Tag Archives: garden

Sage… Co-Starring Parsley, Rosemary and Thyme

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Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Who doesn’t know the next line of the lyrics? Who doesn’t begin to hum that familiar, iconic melody, perhaps recalling where they were in October 1966 when they first heard it sung by two fresh-faced New Yorkers named Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel?  One of the joys of reaching my age is that the folk songs of the 1960s still seem fresh and somehow relevant. Especially the ones where traditional herbs play a starring role!  And no song elevated herbs like the title song of the third Simon and Garfunkel album, which also included Homeward Bound.

But ‘Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme‘ debuted with some controversy since the duo listed themselves as songwriters in adapting this traditional 17th – 19th century English folk song (with its many versions) – which would be fine if it was their own arrangement. But it turned out that Paul Simon had first heard English folksinger Martin Carthy (who had first heard it from Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger) sing his own version when he was in England and copyrighted a similar arrangement without crediting Carthy, causing a rift that lasted until 2000 when they sang it on stage together. “Worse”, according to one music critic, “it credited Paul and Artie as if the centuries-old tune had emerged entirely from their imaginations.” (Wiki)  On the Simon and Garfunkel website, it says, “the duo used vocal overdubs and instrumentation to weave together a traditional song and anti-war protest to stunning effect.” Although not as overtly political as some of the songs I cited in my recent blog Vietnam – Songs of Protest, the song in its long-verse form does sound like the lament of a far-away lover, perhaps a soldier, asking impossible tasks of his sweetheart at home.

SCARBOROUGH FAIR/CANTICLE* traditional, adapted by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, after Martin Carthy (1966)

Are you going to Scarborough Fair
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine 

Tell her to make me a cambric shirt
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Without no seam nor needlework
Then she’ll be a true love of mine 

Tell her to find me an acre of land
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Between the salt water and the sea strand
Then she’ll be a true love of mine 

Tell her to reap it in a sickle of leather
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
And to gather it all in a bunch of heather
Then she’ll be a true love of mine 

Are you going to Scarborough Fair
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine

*The lyrics above do not include the “Canticle” verses, which are part of the official lyrics listed in their database, but they were the lines sung by the duo 15 years later in front of a half-million adoring fans at the September 1981 benefit concert in Central Park (below) to raise funds for the redevelopment and maintenance of the park. By then, Simon and Garfunkel had broken up and reunited a number of times; even their rehearsals for the concert were fraught with tension. Though they were elementary school classmates who had sung together since high school, initially as the duo Tom and Jerry, lyricist and composer Paul Simon was continually frustrated by the wandering attentions of his partner Artie of the sweet choirboy voice, who had ambitions to be an actor and solo performer. The concert represented a short-lived reunion for Simon and Garfunkel and produced a double platinum live album.

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The Sages, a Photographic Collection

The Scarborough Fair was a popular medieval market fair held in the town in Yorkshire from mid-August throughout September. Though it went on until the 1700s, it was at its height of popularity in the late 1300s. The use of the herbs in the song lyrics recalls their traditional symbolic meanings: parsley for comfort, sage for strength, rosemary for love and thyme for courage.  Salvia comes from the Latin word salvus meaning “healthy”. It refers to the European herb Salvia officinalis, an evergreen (where hardy) sub-shrub native to Mediterranean parts of Europe and the Middle East. Its use as a medicinal and culinary herb is recorded in ancient works by Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen. It is a lovely plant for modern herb gardens, and is a favourite of bees too. (And, of course, one of its principal uses is in our stuffing recipes for turkey.)

Salvia officinalis has a number of fancy-leafed forms, including beautiful ‘Icterina’ (often labelled ‘Aurea Variegata’). I loved seeing it a few years ago (far right) in this exquisite design by Paul Zammit at the Toronto Botanical Garden, along with parsley and calabrichoa, heuchera, hakonechloa, pelaragonium and carex.

Another ancient sage (from the French word sauge for the herb) is Greek sage Salvia fruticosa. I photographed the handful of leaves in the Peloponnese in November, during my botanical tour of Greece with Liberto Dario (Eleftherios Dariotis).  There it is used, along with sideritis, for making traditional Greek tea.

Another sage is used for an entirely different ‘medicinal’ purpose.  When I was at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew some years ago, they had an exhibit devoted to hallucinogenic plants, including ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi).  One of the plants was Salvia divinorum, otherwise known by a number of descriptive common names…..

…. including sage of the diviners, ska maría pastora, seer’s sage, yerba de la pastora.

Silver sage (Salvia argentea) comes from southern Europe and northern Africa. A biennial, it is better known for its spectacular, silvery leaves that form as a rosette the first year…..

…. than for its white flowers the following year.

Over the past few decades, I’ve photographed salvia species, hybrids and cultivars around the world – admittedly just a drop in the bucket of some 900 species worldwide. And I’ve grown lots of them in my own gardens, both in the city where the meadow sage Salvia nemorosa ‘Mainacht’ (‘May Night’) with its deep-blue spikes graces my pollinator island, attracting lots of bees…….

…. and in the containers on my sundeck at our cottage overlooking Lake Muskoka. There salvias and agastaches are my principal container plants intended to lure ruby-throated hummingbirds each summer. I don’t have a nectar feeder for these graceful little birds, preferring to give them organic sweeteners. (That’s sacred basil on the far right, Ocimum tenuiflorum – a superb bee plant).

The very best lures are the big sages in my hand…..

….. especially the champion – Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Blooms’ (also ‘Black and Blue’ in previous summers).

This lusty big Argentine sage is simply the best for bringing in hummingbirds.

Last year for the first time I tried Salvia ‘Amistad’ bred by Argentina’s Rolando Uría, and it was popular with the hummingbirds too.

Salvia ‘Wendy’s Wish’ was a distant third, but still attracted its share of hummers

Salvia microphylla ‘Hot Lips’ is so colourful and a hummingbird favourite.

I did an experimental planting of Salvia ‘Big Swing’ (Salvia macrophylla x S. sagittata) last season. Although the hummingbirds visited it now and again, its strange flowering habit (at least in a container) worked against it.

Annual ‘Mystic Spires’ salvia attracted hummingbirds, too, but not if ‘Black and Blooms’ was in flower.

In my naturalistic borders at the cottage, Salvia nemorosa ‘Mainacht’ consorts with a number of self-sown wildflowers (which we now call exotic invasives…..) including musk mallow (Malva moschata).

If you visit the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew outside London in autumn, be sure to find the stunning salvia border there. This was October 25, 2014.

It was at Kew that I first saw Salvia confertiflora from Brazil…..

….. and luscious, deep-red scarlet sage, Salvia splendens ‘Van Houtte’…..

….. and pretty hybrids like ‘Phyllis Fancy’ below, discovered at the University of California Santa Cruz Arboretum and named for Phyllis Norris.

Chanticleer Garden outside Philadelphia in Wayne, PA is my favourite public garden in the United States. I wrote a 2-part blog after my June 2014 visit. Its many gardens change each year in the most creative way, but I think my favourite scene was this confection featuring the deep-indigo spikes of Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’ (from Zillmer Nursery in Germany), acting as dark vertical brushstrokes in a riot of cottage garden colour.

The Toronto Botanical Garden features its share of sages. Meadow sage, of course, is a prime player in the various June planting schemes. This is white Salvia nemorosa ‘Snow Hill’ (‘Schneehugel’, an Ernst Pagels introduction) with alliums, catmint, lady’s mantle and peonies.

Catmint, of course, is a beautiful partner for meadow sages, like Nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’, here with Salvia x sylvestris ‘Blauhugel’ (‘Blue Hill’), another Ernst Pagels introduction, and a splash of lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis).

In the Piet Oudolf-designed Entry Border at the TBG (I wrote a comprehensive 2-part blog on his design for this border), he incorporated his own introduction, Salvia nemorosa ‘Amethyst’, placing it near a wine-red sanguisorba.

His pretty purple-and-white hybrid sage Salvia ‘Madeline’ is also featured in the border.

And at the Royal Botanical Garden in Burlington, Ontario not far from Toronto, I loved this combination of Piet’s introduction Salvia verticillata ‘Purple Rain’ with creamy-yellow Achillea ‘Anthea’.

When I visited Chicago Botanic Garden in 2018, I was impressed with this mass planting of sky-blue bog sage (Salvia uliginosa)…..

….. enlivened by orange dashes of Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia ‘Fiesta del Sol’). I wrote an extensive blog about my visit later.

Years earlier, I had been wowed by a themed garden at Chicago Botanic that featured bright-blue gentian sage, Salvia patens, with lots of gloriosa daisies (Rudbeckia hirta).

Speaking of gentian sage, this was one of the happiest combinations ever – a street planting at Vancouver’s Van Dusen Botanical Garden featuring Salvia patens ‘Cambridge Blue’ with Zinnia angustifolia ‘Profusion Orange’, purple Verbena rigida and fuzzy white bunny tail grass (Lagurus ovatus). Isn’t it lovely?

At Lady Bird Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas a few years ago, I was impressed by the meadow plantings of native mealycup sage (Salvia farinacea), a species that has become a popular bedding and container annual in colder regions.

There I was intrigued to see it looking so beautiful with native Texas yellowstar (Lindheimera texana), left, and was reminded of how effective it is with any yellow flowers, like the gloriosa daisies (Rudbeckia hirta) at right.

It’s such an easy sage to use: here it is with a rollicking sea of orange and yellow celosias at the Ottawa Experimental Farm one summer.

And this trio at the Montreal Botanical Garden was impressive: Salvia farinacea ‘Fairy Queen’ and ‘Evolution’ with a massed planting of chartreuse sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas ‘Illusion Emerald Lace’).

This formal knot garden at the New York Botanical Garden was enlivened by a mix of annual sage (Salvia viridis) in pink and purple popping up in the middle of the knots.

In spring, New York’s High Line features early-flowering Salvia ‘Pink Delight’ and ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ (both Piet Oudolf hybrid sages) mixed with amsonias. I blogged about that May 2012 visit too.

Last summer, I photographed and blogged about the Denver garden of Rob Proctor and David Macke. In June, their front yard is a sea of blue sage, including Salvia nemorosa and Salvia pratensis.

Even their long hellstrip (that’s Denverese for ‘boulevard’) is an azure avenue of sages, perennial geraniums and onosmas.

On my recent botanical tour of Greece with the North American Rock Garden Society and Liberto Dario (Eleftherios Dariotis), we visited our guide’s “salvia garden” in Paiania outside Athens. Let’s just say there are a few sages growing there, including many whose seeds he offers to customers worldwide.

What else? So many….. When I was in Tucson, Arizona seven years ago, I drove over the mountain pass to the fabulous Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. In its wonderful garden, honey bees were busy gathering nectar from native Salvia apiana. Guess what its Latin name means? Yes, “bee sage”.

At Idaho Botanic Garden a few Septembers ago, native rose sage Salvia pachyphylla was in flower.  And of course, I blogged about that lovely visit as well.

At Santa Barbara Botanical Garden, the appropriately named California hummingbird sage (Salvia spathacea) was, naturally, attracting California hummingbirds! This is the sweet little Anna’s hummingbird.

While at Santa Barbara Botanical Garden, I also saw Santa Rosa Island sage (Salvia brandeegii)…..

….. lovely, silvery Salvia leucophylla ‘Amethyst Bluff’, a selection of purple sage by Carol Bornstein.

During my visit to Chile and Argentina last winter on a wine tour, many of the gardens featured Mexican bush sage (Salvia leucantha).  What a great shrub that is for warmer regions!

I can’t remember where I photographed Salvia dorrii.

Salvia mexicana ‘Limelight’ has brilliant chartreuse bracts that are as much a colour feature as the blue flowers.

Biennial clary sage (Salvia sclarea var. turkestanica) is a cottage garden mainstay.

Even my local park’s Victorian ribbon planting took on a festive air when scarlet sage (Salvia splendens) was paired with chartreuse Canna ‘Pretoria’.

All the sages are wonderful pollinator plants and since insects on flowers are a specialty of mine, I always enjoy finding bees on salvias, like this big carpenter bee nectar-robbing from the corolla of Salvia ‘Silke’s Dream’ at Wave Hill in the Bronx (yes, a blog there, too)….

….. or this bumble bee foraging on annual Salvia coccinea ‘Coral Nymph’ on my own cottage deck.

Hmm.  I think that’s enough sage wisdom for one blog, don’t you? Except…. what about poor rosemary? It’s having a little identity crisis at the moment because it was known as Rosmarinus officinalis ever since Linnaeus assigned names back in 1753, but then came 2017 and one of those gene-sequencing revelations that turned taxonomy on its head.

Alas, it seems that rosemary is just a needle-leafed sage, now called Salvia rosmarinus. But sssshhh… don’t tell Simon and Garfunkel.

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If you liked this musical blog, the 5th in #mysongscapes for 2020, be sure to read my blogs on Joni Mitchell’s ‘Night in the City’, Paul Simon’s ‘Kodachrome’ and my life in photography, Vietnam Songs of Protest and my sentimental take on ‘Galway Bay’.

Visiting Cougar Annie’s Garden – Part Two

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If you’ve read Part One of our visit to Boat Basin and Cougar Annie’s Garden, you’re waking up with me now on Day 2. After a night in cabin #6, we rose ready to explore the rainforest and take a little more time to visit Annie’s garden. I looked out our cabin window at the trees growing on the ridge. I saw yellow cedar (Callitropsis nootkatensis, formerly Chamaecyparis). Though it grows from Alaska to California, it derives its botanical name from the fact that it was first collected near Nootka Sound, just north of Boat Basin. Its wood is much used for buildings and was the material Peter Buckland used to make the long sushi table, among other structures.

I could also see Pacific silver fir or amabilis fir, Abis amabilis.

When I walked up the forest path towards the outhouse, there was Pacific yew (Taxus brevifolia) growing amongst the salal.

Caitlin was already out photographing when Doug, Mary Ann and I finished a leisurely breakfast and began our walk down the ridge road.  Caitlin had warned us it was steep, and this photo doesn’t really illustrate how steep.  You can see the ghostly cedars along the road. Peter said: “Dead, standing cedars we call ‘grey ghosts’.  They make excellent posts and beams, structurally and aesthetically.  Most have grown in wet ground where nutrients are low, suppressing growth.  Grey ghosts are effectively hardwood.  Their interior is deep mellow brown in colour, ideal for interior finishing, viewable at Central Hall and several cabins.  Logging cut down grey ghosts and left them to rot, a process that takes centuries due to the preserving oils within cedar.  All was not lost.  During the first twenty-five years of construction when logging roads provided access to nearby clearcuts many grey ghosts were recovered.”

As the road flattened, I saw lots of young lodgepole or sea pine (Pinus contorta).

We came upon Peter’s garden in a clearing with raised beds filled with …..

….. the dahlias we’d seen in vases, the ones that recall Cougar Annie’s mail order business…

…… as well as mesclun lettuces (Peter contributed the salads to our two dinners) and….

….. shiso (Perilla frutescens) and squash.

Heading towards Annie’s garden, I saw some old gem-studded puffballs on the road….

…. and passed Peter’s beautiful woodshed, almost filled and ready to supply a winter of heat to the pot-bellied stove in his house.

As we took a path from the road through the trees into Annie’s garden, I wished it was June rather than early October. Had we arrived in spring or summer, we might have seen some of the colourful blossoms of the perennials, shrubs and trees still surviving, with Peter’s help, and illustrated on this poster.

We wandered about, imagining how Annie’s house must have looked in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, when she was still filling plant and bulb orders to be sent throughout Canada…..

…. and growing her own pleasure garden, now setting seed in another autumn.

I saw a big drift of montbretia (Crocosmia crocosmiiflora) and a….

…. hydrangea ensconced in the heather.

A dark blue gentian poked its head up from the leaf litter…..

…. and we found a few grapes growing on a vine.

Hebe grew along a path, below, along with spireas, weigelas, azaleas, rhododendrons and other shrubs.

I chuckled when I saw a Steller’s jay flitting through the branches of a fruit tree. Cougar Annie couldn’t stand these cheeky birds and there was usually one simmering in a broth on her stove (or so the story goes).

Like much of the Pacific Northwest, Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius) is a troublesome invasive at Boat Basin and Peter keeps it clipped in the garden to prevent seeds escaping.

But the rainforest is always waiting in the wings to reclaim this relict garden. Here native salal (Gaultheria shallon) was blooming for a second time in the season. In some coastal parts of western North America, evergreen salal forms tall, almost impenetrable thickets. It is commonly used by florists as a filler in bouquets.

Its fruit is edible and has a unique flavour, according to Wiki. Native people ate them fresh or dried into cakes, and the Haida and other B.C. first nations used them to thicken salmon roe.  They make a good fruit leather and are also used as a purplish-blue dye.

If the rainforest wants to take back the garden, the little structures have all but surrendered to the ravages of time. I surprised a pine marten who quickly scurried back into the shelter of this ruin….

…… and I was fascinated by the collection of post office papers and bulletins that Annie’s son Frank tried to keep filed when he was still running the little post office….

….. where old magazines talked of even older British monarchs and J&B scotch.

Peter found us in the garden and asked if we’d taken the Walk of the Ancients yet. We hadn’t and he offered to give us a tour. I asked if he would first demonstrate his ‘fool the eye’ diminishing perspective under the pergola he built into the garden. He happily acquiesced.

We passed the old truck that Annie’s son Frank had bought used; it only worked for a few runs before dying and was left here to the forest.

Then we were on The Walk of the Ancients, the path through the redcedar giants (Thuja plicata).  As Peter notes in the handout for the trail: “The stage is now set. A majestic and magical scene lies ahead. It is best to move slowly, to look both around and upwards into the forest canopy. Look for evidence of the people who that came before in search for, and in respect of, the great red cedar. Remember that it was just over 200 years ago that Captain James Cook landed at Friendly Cove, which is only nineteen kilometres northwest of this trail. This event signalled the twilight for early native culture. Consider also that ‘modern’ logging developed the clearcuts of Hesquiat Harbour in only ten years.”

Peter has made signs pointing out trees of interest, and has provided a written guide for visitors.

The first was a tree with a hollow bottom.  “The hollow base formed because the tree grew upon a nurse log or stump which subsequently decomposed into humus. This exposed the tree’s core to moisture and air resulting in centre rot well up the tree. While rot precludes structural use of the wood, the hollows offer many advantages to various visitors. Black bear will hibernate in hollow trees located up the mountain slopes. Mink and pine marten are often seen darting in and out of the root holes sometimes packing clams dug at the beach. Red squirrels, bats, and various birds live in the rotted interior where holes develop up the trees.”

The scene below is called “Canoe Revival”. Says the guide: “The use of an old canoe tree stump as a nurse log by a younger cedar is quite common. Perhaps this is nature’s way of perpetuating the canoe log supply!”

Somewhere in there is the old sea wall.

Moss hangs luxuriantly on the windfall trees here.

This tree was signed ‘Bark and Boards”. You can see where the bark has been stripped away. According to the B.C. Government website: “The western redcedar has been called ‘the cornerstone of Northwest Coast aboriginal culture’, and has great spiritual significance. Coastal people used all parts of the tree. They used the wood for dugout canoes, house planks, bentwood boxes, clothing, and many tools such as arrow shafts, masks, and paddles. The inner bark made rope, clothing, and baskets. The long arching branches were twisted into rope and baskets. It was also used for many medicines. The wood is naturally durable and light in weight. It is used for house siding and interior paneling as well as outdoor furniture, decking and fencing. Because of its resistance to decay and insect damage, the wood of large, fallen trees remains sound for over 100 years. Even after 100 years, the wood can be salvaged and cut into shakes for roofs.”

Mary Ann stopped to photograph this beautiful burl. (And I stopped to photograph Mary Ann!)

I loved this grouping of “Companions”, in the rear. Redcedar, western hemlock and amabilis fir, all rising from the same place in the forest. This is a true “ecosystem”, featuring the major species of this forest near sea level. (I don’t know what the mossy trunk is.)

To provide a sense of scale, Peter stood under #9, Silver Giant. This redcedar is at least 700 years old.

“Old Friends” are two redcedars growing together, one pointing in the direction of the bog nearby.

As we headed towards the bog, I smiled at the sight of a big banana slug on the path, familiar to me from my B.C. childhood. Ariolimax columbianus is native to the forest floors of North America’s Pacific coastal coniferous rainforest belt, where it decomposes dead plant material, mosses, mushrooms and animal droppings into humus.

Peter pointed out a young cascara (Rhamnus purshiana), whose bark is used by first nations people for digestive ailments and constipation..

Then we toured the Bonsai Bog.

The boardwalk wound through a boggy, stunted forest….

….. and rested upon the sphagnum.

Bog Labrador-tea (Rhododendron groenlandicum, formerly Ledum) has white flowerheads in early spring.

Peter explained that he built the boardwalk atop Cougar Annie’s old trapline. This was the path she took with a lantern held close to her rifle so she could spot the cougar eyes.

Club moss or ground cedar (Lycopodium clavatum) reached across the boardwalk….

…. and the red fruiting bodies or “apothecia” of toy soldier lichen (Cladonia bellidiflora) brightened a rotting tree trunk.

The red sphagnum moss (Sphagnum sp.)…..

…… contained little carnivorous sundews (Drosera rotundifolia).

Until I saw Boat Basin, I was unaware that red-fruited bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) was circumboreal, having seen it in boggy places in Nova Scotia and Ontario.

Gray reindeer lichen (Cladonia rangiferina) is another circumboreal species, and is an essential food for reindeer (caribou).

Though they’re native to eastern Canada bogs from Ontario to Newfoundland, Peter has grown some North American cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpon) in the bog, which seem to be doing very well.

Our bog walk finished, Peter returned to his chores and Mary Ann, Doug and I walked back up the road past the “ghost cedars” for lunch and a nap. Rain was forecast for later and we were happy to have seen the Walk of the Ancients and the Bonsai Bog in dry weather.

Barbecued chicken was on the menu for our final dinner and Peter added his homegrown salad greens to our feast. In our cabin, we threw some logs into the woodstove and retired early, listening to the rain beat down on the roof and on the rainforest around us.

Our floatplane was arriving at 9 am so an early breakfast was in order. But I couldn’t resist one last look out at the rainforest, even if it was pouring rain.

The rain stopped in time for Peter to drive us and our bags down the road to the dock on Hesquiat Lake. A black bear galumphed in front of the truck for a bit before turning into the forest. We watched the Atleo floatplane land and taxi down the lake, arriving with a few Atleo employees who were bringing in supplies to Boat Basin for their annual company weekend. The pilot Sinclair then stowed our bags and we hugged Peter goodbye and crawled into the plane.

As we flew southwest towards Tofino, I gazed back over the wisps of cloud weaving through the dark, forested peaks of this rugged west coast of Vancouver Island. I couldn’t quite believe how much we’d seen and learned in less than 48 hours.

And I felt thankful to a crusty old lady named Annie and her determined friend Peter, who helped us see the trees and the forest, not to mention the garden.

Here’s a last look at Clayoquot Sound from the air.

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To enquire about booking a trip to Cougar Annie’s Garden and the Temperate Rainforest Study Centre, visit the Boat Basin Foundation Website.

Visiting Cougar Annie’s Garden – Part One

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Perhaps this blog actually began in the 1960s in Montreal when my husband, in his 20s and fresh out of business school and in his first real job, was invited to a party given by some young women from Vancouver where he met their friend Peter Buckland. The two men would reconnect a few years later when my husband moved to Vancouver where they both worked in the financial industy. In 1974 Peter invited Doug to visit him at Boat Basin in remote Hesquiat Harbour in Clayoquot Sound on the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island.  Doug was invited for Peter’s “World Tidal Hockey Championship”, the fourth annual edition of a rollicking game played with friends on the sandy beach.  Doug remembers meeting a little old woman who sold them eggs for breakfast. By then, Peter Buckland had known Ada Annie Lawson, aka “Cougar Annie”, for some six years, a friendship cultivated during his monthly trips to the area as an amateur prospector. Annie’s legendary life in the rainforest spanned more than 60 years and included 4 husbands (three of whom were mail order grooms she advertised for in the same paper where she ran ads for her dahlias), 11 children, a sprawling garden hacked out of mossy first-growth forest, a mail-order plant business and well-earned notoriety for being a crack shot of the cougars that terrorized her goats and whose hides brought a government bounty to supplement her sale of dahlia and gladiolus bulbs.

Cougar Annie, 1962. Photo by John Manning-Royal B.C. Museum & Archives

The award-winning 1998 book Cougar Anne’s Garden by Margaret Horsfield recounts the story of her life, from her 1888 birth in Sacramento, California to her Vancouver marriage to Scotland-born Willie Rae-Arthur, the black sheep of his family; her 1915 arrival in Hesquiat Harbour aboard SS Princess Maquinna with her opium-addicted, alcoholic husband and their three oldest children and a cow; her life as a homesteader on 117 government-deeded acres of primeval forest; her hardscrabble career as a nurserywoman and postmistress; the 1981 sale of her property to Peter Buckland; and finally her 1985 death at the age of 97. In 1987, Peter retired and moved to Boat Basin full-time.

Then again, this blog might have begun in 2016 at the Idaho Botanic Garden, when Doug relaxed with my friend, Boise garden writer Mary Ann Newcomer, while I climbed to the top of the wonderful Lewis & Clark collection for a blog I would eventually write on the garden.  As they waited for me to come down, Mary Ann mentioned an award-winning story she’d written for a 2013 issue of Leaf magazine (pgs 48-59), below, about Cougar Annie’s Garden in British Columbia. Doug chuckled and told her about his friendship with Peter Buckland and that he’d actually visited the garden and met Cougar Annie more than 40 years earlier. It was a serendipitous moment, because…..

….. it led to a May 2019 Facebook message from Mary Ann asking for contact information for Peter on behalf of a California photographer named Caitlin Atkinson, who was working on a book project on wild gardens. Since we were planning an autumn trip to Vancouver Island prior to a holiday in San Francisco anyway, we did some calendar juggling and back-and-forth emailing with Peter that resulted in all four of us meeting for a night at the beautiful Long Beach Lodge in Tofino, then checking into the Atleo River Air Services office on a dock in Tofino. bright and early on October 1st 

…. and finally preparing to climb into our chartered Cessna floatplane. We had been warned to keep our soft baggage to the bare minimum, and we added enough groceries for 2 days as well as a little bit of wine. We were heading to a paradise with no electricity or indoor plumbing, after all, so we knew chardonnay would be a welcome touch.

Then we were off, flying northeast on a 20-minute flight over the most spectacular scenery towards our destination 51 kilometres (32 miles) from Tofino.

The rugged west coast of Vancouver Island is the last stop on the North American continent. Here the breakers are massive, making Tofino a mecca for surfers. The temperate rainforest we were about to visit is part of the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nation, specifically the Hesquiat (Hesquiaht) First Nation, who have been there for some 6,000 years. Through their oral history and written Japanese records of the giant tsunami, we know that on the night of January 26, 1700, a massive 9.0 megathrust earthquake struck near Pachena Bay, not far south of Tofino.  In fact, it was thought to be just the latest tectonic collision in the Cascadia Subduction Zone as the Juan de Fuca Plate pushes under the North American Plate, since it is estimated that 13 such massive earthquakes have occurred in the 6,000 years that first nations have been here. And, of course, west coasters have repeatedly been warned to prepare for the next “big one”.

In the floatplane, Mary Ann was in the middle seat with me focusing on the view….

….. while Caitlin was smiling in the back seat.

We flew over massive tracts of forest and ….

…..sandy beaches and turquoise ocean dotted with rocky islets and dark kelp beds where rivers ran into the sea.

As we approached our landing on Hesquiat Lake, I noticed the landslides on the mountain. We would learn later that these originated in previously-logged areas high above on Mt.Seghers, and during a November 2018 rainstorm had filled the lake with debris.

I made a cellphone video to remember this flight, looking out west towards the open ocean.

Peter Buckland was at the Hesquiat Lake dock waiting for us and helped take our bags and supplies up the hill to his truck parked on the gravel road.

A short drive later, he stopped and invited us to get out and walk with him on the grand tour. He would drive our bags to our overnight accommodation later.  As we made our way under towering red cedars (Thuja plicata), he began by showing us his eagle woodshed, a sloped structure surmounted by the mythical bird that he designed and built.

This eagle woodshed was our first clue that though Peter had to be highly resourceful to live here with no modern conveniences, he was also an artist, a designer, a carpenter, a gardener, a chef and a quirky, funny, well-studied natural philosopher.

He pointed out the stump of a “canoe tree” that had later been felled, showing us the dugout shape at the wide base.  In the lexicon of indigenous people of the west coast, this old red cedar is a culturally-modified tree (CMT).


Then he showed us the little shop building near his house featuring an in situ tree stump as its facade and door frame. All the buildings at Boat Basin, including Peter’s house, the central lodge and guest cabins, were designed by Peter, who also milled and split the lumber, primarily from old-growth windfall on the property. The larger buildings were framed by renowned west coast builder and surf legend Bruno Atkey, working with local crews and with Peter as interior finish carpenter; Peter built many of the smaller buildings himself.

Inside, we stood on a floor of mortared floor tiles made of sinuous Pacific yew (Taxus brevifolia).

We made a quick pass through the house he shares with his partner, Makiko, who was away on a trip.  The woodstove here was identical to the ones we’d see later in the eco-lodge on the ridge above.

Then we headed out to sit in the autumn sunshine at the beach cabin on Hesquiat Harbour. Dahlias, below, seem to have a special place here at Boat Basin because Cougar Annie sold the tubers until she was no longer able to operate her business, even peeling them by feel, rather than sight, when she became blind.

Peter’s canoe was tucked into the driftwood…..

….. and a moon snail shell (Euspira lewisii) decorated a log.

We sat nearby as Peter talked about the property, its history and geology while sipping a glass of fresh water pouring from a carved cedar flume.

Then it was time to take the boardwalk that Peter built atop Cougar Annie’s old path from the beach. I looked up and saw evergreen huckleberries (Vaccinium ovatum) creating a lacy understory to ancient cedars….

…. and down at the deer ferns and salal flanking the boardwalk.

We stopped at a massive cedar, below, and Peter pointed out how it was in line with two other huge cedars whose roots reach down to bedrock, while shorter trees around have roots in gravel sediment left behind by glaciers. “So when there’s a tsunami every five or seven hundred years, it’s not a wall of water like Japan (Fukushima), just a rising tide. The water sits for a half hour or so then it all wants to go out at once”, he says. “That’s when all the damage is done, and the trees growing in the gravel are undercut. That explains why these trees are so much older than the surrounding ones.”

Next he pointed out a fallen log acting as a nurse log for a dated 500 year-old cedar.  The log fell because the tree was cut down to make a dugout canoe, evidenced by the missing portion immediately above the stump. The relationship distinguishes it as one of a few sites in North America showing physical evidence of human activity prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus.

Then we came to the long pergola that Peter built leading to Cougar Annie’s 5-acre garden. He designed it in a manner “to trick the eye”, making it gradually wider in the distance and altering the board size to overcome the effect of diminishing perspective. (The next day, he’d demonstrate that for me.)

When Peter bought the property from Annie, she was 93-years old, nearly blind and had not maintained the garden for a long time. He spent years using a chainsaw to reclaim the various beds and borders — like the garden below, with its driftwood whale sculpture — from the encroaching rainforest, in order to attract visitors to this heritage garden. Six lawn mowers are scattered around….

….  to mow the salal, salmonberries and Annie’s heather that now forms a rampant groundcover.

A wooden wheelbarrow was rotting into the mosses.

And there was the lovely ruin, Annie’s house, where, incredibly, she raised all those children, ran her business, and even found space for the post office counter. We would come back the next day to explore more here.

We stopped at a raised mound of heather where Annie buried three children who died as infants and two of her husbands, Willie Rae-Arthur, who drowned in 1936, and George Campbell, a reportedly abusive man who died in 1944, so the story goes, ‘while cleaning his shotgun’. Peter told us of plans by Annie’s descendants to bring her ashes up to Boat Basin next year for an interment ceremony. So confining was this life that, one by one, her children fled the homestead as soon as they were of age, except for a few sons who stayed to help their mother, one drowning tragically in Hesquiat Harbour in 1947.

Our next stop was a nearby stand of 95-year-old hemlocks. Inspired by Makiko’s tales of Japanese forests where urban people come to sweep the mossy carpets below, Peter is turning this into the Boat Basin version. As he talked, it occurred to me that our stay here in this towering rainforest perfectly embodies the Japanese concept of “forest bathing” or  shinrin-yoku.

And then he smiled as he guided us towards……



…. the Japanese-signed entrance…..

….. to his sushi table. Peter milled this astonishing 4’ wide x 5” thick x 25-foot slab out of a big yellow cedar (Cupressus nootkatensis). Imagine being invited to an omakase feast right here!

Beyond the sushi shelter is a tranquil, moss-carpeted Japanese garden, with Peter’s Shinto gates at the far end. In a 2004 article in Pacific Rim Magazine, the former curator of the David Lam Asian Garden at the University of British Columbia, the late Peter Wharton, said: “There is an Asiatic strand throughout the landscape in terms of geology and vegetation. To me it makes absolute sense both now, and even more so in the future, when I think the cultures of western Canada and the countries of the Pacific Rim will be even closer than they are now.” 

As we walked on, I caught a movement in the trees and pointed my camera up, but the spotted owl had turned his head away from me, then flew quickly off.

Peter looked north to Mount Seghers on Hesquiat Lake, drawing our attention to the logging landslides on its flank. This peak played an interesting role in early exploration of the west coast of Canada, for it was noted and named on August 8, 1773 by the Spanish explorer Juan Pérez, the first European to record a sighting of Vancouver Island. From aboard his frigate Santiago, he called it Loma de San Lorenzo. Had Pérez gone ashore there rather than staying on ship and trading Spanish spoons for sea otter skins and sardines with the local Hesquiat in canoes, or had he gone ashore at Haida Gwai a few days earlier rather than greeting twenty Haida braves who paddled out in their canoes to trade gifts, there might be a very different North America now. But Juan Pérez neglected to declare the formal Act of Possession. Five years later, Captain James Cook, a veteran sea captain arrived nearby on HMS Resolution becoming the first European to sight both the east and west sides of North America. (To read more about the explorers of the west coast, including Quadra and Vancouver, have a look at The Land of Heart’s Delight: Early Maps and Charts of Vancouver Island by Michael Layland.)

Heading up towards the ridge, we stopped at Annie’s museum….

….. containing artifacts from the Boat Basin Post Office……

….. and bulb labels and Annie’s pruning saw.

As we came out into a gravel clearing, I looked down to see black bear scat filled with fruit, possibly native Pacific crabapples (Malus fusca) which turn soft in autumn.

Peter stopped at his Shake Shack to demonstrate the use of his froe or shake axe. I made a video of him making the cedar shakes that are so prevalent on the property.

This might be a good place to include a map of the property, showing where we were at that point(red arrow). Our destination now was the top of the ridge above where we would find our cabin and the central hall.

Then we set out along the boardwalk under mossy, leaning trees…..

…… past the skunk cabbages I remember so vividly from my British Columbia childhood….

…… and drifts of deer fern (Blechnum spicant).

We climbed up, up, up and I looked back down towards three staircase runs flanking a mossy rock outcrop, marvelling that this entire journey – 700 metres (2300 feet) of red cedar boardwalk – was created by one man with a vision as passionate and tenacious as the woman who had lived her for almost 70 years.

I felt small in the midst of these forest giants, standing and fallen.

Natural rises in the land were negotiated via stairways and bridges.

I looked out over the forest here and caught a glimpse of Rae Lake. Alas, I did not make it down to the lake in our time here (blame my aching knee).

I longed to have a rest in the shelter of this cedar, harvested at some point by first nations people for its bark or boards, but kept on climbing.

At one point I turned around to gaze at the miniature ecosystem that takes hold in the slowly-rotting bole of a dead red cedar.

Finally we came out into a clearing and there was the central hall, aka the lodge, aka the Temperate Rainforest Study Centre.

I loved the Boat Basin logo cutout in the heavy yellow cedar door.

And what a clever use for an old power line insulator!

Then we were inside the hall. Measuring 50′ x 50’, it is heated by a wood stove and features a well-supplied kitchen with propane appliances turned on for each visiting group during the time they are there.  Flashlights, battery-powered lights and candles provide illumination.

After leading us to the top, Peter headed back down to the road to drive our supplies up by truck.  We explored the hall and the outer deck and marveled at the spectacular view of the property and Hesquiat Harbour.

From here I could see red cedar, yellow cedar, amabilis fir and lodgepole pine. I’m sure there were more species in this complex forest ecosystem, so different from the monoculture second- and third-growth forests planted by the timber companies to “replace” the old-growth they cut down.

When we had our bags and groceries, Doug made us all a sandwich lunch, then we made our way up the path through the forest to our cabins.  Ours was #6 – the honeymoon cabin!

There was a rusty mirror and I decided a rainforest selfie was in order.

Huckleberries and salal made me feel as if my own little garden was pure west coast!

This was the view from behind our platform bed. Not bad, eh?  I quickly made up the bed with provided sheets and sleeping bag blankets and stowed our clothes on the shelf.

Further up the path from our cabin was our own “outhouse with a view”.

As I wandered back towards the central hall, I heard a familiar tapping from the forest. A hairy woodpecker was working its way up an old hemlock.

As the sky darkened, we chopped vegetables, sautéed mushrooms and barbecued steak. Peter joined us for dinner by candelight.

It had been one of the most magical of days: a very special opportunity to share a little slice of this majestic part of Canada. After washing the dishes in water heated on the woodstove, we said good night and headed up the path toward our cabins. It was time for bed.

Continued in Part Two 

***********

To enquire about booking a trip to Cougar Annie’s Garden and the Temperate Rainforest Study Centre, visit the Boat Basin Foundation Website.

Walla Walla’s Abeja Inn and Winery

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After our big day of geology at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument and the wonderful Thomas Condon Paleontology Center in Oregon, (click on the link for my last blog), we arrived a few hours later at the Abeja Inn and Winery in Walla Walla, Washington. This was our big splurge for our British Columbia-Washington-Oregon road trip, and we were going to enjoy it.

We were two hours late for our wine-tasting (blame geology!) but the lovely receptionist told us it would be no problem to switch the appointment to the following morning…. after breakfast! She said this as she poured us a delicious glass of wine, which tasted extra special after a long day amidst fossils and volcanic ash flows!

With a friendly guide pointing out the property’s features, we walked past the entrance with its big allée of maple trees….

…. and headed towards the house. Goldenrod was in bloom and the mountain ash was loaded with fruit.

Lavender plants had bloomed earlier and had their summer shearing.

The inn occupies the original Kibler family farmhouse from the early 1900s.  But for almost 20 years, the property has been owned by Ken and Ginger Harrison, who developed the winery after searching for a property where they could grow Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.

There was a spacious veranda….

…. where rose-of-sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) in full flower.

I loved this wire plant stand – maybe a defensive accessory against plant-loving rabbits?

The view of the vineyard from the sitting area down the hall from our room was gorgeous, as was our room!

Grape vines and grain fields did look lovely in the late afternoon light. I read somewhere that local farmers are getting anxious because more grape-growers are moving into the area and transforming farm land into vineyards. Having tasted some pretty delicious (and expensive) Walla Walla reds, I could understand the appeal of the terroir but sympathized with the concern of long-time grain farmers. The same thing happened to fruit growers in Ontario’s Niagara regions – out with the peaches, in with the Cabernet Sauvignon.

There was a comfy living room for reading, but we were ready for dinner, having snacked for lunch on last night’s meagre deli supper ingredients in the car on the highway through Oregon.

Saffron Restaurant was on the main street of Walla Walla, and was every bit as lovely and delicious as we’d read.

The next morning dawned crisp and a little cool, and we headed to the breakfast patio.

But first I wanted to tour the beautiful garden….

…….. with its central fountain…..

…. and late-season perennials and shrubs.

It was a lovely place to stop and “smell the roses”.

We decided to find a little nook out of the wind so…..

…. took a corner table where we were served the most scrumptious waffle with blackberry preserves and peach cream….

….. and then a delicious shirred egg with herbs.

After breakfast we toured a little of the property. Check out the big trumpet vine.

It was grape harvest time and the vats were being readied.

We walked past the vineyards, netted to prevent birds….

….. from eating succulent grapes like these 2018 Syrah.

Then it was time for our 10:30 am WINE TASTING!  No, I didn’t drink and Doug took small sips. (After all, when in Rome….)

We learned that Abeja means “bee” in Spanish, which translates to some interesting themed gifts in the shop.

I had already noticed bees on the butterfly bush. (And of course as part of my work I photograph all kinds of bees wherever I am in the world).

But we had a big drive ahead with a stop at a very special destination (next blog!) and we walked pack to the lovely old farmhouse inn and packed up. Thank you Abeja!

Portland’s Japanese Garden: A Haiku in Green

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When it comes to garden styles, I prefer a meadow:  buzzing with bees, fluttering with butterflies and alive with birdsong.  That is how I’ve designed my own Ontario gardens, with a view to native plant ecology and inclusion of insects, birds and wildlife. It doesn’t mean I don’t love visiting all kinds of gardens: Elizabethan knots, formal rose gardens, vegetable patches, wetlands and colourful perennial borders. But the most interesting, from an intellectual point of view, is the Japanese Garden, which represents ancient Shinto (Zen gardens) and Buddhist philosophy.

In my three decades of garden travel, I’ve visited Japanese gardens in Kyoto (Tenryū-ji, Ryōan-ji, Saihō-ji, among others); at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew; Chicago Botanic Garden; Brooklyn Botanic Garden; Denver Botanic Garden; Missouri Botanical Garden; the Tea Garden at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco; Montreal Botanical Garden; Vancouver’s UBC Botanical Garden; and The Butchart Gardens in Victoria. But the finest of all – and reportedly the most authentic garden outside Japan– is the Japanese Garden in Portland, Oregon.  It even inspired me to write a little haiku…

Last September at this time, I was there with a group of women I’ll call “the golf widows”. Each year, our husbands (college classmates) get together somewhere and while they tee off, we see the local sights. One of the highlights of our Portland-Bend visit was this early morning tour, courtesy of garden member Gail Carr. It was my second visit, but it had been more than 15 years since I’d seen it, and a lot had changed during a $33.5 million expansion over 16 months. Foremost was the new entrance at the parking lot level in Washington Park. Designed by architect Kenzo Kuma and Garden Curator Sudafumi Uchiyama, it opened in spring 2017.  I was intrigued with the sleek, modern pool beside the ticket house, glimpsed through bamboo culms….

….. and the tiered waterfall feeding it.

From here we entered via an ornate, century-old gate…..

….. that took us up a steep hillside of old Douglas firs and bigleaf maples (Acer macrophyllum).

New native understory plantings on the hillside were created along with the pathways, and an “ephemeral” water course built to drain seasonal rainfall or snowmelt from the top to the bottom.  Said the garden of this new entrance: “It is as if visitors were setting foot on land after a voyage across the Pacific from Japan or disembarking from the Willamette or Columbia River, which were the original highways of this region.“

Horsetails and ferns combine with trilliums, columbines, salal, huckleberries and all kinds of native plants nestled among beautiful boulders.

Stone retaining walls appeared where the slope was steeper….

…. but Japanese design touches were married with the Pacific Northwest theme.

Nearing the top, we came to a handsome glass-enclosed bridge named for donor Sheila Edwards-Lienhart.

Beyond the bridge, steps led up to the new Cultural Village.

At the top, we could look back down at the impressive ascent. Visitors with mobility issues or those who don’t welcome this climb on a warm day can take a garden shuttle, which runs every 15 minutes.

We stopped in the Tateuchi Courtyard of the Cultural Village outside the Jordan Schnitzer Japanese Arts Learning Center.  As the garden says: “The Cultural Village provides a place where visitors can immerse themselves in traditional Japanese arts through seasonal activities, performances, and demonstrations in the Atsuhiko and Ina Goodwin Tateuchi Foundation Courtyard.” The perfect little garden below is called Tsubo-Niwa, which means “courtyard garden”, and features the traditional Japanese elements: stone, water and plants.

The Marguerite Drake Sculpture Terrace offers a dramatic setting for beautiful works of art.

Bonsai is an essential element of Japanese design, and the Ellie M. Hill Bonsai Terrace features some fine specimens, like this 40-yearold European beech tree (Fagus sylvatica)….

…… and this 35-year old ‘Beni-Kawa’ coralbark maple (Acer palmatum).

A shimmering bamboo allée leads from the Tateuchi Courtyard to the Nezu Gate, which is the entrance to the original garden itself and its five distinct Japanese garden styles.  Begun in 1963 on the site of what had once been the Washington Park Zoo, it was designed by Professor Takuma Tono (1891-1987) of the Tokyo Agricultural University.

The Nezu Gate is a good place to show a map of the garden and its five styles: the Flat Garden, the Tea Garden, the Strolling Pond Garden, the Natural Garden and the Sand and Stone Garden . I’ve added a yellow arrow to indicate where we are. Click to enlarge.

On the inside, you can see the compartments on either side of the Nezu Gate, which were traditionally the offices of the samurai who guarded such entrances.

 

It was early in the morning, so gardeners were going about their tasks as we walked by towards The Flat Garden. As you can imagine, pruning and shearing is a non-stop task in a large Japanese garden, where symbolism is entwined even in the shape of the plants.

In Japanese design, the journey is meant to be contemplative, thus small vignettes like this water basin with its bamboo spout, which I borrowed for my introductory haiku.

The Flat Garden, hira-niwa, represents the evolution of the classic dry landscape style. We stood on the veranda of the Pavilion, observing the scene. The mossy islands in the sea of raked granitic Japanese sand represent a sake cup and a gourd.

This century-old weeping Japanese cherry (Prunus x subhirtella ‘Pendula’) would be lovely to see covered in pink blossoms in early spring.  Note the careful support of the branches.

We walked to the other side of the Pavilion.  Designed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill and built in 1980 from Alaskan cedar (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis) with a long wall of shoji screens, it is used for garden functions.

Rock selection and positioning is carefully considered in Japanese design.

As we headed back towards the other gardens, I noted another lovely stone water basin…

…. and a handsome lantern.

Japanese maples are planted everywhere, of course. They are called momiji in their native land.

But even though native Japanese plants occupy the understory here, they are sheltered by trees of the Pacific Northwest forest, like the massive Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), below.

We passed under a wisteria arbor, its concrete posts textured to appear tree-like. Many of the old cobbles in the garden originally paved Portland streets before being replaced by asphalt; they are recycled in the pathways here. In the distance, you can see the……

……. Sapporo Pagoda Lantern, set in a niche under towering red cedars (Thuja plicata) and Douglas firs.

Standing 18-feet tall and more than a century old, it was a 1989 gift from Portland’s Japanese sister city, Sapporo.  They were joined in 1959 just a few years after President Dwight Eisenhower established the Sister City Program. As they celebrate the 60th anniversary this year, the garden notes that the relationship reminds us “that the Pacific Ocean acts not as a barrier but a bridge between our two countries”.

The lantern’s five stories symbolize earth, water, fire, wind and sky.  And the stones set in moss at its base represent a stone map of the island of Hokkaido.



We walked through the Tea Garden which contains an inner garden, a middle garden and an outer garden. The teahouse itself is managed by the Kashintei Kai Tea Society which offers workshops and ceremonies in chadō, the “way of tea”. Tea culture, of course, is a fundamental part of Japanese life.

This is a lantern in the Tea Garden.

I loved this mossy niche in the Tea Garden. Evidently some of the polished shingle stones in the garden were collected from the beach at Ecola State Park, my last blog.

This was one of my favourite vignettes: a green machiai, traditionally used as a sheltered waiting place before the tea ceremony. I loved everything about this….

…… including the handsome tied bamboo fence.

This mossy lantern added to the serenity of the Tea Garden….

….. as did this suikinkutsu stone basin and bamboo fountain.  Sound is important and the gentle splash of water adds to the tranquility of the Japanese garden experience.

Then it was time to explore the two ponds in the Strolling Pond Garden, chisen kaiyu shiki teien.  The upper pond is viewed from a moon bridge….

…. looking out over a beautifully landscaped body of water.  So many shades of green! The mound-shaped shrubs in this setting have special symbolism as well; they are meant to suggest moss-covered stones.  During the Edo period (1603-1867), feudal lords or daimyo displayed their wealth with strolling pond gardens.

The handsome bronze finials on the moon bridge begged to be caressed.

Two bronze herons or cranes stand in the shallow, forever fishing.

Then we walked along the zig-zag bridge, or yatsuhashi.  Designed to trick evil spirits that might be following you, it took us past beautiful koi…..

…… swimming along past ferns and Japanese iris in spring…..

….. towards the spectacular lower pond.

I’m sure there is symbolism here in the placement of the lantern and the stones.

I loved the way the maple-framed lantern reflected in the water.

The Heavenly Waterfall occupies the former bear den of the Washington Park zoo. In 1997 it was damaged by a winter storm and subsequently rebuilt at a greater height.

Isn’t this an enchanting scene?

We walked on towards the Natural Garden, passing a gardener sweeping the moss. This is a familiar scene in Japanese gardens, one I’ve photographed in Kyoto, too.

A deer-scarer fountain, shishi-odoshi, clacked its warning as we passed.   (Be sure to watch my video of the various water features at the bottom of this blog.)

For some visitors, the Natural Garden is a favourite place to appreciate a less controlled, contemporary way of gardening in the Japanese style, called zoki no niwa.   Although Professor Tono designed this originally as a moss garden, the terrain did not lend itself to that concept, and it was reimagined later as a place where visitors could rest and reflect on the seasons of a garden and life.

The stone paths here are works of art in themselves…..

….. taking visitors past natural water courses and onto the mossy hillside beyond.

Near the bottom, a stream runs under a lovely arched timber bridge……

….. topped with cement and edged in slender stickwork.

A little further, an angled stone path traverses water reflecting the trees and sky.

The Natural Garden features little nooks and crannies where visitors can sit, rest and reflect.

Being on a hillside there are lots of stairs in this garden, like these lovely stone-edged stairs ascending past a mossy bank.

Vine maple (Acer circinatum) is a beautiful Pacific Northwest tree that is used extensively in the Natural Garden.

Our visit was nearing an end and it was time to climb up the last set of stairs from the garden to arrive at the….

…. Sand and Stone Garden.  This classic walled dry landscape garden in the karesansui style reminded me very much of the famous Edo Period rock garden at Kyoto’s Ryōan-ji.  Using carefully placed rocks set in raked gravel according to the principle of yohaku-no-bi, meaning “the beauty of blank space”, both encourage contemplation.

The stones tell a story inspired by designer Takuma Tono’s reading of the Jataka Sutra, a 2,000 year old Indian tale about seven tiger cubs thrown into the sea as a test of courage by a tigress. The raked stones represent the waves in the seas.

The cubs are saved from starvation when Buddha, arms outstretched, offers himself to them as food; they consume him and are saved.  It is a lovely fable with a happy ending, and a fitting end to my tour of the Japanese Garden.

But before you leave, enjoy the splash of water from the garden’s many water features and fountains. Arigatō Portland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XzQbAyFiYk&t=17s