My Own Personal Jungle

OK, we’re not Vermont, but if you squint your eyes on a gloomy day in Western Washington, you can find color out there besides green. Anyway, with some artistic contributions to the garden, you can certainly make the best of it.

Witch hazel (Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Jelena’)

Cherry leaves

Eastern cherry trees in the garden

Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis)

Himalayan blackberry (Rubus discolor) 

Red dahlias

Pyracantha koidzumii ’Victory’

Japanese blood grass (Imperata cylindrica ‘Red Baron)

Big leaf maple (Acer macrophylla)

Campanula and Japanese maple leaves

This will be my first winter in WA in two years, and already my instinctive rainfall calculations are off.  My carefully planted woodland garden, intended in part to provide a buffer zone to capture driveway runoff before it reached house, has instead become a minature Mississippi. 

A mature cedar tree under which this area was planted  justified my refusing to add soil to elevate this part of the yard above the side yard that runs to the south side of the house. Once the front yard was done and the roots partly compacted on that side from the excavator back in June, I figured it best to leave the poor tree alone. Cedars have a network of shallow roots that are easily damaged, and I was concerned that the weight of a few more inches of sil might suffocate them.  Instead, I placed about two inches of much lighter mulched wood chips and horse manture  over the area and edged it with a low rock wall to hold the material back off of the side yard, which was about six inches lower.  These few inches, I felt, would absorb any surface runoff.

Front yard with excavator, June 2009

However, even before full soil saturation was acheived, a hard overnight rainfall October 17 was enough to flood my little garden. What went wrong?  The amount of water collected over about 70 feet of open driveway at a 0.5% gradient combined with soil compaction and a lack of vegetation probably combined to overwhelm the buffering capacity of my short strip of mulch.  Although I had planted a lace-cap hydrangea, two Pieres ‘Mountain Fire‘ and a few sword ferns, it was not enough to slow the surface flow.  Subsequently, both the volume and velocity of the water was sufficient carve a drainage through the rock wall and down into the back  yard where it disappeared into the septic drainfield.

As I stalked about the yard in the pouring rain with my camera, I pondered my options. I had been considering installing a small reflecting pond surrounded by vegetation in the path of the current flood. That, however, would not be sufficient to absorb the flow.  Digging out a small retention pond would be  infeasible if I want to protect the cedar tree. I tend to avoid berms as a way of delaying the inevitable (kind of like pushing rocks uphill, really), so I ruled out shunting the water further along the drive and into woods. Filling the area with vegetation will probably be the only way to baffle the flow and keep it stationary long enough to sink into the ground before it reaches the back yard and drainfield.  I need a rain garden.

According to a University of Rhode Island website on sustainable landscaping (raingarden.htm),  a rain garden “is a natural or dug shallow depression designed to capture and soak up stormwater runoff from your roof or other impervious areas around your home like driveways, walkways, and even compacted lawn areas…The rain garden is planted with suitable trees, shrubs, flowers, and other plants allowing runoff to soak into the ground and protect water quality.” 

Planting dense grasses or multi-stemmed, creeping vegetation should protect the surface from channelization and the give the water time to soak in.  My observations the morning after the heavy rainfall confirmed that the soil quickly absorbed the water after the rain ceased, despite the relatively high clay content.  This may change as winter progresses and the soil reaches saturation, but experimentation with other temporary methods of water baffling, such as pieces of wood, may prove that slowing the flow will be enough.  Some calucations of slope, anticipated runoff volume, and soil absorption capacity based upon composition will aid my work if I feel like playing engineer for a day.  Things are far too wet right now for planting, but I’m already designing a plan for spring.

I think it’s the combination of problem-solving, geology, engineering, botany, and creativity that makes this enterprise sooo much more fun than my previous paying job!

I came up with the idea of a winter vegetable garden while nosing about in the old barn where my father had dumped a random assortment of junk, including a box of books from which I’d gradually been extracting all of the most interesting delicacies. I had figured it was time to pack up the rest to donate to the library when I came across a little paperback at the bottom entitled WINTER GARDENING IN THE MARITIME NORTHWEST: COOL SEASON CROPS FOR THE YEAR-ROUND GARDENER by Binda Colebrook (Rev. ed. Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1998). I read it over the period of a few days and was inspired. 

The barn - a landscaping tale of its own and the site of the winter garden

 To date, I had always associated ‘winter’ and ‘garden’ with a drab mess of slimy plants moldering in the garden by about the beginning of October.  At that point, I would quit weeding and more or less give up hope.  But this book bespoke confidently of the possibility of tasty greens, crispy kales, and tangy beets. It even sounded remotely…cozy: growing and then picking greens in the dead of winter to feed the family fresh salads.  Determined to do it right, I took the rare step of planning my purchases in considerable detail and – not to skimp on just any seeds – I went to an online seed vendor (Nichols Garden Nursery in Salem OR - a most excellent choice for price, selection, and timeliness) and purchased one package each of the following:

CABBAGE – EARLY JERSEY WAKFIELD Heirloom

CORN SALAD – MACHOLONG

KALE – RED RUSSIAN Heirloom

ONION – EVERGREEN HARDY WHITE BUNCHING

RADISH – RELISH CROSS HYBRID

Carefully following the instructions in the book, I then selected the ideal site:  a spot protected from north winds, sunny in the morning, and not in a low area where the cool night air might freeze it.  The solution was a weedy area in front of  the barn-turned-studio where I laid out a simple 10′ x 6′ frame of untreated 2×12’s and added a about a yard of  5-way soil mix and rotted manure from a generous horse owner.  

The winter garden as of 10/4/09

The seeds arrive in the mail around August 20,  and I had them in the ground by the second week of September. By October 4, they were up and growing strong – the largest leaves in the photo are the radishes, which got a quick start followed by the kale, corn salad, and beets.  In fact, I was rather surprised by the rapid germination, which may have been the result of lingering summer warmth and occasional light rainfall which produced a crop faster than I was able to get in early June (see ‘Yard as Garden’).

This would be a happy tale except that out of the blue, hoofed disaster struck. The goats, with whom I have been fighting a running battle to keep fenced out the yard, escaped as they often do and (sob!) swept through my garden.  The biggest and showiest got their attention, leaving me without radish or kale, unless a miracle happens and these tender annuals can regrow their missing leaves. Apparently goats have a knack for nibbling the tops of things without the tearing motion used by horses and cows that would otherwise uproot the entire plant. Thus, a goat-grazed plant usually retains a skeletal frame of stems without any leaves.  Of course, there is always reseeding and the hope of another quick germination before the frost. That same day, they also razed my new Virginia creeper in a gallon pot, again taking only the leaves.  The warnings of a poison ivy -like rash were unheeded by the goats, who survived with no apparent ill effects.  

In the aftermath of my loss,  I spent the better part of a day and a half repairing the fences necessary to contain the hoofed menaces, but for now must face the startling gaps in my winter garden.

My next challenge will be the frost, which will be coming soon I think. Saturday night was clear and a cold 38 degrees. Realizing the challenge to my carpentry skills, I’m procrastinating for a while before constructing a cold frame of wood and plastic. In the meantime, I’m keeping the goats occupied consuming blackberry leaves and their most favorite food, Douglas fir branches.

Soils Management

The situation that I face here is somewhat unique in that the property immediately surrounding the house is forested. I am not, therefore, dealing with the concerns of imported, compacted soils that usually inform the decisions of the gardener on the urban lot. Rather, I am surrounded by disturbed native soils that have been cleared of native vegetation and allowed to grow all manner of invasives.

My decisions are thus: chop up the soil and add amendments to create a nice, smooth planting surface, or remove undesired species by hand and disturb only the immediate area necessary for planting.

As an ecologist, I identify strongly with the latter approach, particularly in areas where the soils have been allowed to settle and form a rich humus top layer. In many instances, the predominant ground cover is moss, through which small herbaceous plants grow protected from the damage of raindrops and the drying effects of the summer drought.

In other places, a dense layer of fir needles creates thin but effective mulch nurturing a community of microorganisms that keep the underlying soil moist and fertile. Often while I am installing plants near a natural border, I will take a scoop or two of the topsoil from an undisturbed area and place it in the hole in lieu of potting mixture. 

Removing non-native species, in particular Himalayan blackberry, while preserving forest soil integrity has become a time-consuming process, but it not without its rewards. In fact, I take a curious pleasure in wading into a thicket higher than my head armed only with gloves and bypass shears and clipping the canes down to the ground. Perhaps it is part of the simian nature to want to clip and pull things, much like chimps grooming each other’s fur. Whereas lawnmowing or watering are chores that quickly tax my admittedly limited patience, I can stand for hours complacently chopping briars.

The results in the areas where I have implemented this practice have been good. Leafy forbs such fringecup (Tellima grandiflora) and youth-on-age (Tolmiea menziesii) have emerged from areas once dominated by dense thickets of briars. Ferns appear to enjoy the light as well. Furthermore, as I trim, I do a plant survey of what lies beneath so that I can easily avoid anything that I want to preserve. Based upon my personal experience as a biologist, I recognize that the plant diversity here is quite low, and getting lower as more invasives enter areas that have been previously disturbed. There are, for instance, very few populations of fringecup left here, or of the few small clusters of coral root (Corallorhiza maculata) that I have located here. Finding and preserving them will be a big part of my personal conservation plan for the property.

Goats are another option, but these cute little cud chewers tend to prefer already open areas, perhaps a function of their innate desire to avoid predation in dense vegetation. They will not wade into a brush and blackberry canes unless constricted only to that habitat. Subsequently, I encounter them each day in their half-acre pen contentedly chewing their cud in a sunny dust wallow of their own creation while the briars threaten to take over the garden at the other end.

I will be the first to admit that this approach to soil conservation is slow, and as I do my six-month progress review with my camera, I feel as though I have achieved very little. In many areas around the house, the weeds still encroach, the areas I have landscaped have not reached maturity, or some of the plants have not met expectations and will need to be moved.  Meanwhile, I struggle to assimilate the principals of design and apply them to my unplanned, off-the-cuff ideas. In many ways, I am more comfortable when I step off into the back 20 leaving behind the world of the manipulated landscape and entering the forest ecosystem that I know and love.

 Chloe – registered Oberhasli doe

Here is where I come to realize that reading and comprehending are often further apart than one might think. Believing the stories that goats make excellent ‘brush hogs’, I acquired two on September 7 with the idea that I could use them to graze back the Himalayan blackberry thickets that pervade the back 20. Prior to getting them, I read selected websites written by experienced handlers who spoke of the differences between sexes, what vaccinations are necessary, and what they should and should not eat. A price was paid for the goats, and the associated accoutrements, including durable rubber tubs, goat feed, loose salt, leads, collars, and a galvanized bucket for milking the doe that had recently weaned a kid. Money and time was also put into a shed my father built, and a fence that we worked to put up as a small holding pen. 

The first day, one crawled under the fence. The second day, they learned to jiggle the latch and open the gate. By the end of the first week, I had learned why people told me that staking out was not such a great idea for goats. Tied to tires, tree trunks, or fence posts, together or separately, it mattered not. Within the hour, slender legs were hopelessly entwined with rope or cable, or the ropes were wrapped a dozen times around tree trunks, pallets, or clumps of fern. Every few hours I was out disentangling them.

Daisy - Oberhasli/Boer doe

Trying my hand at goat psychology, I let them run loose. Given 19 acres of woods and blackberries, they chose my garden spread by the house every time. They nipped off the dahlia heads, peed on the sidewalk, and tumbled pellets in the driveway. Perplexed, I went back to staking them out for partial days after I’d finished my morning work. One morning as I walked out to feed them, I was greeted by the site of a goat eating my newly planted blueberries by the garden. Eagerly they bolted towards me, and as I opened the gate to the shed saw the hole that they had hammered out of the side. One goat gave me a quick tour of her escape route by nimbly re-enacting her escape. They seemed altogether pleased with themselves.

So, I paid for a fence, about 1,000 feet worth of three-strand ½ inch polytape electric fence. Yesterday when we hooked up the charger, I was elated. The charger ticked. The goats stood looking at the strands from a safe distance, then proceeded to graze their new area without further investigation.  At last, I could again focus upon my landscaping without spending half of the day chasing or untangling goats.  No sooner did I pronounced the design a success then Daisy took a run at the three – strand hotwire gate and ran beneath it brushing the wire with her back without incident. Giving her a sample shock on the fence yielded only temporary results. They respected the fence until feeding time when they again filtered through the fence to return the pen.

This might all be worth it if they were indeed the non-discerning little brush eaters that they have been made out to be, but they’re not. They eat a bit like a bored teenage boy; a bit of this, a bit of that, move on leaving the rest unfinished. They like blackberry leaves but not the stems, ignore thistles and huckleberries, adore Douglas fir branches, and eat grass only sporadically. Much of the afternoon is spent lying about cud chewing.

My father, gazing out over an area of tall grass and briars suggested leveling it out with the excavator. Avoiding the tendency to roll my eyes and slap my forehead, I patiently explained that the reason for buying the goats was to avoid undue soil disturbance by letting them graze through those areas. Not that I’m convinced anymore by the argument. I have visited the isle of Crete and saw the vegetation leveled by goats. But that took legions of the hoofed animals and hundreds if not thousands of years of human occupation to accomplish. With these two attention-deficient animals, I may not even get a single paddock cleared.

The site of the future (now completed) detention pond above the house. At present it is a bit ragged, but will be completed with a mixture of obligate and facultative wetland vegetation.

When I first arrived in late May, progress was easy because there was everything to do and anything that I did looked good relative to the way that it was. The front yard was re-established with an attractive perennial garden on one side, and a burgeoning woodland garden on the other. I rebuilt the retaining wall by hand using a two-tiered approach to add planting space for ferns. A nasty weedy area by the garage has become a perennial garden fronted by large red dahlias I got for free from a local garden giveaway. I built pond and waterfall, and oversaw the construction of a detention basin (below) for controlling runoff such as what flooded the basement last year.

Now, as it turns September here and the fall rains begin, I look upon what I have done and realize that it is no longer so easy to prioritize. I’ve gotten to the easy stuff and left the trickier elements for last. For instance, the crumbling walls of stone along a weed-filled planter with rock-hard clay soil which greets the visitor long before the gorgeous new perennial garden. Then there are the other elements of the larger plan, the back 20, including the 2,500 square foot vegetable garden that required tilling and mulching, and I realize that 1. I need a plan that will best use my resources to complete the creation of my 10-acre garden, and 2. I need a business plan to earn some money at this rather than watching my recession-tattered savings drain.

There are some rays of hope. I am applying for a Master Gardner class that will provide me with opportunities for volunteer work and networking. I will start two community college classes this month, one in business and another in executing landscape design drawings. I also plan to get a business license and begin advertising.

Ultimately, I see myself being a landscape designer and writer, but also the conservator of an amazing 20-acre preserve that includes gardens and natural areas accessible by modest trails flanked with a diversity of native plants from throughout the region. The task before me seems so overwhelming at times, though, I almost don’t know where to begin. Each day, I step outside my door and think of the thousands of things that I could be doing and wonder which is the most important. And even this question has two parts:
which is most important for bringing me to the point of being fiscally sustainable, and which is the best for my heart. For in the end, it is not the money, but the creation of a dream, a garden of my own, that draws my heart. For that I would work endlessly without pay, at least in an ideal world.

The rainy season has come early it seems. Usually, the Northwest rainy season is heralded by a sudden tranisition from Indian summer to a week of steady downpour, just to get you accustomed to what’s to come. This year, it began with a series of rainy, cloudy days in August backed up by harder rains in early September.

I had a friend here once who had been raised in LA and moved to Olympia. When he returned to LA a decade later, he spoke of having to put away the pills and sharp objects to make it through the winters here. I was born here, but forays to other places have reinforced the fact that much of my depression over the years was probably enhanced by the grey winters here. This time, living in the midst of 20 acres of lots to do, I hope that it won’t hit me so yard. Anyway, the rain brings an enforced respite from my grueling landscaping schedule. Now I have time to draw, to write, and to generate the landscape designs that I hope to use in my future business. Classes start again in late September, and there is antique refinishing and crafts that I want to do. 

No matter how I face it, though, I miss the sun, the heat, and the long days spent doing nothing but work. After so many years behind a desk, it is all that I want to do. Intellectually, I read fanatically and enjoy writing, but there is a freedom in wielding the hoe, hauling the wood, replanting one thousand day lilies, taking on a blackberry thicket with pruners. It is a relaxing rhythm for me. The grey days ahead will be a challenge.

A moss covered rock wall built by my mother in the 70's or 80's.

This old stump was cut back during the days of springboards and whipsaws. A 8" x 3" rectangular mark indicates where the end of a board was inserted to allow a man to stand further up the trunk to make the cut. Many of these old stumps remain on the property. They serve as 'nurse stumps' and make great garden centerpieces.

The yard upon which I have started is but a small piece of the larger 20, which consists mostly of disturbed Douglas fir forest mixed with Pacific madrone, redcedar, red alder, the occasional dying hemlock, and an understory of mostly huckleberry and salal.

The place was logged over back when they used springboards, and a stump in back of the house bears its marks.

My father purchased it as part of a 40 acre spread in the early 70’s when it was undeveloped. A large wetland area occupied the northeastern side; he still retains full ownership of this 3-acre area. I used to skate on it in winter and paddle it in my rubber raft in summer, but it is now gradually filling in. As a kid, I kept up to three horses on the property, riding them through trails and field that my father made. It was the reason I loved the outdoors, and precipitated my decision to become a biologist.

My mother, a former librarian and later full-time homemaker, landscaped the three acres surrounding the house with rocks that she personally grubbed from the property, and plants ‘borrowed’ from many places, including a mountain laurel from her home state of North Carolina. I still find her many rock walls hidden under the encroaching native shrubbery, covered in moss, encircling the places that she loved best. It feels like finding the remnants of some forgotten civilization.

Within this context, I arrive to try and turn the place into the botanical garden that I truly believe that it can be. The front yard was the easy part, a warm up to give myself something to admire each day so that I can begin the long effort of convincing myself that I am up to this. It is, really, a dream of mine that never came through with the postage stamp yards of the houses that I could afford, or the rentals that I had to leave in California.

I approach it with the zest of the suppressed artist that I never became, and the analytical scientist that I was trained to be. Before I even left SoCal, back when this was just my notes during long management meetings or weekends when I was totally fed up with work in general, I prepared sketches and management plants. Arriving in late May, I already had the plans for the front yard in my head. But that is only about 1% of what I really want to do.

To create a garden of this size, you need a plan, a theme, a feeling of unity and continuity. I want to enjoy this but I also want to make it my own personal legacy. The mulling, dreaming, planning and scheming are the best part of this, my own tabla rasa.

Focus is critical. The front yard is nearly done but for the grass, but there is so much more. Here is what we fondly used to call ‘the center thing’, a circular planter of rock surrounding a 100 ft+ Douglas fir in the center of the driveway between the house and garage. A patch of weedy daylily fills an area between the planter and the driveway split. The peonies, heather, and other flowers that my mother planted there 30 years ago area long gone, and the place used as a holding area for logging chains and boxes of nails.

Then there is a cove in the woods above that where the driveway splits*, a weedy disaster harboring the property’s first known incidence (quickly eradicated with snips and motor oil to finish the job) of poison oak. Once home to roses, redhot poker, purple bearded iris and pinks, the place has been overtaken and the domestics have long died.

Beyond that is an area that my mother designed as a little creek for winter runoff that is now a lumpy mess of bulldozed soil, weeds, and a 100’ x 5’ ditch ripped last winter to abate the flood that resulted in the destruction of the front yard.

Surrounding the once domesticated areas are woods full of blackberries, English ivy, and Scotch broom deserving to be tamed and turned into placid places to stroll amidst ferns while gazing at the remnants of the lake.

Due to the technical difficulties posed by not being a website designer, I missed a month or two on updates. Still, I when I did get back on, I was pleased to see comments (thank you all!). I hope to be more diligent now in my postings.

In the interim, I completed the wall using scrap rock from the original wall plus whatever else was lying about.  The rock-a-day technique worked well, and without the Bobcat I might add, which, while desperately needed for other projects around here likely would not have worked so well.  Hand-placing the rock was the key, and over the course of about 3 weeks, I was able to create a two-tiered wall now planted with fern and a creeping evening primrose. Money saved on equipment rentals, however, was money spent on massages to relieve the re-emergence of my long-running thoracic outlet syndrome  (http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/thoracic/thoracic.htm).  One saving grace has been my father’s motorized dumping wheelbarrow with an 800 lb capacity. With it, I have already moved several thousand pounds of rock around the yard for a variety of smaller projects. Although I am normally adverse to loud, motorized equipment, it has made my life much easier and saved me many sleepless nights with shooting nerve pain.

When I was not moving rocks, I began preparing the front yard.  [At this point, those in the know may feel free to comment upon my methods, which are derived from a combination of experience, book-learning, and educated guesswork.]  From a local farm, I obtained 10 yards of heat-treated horse manure/chips/sand and rototilled it six inches into the sandy clay soil that represents the efforts of one of my father’s past wives. I also reconstructed the walk from the pavers not broken by my father’s excavator excursions to lead visitors through the gazebo and to the front door.  The plan, based upon reading my landscape design books, is to draw visitors away from the kitchen door, which is misplaced on the front of the house, and to the more formal ‘front’ door which leads directly into the living room. The yellow gazebo will be reinforced and painted a warm grey and the cement overlain with tiles. Cement planters with benches will be installed to the right to cordon off a part of the patio for entertaining. A perennial garden in purple and violet tones will grow between the walk and the patio, a lawn to left flanked by a Japanese maple and the neon blue hydrangea. Foundation plantings of red pygmy barberry will flank the reddish brick wall, while to the right of the door, a white azalea and small rhodoendron will provide a visual draw toward the door.

To the right in the overview photo  is the nascent perennial garden featuring several types of Salvia (my fav genus), Miscanthus, Dianthus, Penstemon, and Hosta in the shade. To the left will be a narrow strip of grass sweeping around the cedar, beneath which will grow a selection of NW natives and shade-tolerant plants, including a grove of sword fern, woodfern, bunchberry, Oregon oxalis, Hellebore, salal, Mitella, and others. I have even added half of a Douglas fir log behind the neon blue hydrangea in which I hope to cultivate licorice fern. (I will be adding a plant list here shortly from the Excel file that I am keeping).

The beans, squash, peas, cucumbers and potatoes, however, are not a part of the long-term plan. Reading about the best time to seed a northwest lawn, I have elected to wait until September to further till and refine the soil for planting grass seed. Meanwhile, I have planted a sward of leguminous crops along with a few other tasty species to add nitrogen and out-compete the weeds. So far, the growth from my early June plantings has exceeded my expectations and yields of snow peas and yellow squash are beginning to outstrip our capacity to eat them. The notable exception is the pole beans, which dominate the scene on tall bamboo frames at seven feet and growing. I believe that the high-nitrogen mix that I applied has encouraged them to grow only leaves, for I am still awaiting the beans to emerge from the lush vegetation.

As a break from all of that, I also constructed a modest pool with a foot-high falls.  Ferns and large-leaved plants yet to be chosen will grace the now arid borders. The climbing rose will be leaving the scene too, perhaps to be espaliered on a wall. For now, I have a few Spirea, Japanese blood grass (in pots, so they stay put), Ribes sanguinum, horsetail, Alaska fern, lady fern, sword fern, and a lonely bog rosemary. The story of the pool will follow later, including my experimentation with building techniques for those who might want to try this at home.

Now, as the July sun wanes and the August sky is cloudy and threatening rain, I stand back and feel a mixture of pride and concern. It still doesn’t look quite as I’d hoped; I have a substantial budget, but not enough to spend on large numbers of expensive plants. My shopping techniques range from Lowe’s and Home Depot bargains, local nursery 50% off sales, natives from other parts of the property, freebies from volunteer work that I am doing in my horticulture class, and a few splurges for nice, full-price selections.  There are most definitely gaps. Materials are hauled in pickup truck, and the work is solely my own.  I  am beginning to explore the limits of my own 42-year-old body, seasoned as it may be from years of running and hiking, and the natural impatience that I have also exhibited towards things that take more than one year to complete.  I realize once again, that this is an exercise in how things are done, a lesson in the patience of time. Soon enough, September will come and I will be taking two more horticulture classes, and maybe,  just maybe, taking the time to care of myself. I miss yoga, I miss my art, there is a meditation group I want to join.  The rains will buy me time to slow down and savor the slow passage of time as the things that I have begun mature, and new ideas emerge.

For additional reading on the progress of the back 10 acres, see “Hinterlands”.