense of valuable resources that would be best conserved by harvesting locally. Furthermore, the deer prefer the soft, tasty domestics that may have lost some of their chemical protections in exchange for producing larger fruit.

So, as I waited for the second and third years of growth on my blueberries, currants, gooseberries, and raspberries, I spent the waning months of summer rediscovering the exotic flavor and comparative abundance of our wild evergreen huckleberry, Vaccinium ovatum.

Of the 20 acres, about 7 acres consist of Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) forest with an understory of evergreen huckleberry, many of which exceed at least 20 years in age with trunks of up to 2 inches diameter. Salal (Gaultheria shallon) comprises the next largest category of vegetative cover. These species form the underlying structure of any landscaping that I will want to do, and I have considered very carefully the best way in which to approach their visual management. I now also want to factor in harvest potential as well in hopes of capturing an emerging market for wild fruits.

A thicket of huckleberry and salal beneath invasive English hawthorn (Craetagus monogyna), native madrone (Arbutus menziesii) and Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii)

My mother, an amateur naturalist, had once hypothesized that huckleberry might die off eventually if not kept in check by fire. Studies by USDA seem to bear this out by characterizing the vegetation of this area has having been subject to a relatively frequent fire regime. To implement her belief that cutting back would stimulate growth, my mother ‘brushed’ the forest lot surrounding the house by cutting back the shrubs severely at the base. Evidence of her activity can be seen today as I stoop to examine the flush of new canes that emerged after this treatment, creating an even worse thicket effect even after 30 years.

My goal is somewhat more refined: I wish to reduce the overall height of the shrubs to allow a view through the forest not currently possible. I’d also like to allow informal paths for strolling, and be able to introduce more ferns and other Pacific Rim species from the genera Rhododendron, Gaultheria, Pieris, Styrax, and others. Natives will fill out the palette of potential diversity now lacking on the property, while the colors offered by introduced species will add highlights to the otherwise monotonous sea of green. I envision paths that will entice the curious explorer into the woods, moving from one patch of color to another, perhaps past an oakleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) here, or a wash of foam flower there, through a small wetland glade, and out into a small Douglas fir prairie with a bench.

Hacking back the jungle is just the beginning. But hack is too harsh a word: I want to learn how best to prune both for views and for fruit. As I register for a pruning class at my community college, I experiment outside with various techniques. First, I try headcuts of various sorts to top out huckleberry exceeding 10 feet. I hope to encourage more branching to thicken and round out the plants rather than letting them straggle on into the lower canopy. On smaller shrubs, I selectively remove canes from the bottom to thin and ‘lift’ them, creating open spaces beneath that will allow the salal to grow as the ground cover I’d like it to be rather than the snarl of leafless branches it has now become to compete with the huckleberry. I’ll also be noting the comparative fruiting capability of my various approaches to see which approach works best for encouraging production. Many of the large shrubs continue to produce clusters of large fruits, through they are often scattered around the bush and are difficult to reach. Observations that I’ve made of heavily pruned huckleberry suggest that fruiting is not compromised, although production seems to occur on wood at least one year old. So I leave enough to provide berries for next summer through a process of gradual shaping.

The Chase Garden in Orting, Washington is my mental template for my overall approach to forest understory management. The Chases, now both deceased, created an incredible 5-acre garden at their home on the top of a terrace looking out over Mount Rainier. The couple integrated woodlands with formal plantings that allow the visitor to walk along narrow, informal paths through open Douglas fir forests, rhododendron gardens, and glades of alpine ground cover. As I look over the tangled thickets of my environment, I overlay a picture of what a healthy, productive, and aesthetically pleasing forest might look like and hope that as I continue to read, take classes, and conduct my empirical work, I will be able to balance the three in a way that may inspire similar efforts elsewhere.