TOM BENDER
February 1989
It sounds idyllic. A couple of acres on the south side of a mountain jutting
out 300' above the Pacific Ocean, with potential views from sunrise to sunset
framed in huge spruce trees. We knew, however, as soon as we saw the place,
that "gardening" would have to be different from anything we had
known.
Broken-topped alders spoke of the 125 mph winter winds lying at wait behind
the wispy autumn breeze. Rocky ground surface hinted at the talus slope
rocky soils beneath, of the 80 - 120" of rain per year, and of nutrient-leached
soils. Existing vegetation warned of tenacious plants with three to six
feet of growth per year and invasive blackberries which spread 20' per year
wherever sunlight wasn't already captured. Fresh elk droppings told of other
inhabitants with whom the place would be shared, and voracious slugs eagerly
awaited the introduction of succulent new plants.
The looming 400' cliff behind the property spoke of the landslide instability
of volcanic ash clays underlying the soils and the violent earthquakes that
visit the region every 300 years as the tectonic plates further below move
slowly through their inexorable dances. Scars on tree trunks were souvenirs
of the electrifying greetings this first prominence sometimes gives the
massive cloud masses moving in from their thousand mile trips over the ocean.
Things were not always as peaceful here as on the sunny autumn day we discovered
it.
Together these forces strongly determine what is possible and what is desirable
here. They limit the community of plants that can be successful within the
demanding natural forces. They set a high price on excessive clearing, and
on maintaining of "foreign" landscape elements. They also generate
a powerful native landscape with its own unique beauty. Life here is strong,
not elegant. You learn to live with mud on your shoes, but with a glow in
your heart.
Of much of this we would learn later. But it was clear there was power here,
and beauty. The pulsings of nature were strong and dramatic enough to break
through incrustations of culture and force us to live freshly and to learn
deeply and directly from what surrounds us. We decided to let the place
lead us, and teach us to observe, learn, and enjoy.
To live here in itself necessitated changes, beyond asking the elk to share
one of their bedrooms. Although the site was deftly screened from neighboring
properties by topography, further evergreen screening was desirable for
privacy as well as for protection from the afternoon summer winds. Low evergreen
plantings were needed to keep view corridors open and free of blackberries,
alder sprouts, and tunneling mountain beaver. Age, size, and condition of
alders indicated they should largely be phased out as soon as replacement
climax species could be planted and mature. Twenty years, it looked like,
would be needed to accommodate our presence and nestle into a compatible
landscape.
Ten years have now passed. The first years were consumed with building the
house and learning the land itself. We explored its hollows and outcrops,
and sniffed out rocks, trees, and views hidden behind tangles of vegetation.
We learned from experience about the native vegetation - what was edible
to us and to other inhabitants, and the incredible subtle richness of native
plants that the mountain possesses. Grubbing brush taught us what rooted
and grew best where, what outsurvived what, and which plant communities
prevented the encroachment and growth of others. We learned the local rhythms
of the seasons, and of the air, land, and water migrations that follow them.
We learned which of our existing plants are depended upon by migrating arctic
robbins, hummingbirds, doves and whales and local deer, elk, and mountain
beaver.
The elements of landscaping are somewhat special here. Sun, moon, cloud
and stars are unusually important. The sun, partially because of its seasonal
rarity, is treasured, and outdoor activity spaces need to follow its path.
Sunrise and sunset, and their shifts through the seasons, are visible, powerful,
and to be lived close to. More uniquely, though, the silhouetting of trees
lit though fog, the sparkle of raindrops on thousands of spruce needles
at sunset, winter sun reflections off of the ocean, or wind-whipped spray
tossing rainbow auras off of crashing waves, give this place an important
part of its special magic.
Night is also important. Without the glare of streetlights and city light,
the nights are wonderfully dark. Moonrise and set, waves shimmering in the
moonlight, tree limbs dark against soft moonlight and fog, and the ever-shifting
embrace, haloing and release of moon and cloud make the night a vital part
of landscaping.
Sometimes clouds and fog are above us, sometimes below, and sometimes we
are within their cushions streaming by with the wind. Summer afternoons
are often treated with a "freight-train" of fog pouring around
the end or over the top of the mountain. Sunlight breaking through stormclouds
transforms ocean, sky, and land with blazing displays of light.
Given these magic tools of landscaping, it is no wonder that traditional
landscapes such as flowers pale in significance. Indeed, the native wildflowers
are subtle, and by comparison garden hybrids feel coarse, overly obvious
in their beauty, and out of place. Looking for conventional beauty in a
landscape here may be looking for the wrong thing. Its greater power comes
from elsewhere.
The landscape which has taken form around us over the last ten years is
not obvious in its design. It is a rearrangement rather than replacement
of what was already here, to accommodate our physical needs and enrich our
perception of the beauty already around us. It is comprised in part by the
opening of distant views, by the clearing of intimate nearby scenes, by
the development of trails which take us to what the season, time of day,
and weather make special. It has involved the usual clearing and planting
of trees, moving of rocks and transplanting ferns, moss, and shrubs. But
would you call the result a garden?
A few of our garden opportunities came easily. While waiting to decide what
to do with the ground around the house after we grubbed out the brush, a
native grass lawn and a rich wildflower meadow grew up on their own! Miner's
lettuce and fringecups were succeeded through the season by foxglove, wild
hollyhock, Douglas iris, bluestar grass, cat's eyes and a variety of native
meadow grasses. While we've let that remain on one side of the house, maintained
only by occasional clearing of tree and brush seedlings, we found that flat
land is scarce and valuable on a mountainside, particularly with children.
Mowing our only flat area produced a "lawn" of native grasses,
asters, buttercups and mosses which keeps us from getting totally soaked
from dew and rain while coming and going and playing.
Some shaded hillsides have been cleared of shade-weakened elderberry and
salmonberry bushes to reveal a fern and rock understory filled in with a
seasonal succession of fragrant Tellima "fringe-cups" and siberian
miner's lettuce. Sunny areas have been filled in with native salal, a shiny
leafed evergreen with berries rivaling blueberries in taste. Downhill, the
tops of undisturbed thickets of red elderberry are seasonally covered with
blankets of white "ice cream cones" of flowers and clusters of
brilliant red berries.
Red and evergreen huckleberries have thrived where competing vegetation
is removed, while orange salmonberry, thimbleberry, native blackberry, and
cow parsnips fill out the edible discoveries to be found on a walk on the
trails. Among the acidic needle droppings beneath the towering spruce trees,
wild lily of the valley finds a distinctive niche and association. In damp
hollow bottoms, waterleaf, or "ghost star" dominates among the
moss covered boulders like a silent and almost invisible fireworks display.
Slopes trampled by elk become filled for several seasons with clusters of
purple foxglove, while Columbia lily, trillium, Smiths fairy bells, blue-eyed
grass, wild hollyhock and other surprises await discovery along the trails.
Some gardens exist in themselves. Others are to be viewed from within a
building, or linked to interior spaces or places outside the garden. This
garden was planned integrally with the house. The house is placed so that
its outside deck projects over the edge of the hill, accentuating the sense
of being high above the waves. Windows and outside plantings are planned
so that in one seat you look outside in three directions and feel yourself
surrounded only by trees. Yet another seat a few feet away sees nothing
but ocean, sky and distant hillsides in three directions. A small roofed
sitting space allows enjoying being outside even during a quiet rain. A
tiny deck outside the bedroom encourages leisurely sunsoaked breakfasts
tucked in the midst of a wildflower meadow.
For several years we joked that this place had all we wanted except a mountain
stream. Then one winter after a bout of exceptionally heavy rains we woke
up one morning to the sound of running water. A short walk to the hollow
east of the house revealed a 100' waterfall and a six-foot wide creek pouring
from a spring on the cliff face which had been plugged up a number of years
ago by a small landslide. It runs only in extreme conditions, which is probably
o.k., and the porous ground absorbs most of its flow. But we don't complain.
Our expenditures on landscaping almost two acres have been minimal. Over
ten years we've spent only about $100 - for salal and evergreen huckleberry
planting stock. Rocks came from on site or gathered nearby. Trees were thinned
from naturally seeded areas elsewhere. Trails and clearing were sweat labor.
Affordability was not the problem. It was more that what was here was appropriate,
and fit, and transforming it dramatically into something else felt wrong.
What money could buy didn't fit.
How much the making of this wild garden has transformed my perceptions didn't
really become apparent until I returned to visit more conventional gardens
in more amenable environments. The design decisions there now seem so often
to be without significance and holding little meaning to the viewer. So
much color, so much form, so much variety,...so many distractions coming
between you and the power of the garden to move your heart. So much attention
to the small things, and the big things often forgotten. I yearn to be back
in my windswept emptiness, which is yet so full, so full.
There is a pleasure in developing a garden which quietly awaits exploration
and discovery rather than stridently calling attention to itself. It contains
a peacefulness, a rightness of natural place and association, and a uniqueness
of spirit which isn't possible in conventional gardening with domestic materials.
What is here is a rough and wild beauty, and a power that can transform
our hearts, enrich our lives, and shake us free from conventional esthetics.
I hope that through our actions we have made some parts of that beauty more
accessible. From it we have certainly learned better how to be sensitive
to the unique spirit and nature of other places and draw upon that special
power in the design of their landscaping.
What I've learned of greatest value is what is obvious in the most masterful
of Zen gardens. What once needed a bounty of artistic groupings of plants
to accomplish, you learn can be done merely with a shadow, or a beam of
sunlight. What once took color, form and smell, with greater skill takes
only the opening of a way for the spirit of a place to come forth clearly.
What once took careful thought and design and work now takes only an attunement
and unfolding of something to which we feel our hearts respond.
We forget sometimes that the heart of music arises within silence, and the
seed of dance rests in stillness. Once the spirit of place is touched and
revealed, it matters not whether the rest of a garden is shadow or filled
with the boundless creativity of nature. The soul remains, and it moves
our hearts.
It feels, sometimes, like there is nothing special about what we have done
- that it is a perfectly obvious way to deal with where we live. It isn't,
however, judging by how others approach gardening here. Gardening seems
instead to mean getting rid of everything except a blue stripe of ocean
across the horizon, then stuffing a lot of gaudy plants around the edges
of a grass covered yard, oblivious to the more powerful drama going on about
them.
What we've learned can be applied elsewhere, in far richer and more varied
forms than we have used. Our "wild garden" is not an exotic wild
Oregon mountain garden, but a whole palette of powerful gardening tools
that seem totally ignored today. How often do you find articles in gardening
magazines on gardens without plants, gardens of light, snow gardens, spirit
gardens, moon and star gardens?
Yet I remember a "water garden" we had in Minnesota, where an
icicle dripping onto a flooded roof sent a shimmering reflection across
the ceiling of our bedroom, keeping us entranced for hours. Later, I saw
a somewhat similar one in a Zen restaurant in San Francisco. There is another
wonderful garden in Mexico made only with clouds, and gardens in Japan whose
power comes solely from shadows or from light filtered or reflected into
a tiny space.
In Cobenhaven there is a delightful garden made only of air bubbling up
through water. There is an incredible waterfall in Montana of silently dripping
sunlit moss. Stockholm has a fantastic underground garden, where sunlight
shimmering through the glass bottom of a fountain transforms an otherwise
drear space. And sometime I'll tell you about an underground star garden
I found in a cave in India. The same tools can create delight anywhere.
Gardens can have far more power to move our hearts.
Music can be made with more than one note.
TOM BENDER
38755 Reed Rd.
Nehalem OR 97131 USA
503-368-6294
©1989
tbender@nehalemtel.net