Finding Balance - A Work In Progress

This garden drives most of my friends crazy - they want it done. I can not tell you how many times they step into the backyard only to say - sarcastically - "gee, so many changes" or "wow! almost done." In some ways that sums up gardening in America versus gardening in Japan - time is the reward, there is ultimately no finished product.

There are dozens of changes, albeit small, maybe Lilliputian, but I cherish every one - every new moss, new fern, new pine growth, every new bird that visits. Slow change is a delight.

Some things go in this garden and I know they will change - I want them to change, grow, surprise me. Sometimes I simply know I have planted or placed with hope, and the plant or stone has other intentions. Time will travel them to where they must be and then the right balance will emerge.

Recently I began reconstructing a small section (above) where gravity conspired with terra firma to find their own balance - not mine. I finally followed their lead and rebuilt the entire section of stone, rock and plantings, keeping in mind their wishes.

Thee above image show the section reconstructed and washed.

The final step was to remove all the Mexican blue river stone (more to be added) and was it clean of winter's mud and earth that had fallen down from the banks that would not remain quietly where I intended - oh I have so much to learn. Silent lessons.

Finally to add back the life in the crevices and locations it was deciding. (all the small ferns and mosses were removed before I started the reconstruction and mapped so they would go back as close to their homes as possible.)

Giboshi in Spring

It's been far too long since I have updated my garden blog, especially considering after a wet cold early season spring has finally come, or at least the garden has decided to move forward regardless the wintry fronts that continually blow over the westhills from the Pacific.

Several new plantings from late fall and winter have erupted in shades of green - a half dozen Hosta (Giboshi in Japanese) varieties, several native ferns and a few Rhododendrons, and a striped bamboo a returned from the east coast with several years ago and had nearly thought was lifeless - a lesson learned about the eternal hardiness of bamboo rhizomes.

I have been working on water features, new plantings, finally decided on a fence and a deck design and preparing to build. Those last two elements pave the way for the five large stones purchased last year to make their way into the back yard. Photos and details all coming later June.

Couple of things to share. First a wonderful book on the Tea Garden, by Marc Peter Keane. Keane is considered America's top expert on the Japanese Tea Garden. This from the NYTimes review:

THE JAPANESE TEA GARDEN (Stone Bridge, $59.95), opens with an evocative scene of people arriving for a tea ceremony. "The important thing is that a guest be neat and clean as an expression of respect for the host and of purity of mind. No one wears jewelry or uses perfume or cologne, those being too worldly and distracting." Since tea gardens have had a major impact on the design of Japanese gardens in general, this book is a necessary addition to the library of any serious student. The rest of us will enter with humility -- mindful of the small door through which one must crawl into the tea room -- and sip slowly. The sweeping historical ambition of this work emphasizes the connection between social and economic change and the development of tea gardens. In the 16th century, for example, moss was a sign of decrepitude and poor housekeeping; that it went on to become a revered element in Japanese gardens represents "a paradigm shift," Keane notes, "as to what constitutes beauty." We learn that stepping stones not only create beautiful patterns on the ground and keep feet dry but also slow the visitor's pace. It's impossible to be in a hurry and expect to understand anything about Japanese gardens -- a lesson that holds for understanding life in general. --New York Times, Sunday Book Review, December 3, 2009 by Dominique Browning.

The other sharing is the website JapaneseGarden.org Great resource for all this Japanese Garden - maybe more than you thought you ever wanted to know.

I've been traveling for over a month. My life green and wet and all above 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Tropical rainforests, montane rainforests, Chenier forests, bayous and beaches. I returned home to a garden wrapped in clutch of winter, being pulled away from fall. Only the garden's pines and Hinokis, cedar and bamboo are leafed. The maples have all laid their blankets and fallen to rest.

Autumn Songs of Success

In the few days I have between Gulf trips the most perfect fall weather has blessed the garden. As I posted, new plantings and scaping have been in the works, but equally as joyful has been the attraction of visitors - avians - some just passing through, others have become as permanently passionate about the garden as I.

My office window faces the sunrise, overlooking the back garden and a scattering of bird feeders hanging like pendants off the porch and maples. Every dawn the garden is alive with song and chittering, and wings flashing in the first flickers of sunlight through the bamboo. Little lives reminding me I share this space and with each new maple and moss I introduced.

For those who follow this blog with mixed passions - love for birds and bushes - here is a list of garden visitors this past week, plus one mystery warbler and a flycatcher that eluded me in hide-n-seek:

• Black-headed Grosbeak (Pheucticus melanocephalus)
• Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum)
• Rufous Hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus)
• House Finch (Carpodacus mexicanus) - pictured
• Lesser Goldfinch (Carduelis psaltria) - pictured
• American Goldfinch (Carduelis tristis)
• Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis)
• Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia)
• Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)
• Golden-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia atricapilla)
• Rufous-Sided Towhee. (Pipilo erythrophthalmus)
• Bushtit (Psaltriparus minimus)
• Western Scrub Jay (Aphelocoma californica)
• Western Tanager, (Piranga ludoviciana)
• Ruby-crowned Kinglet (Regulus calendula)

Perfect Planting Season

Changes in the garden are often more obvious to those not witnessing daily ebbs and flows of growth - my being way has helped me see the progress the past couple of years has made. The above photo (looking north down the dry creek bed towards the eventual pond) almost suggest something of a real Japanese sasso garden might be on its way.

Since I'm only home in the garden for a couple weeks before heading back to the Gulf I am trying to get as much fall planting done as possible. This weekend off to Garden World - ya I know, silly name - but they have an excellent collection of native conifers and near wholesale prices. The perimeter of the garden is missing a couple key shade producers. My goal is to add two Incense Cedars (Calocedrus decurrens) in the far right corner behind the single Hinoki cyprus there now. The trio should visually balance the grove of five Hinokis on the far left corner that were planted two years ago as the initial anchors. (Which after the initial first year heat wave have established themselves and are adding wonderful vertical growth. The soil around them was augmented this past spring with a large crumbling western red cedar log I hauled out of the local forest. That log brought with it all manner of micro-flora and fauna which has helped seed the garden and made life pretty exciting for the increasing number of native birds that use the garden - up to 23 species last count!)

This past week five starter plants of the Pachysandra terminalis (sometimes called Japanese spurge - not my favorite name) were planted in and around the rock work bordering the pebble path (photo above - what it looks like established in the Portland Japanese Garden - and below - my humble beginnings). A few more medium sized stones are yet to be places in this area, but already it "feels" right.

One of the happiest successes has been the way the Equisetum (native horsetail) has adopted to its new setting (photo below). My friend and expert gardener/plant guru cautioned me on transplanting Equisetum. So with great caution I did - prepping the subsurface with weed mat and perforated plastic, and course sand mixed into the poor dirt to enable a moderate degree of standing wetness to simulate a tanic wetland. The future for this area is to take the spill over water from the pond and what water floods down the dry creek bed during rainy spring and fall weather. BTW - this is the native Equisetum that does not invade the world.

One last look (below) at the pebble path and the initial plantings along its edge - still much work to do here, but also want to let the "weediness" take its rightful place naturally.

Weedy Wonder in My Absence

I have always had a passion for ferns, and mosses, and that odd collection of plant-like green things that live in the in between world, things like liverwort, clubmosses, and horsetail. My loving fondness for them is a childhood thing. They were woodland friends, the bed where I would lay, away from the "other" world, and stare into the treetops, the woodland world a living omnimax of life.

The appeal was in their evergreen-ness. Regardless the season they always remind me life was there. Some ferns would fade, impress there fine shape on beds of Polytrichum, but the whole house was moist, the scent of rich humus, fertile.

When I learned their names they were even more enchanting. Rarely such things as stodgy Douglas-this, or obvious color name like white or red something. All the contrary. They were imaginary things - ferns of Deer or Maidenhair, Lace, Lady and Licorice; mosses of Rope and Beak and Broom. So when it came to My garden, this world of green on loan to me for my few years, I knew I needed shade, and wet, and and the scent of decay. There could be no other than a sasso, "weed garden", as Motomi Oguchi calls it, and within it a yarimizu, a small pond and side wetland.

The garden has been happily evolving in its weedy wonder in my absence; these many weeks away on the Gulf Coast. Ferns and mosses and horsetails have erupted. While I have been tracking oil on beaches the sasso has been washed in gentle rain, and mild days, the greens have taken over under an umbrella of cumulus. In every seam and surface a bright flush of fern and mat of moss has begun. Without a a single spade being turned, the garden has begun gifting.

Thank you Jenn for watching over it with great kindness.

Last Light in the Japanese Garden

Last Light,

Fading through black pine,

Falls on bamboo.

Back home in Portland and the Fall has drifted over the Northwest while I was away - the colors have not shifted, but the season has. Light is low, and warm, and gentle. There is no rush to it's traverse.

"Perfection is the measure of Heaven and the wish to be perfect is the measure of man."
- unknown

As much as I have "wished" my garden to be perfect in some fanciful place reserved in my mind, I am constantly aware that that garden is not what I am creating and that garden is not what I want. In its later years my garden will be its own garden, "zasso", sprouting, intertwining, layering, reaching skyward on its own. So it's Heaven, that gentle persuasion of wind and rain, pruning by sun and cold, the invisible force of other leafy-kinds by shade and gesture, and the nurture of nutrient tides beyond my sight, that will exact some measure of perfection within this plot I now call home.

When ever my vision drifts too far I return to my smallest gardens
- bonsais -
to remind me of the grand scale and my vision there.

photo: Acer japonicum 'Aconitifolium' - Fullmoon Maple

Japanese Gardening with the Pros

Hi All - not much news here lately - promise to change that, there are changes in my garden.

In the meantime, for those of you in the Portland area - or looking for an excuse to visit - there are a wonderful offering of Japanese gardening workshops this next few months.

Back to this blog soon - I promise Candi.

All the reason I need

For the past few days Yellow-rumped Warblers have been taking up residence in the garden - today they were "showering" in the spray of the sprinkler, six of them - that makes me happy deep in my soul; all the reason I need to be building this garden as slowly, carefully and thoughtfully as I have.

Another guests - Willow flycatcher and Cedar Waxwing

FALLing back into work

The past several weeks have been kind of quiet for me in the garden. Sunshine and near 90 degree temps kept the black shade tent in place and the baked ground just wasn't worth trying to hammer into. So instead, I spent weekends on my bike, out on the roads, watching nature's larger garden prepare for the shift that could only be days away. Then last week fall arrived - temps dropped into upper 50's and low 60's and overcast sky and on-again, off-again rains have started softening the soil.

I took down the shade tent constructed a couple months ago and the NE corner is now exposed to the elements. The cooler wetter weather has also brought about a lovely change to the garden - one of the great joys of a garden - hidden secrets: Leaves on several of the maples have begun the tintal migration and a lilliputian forest of fungi have erupted in the humus infused soil I amended in late spring. The fungi only last a day and exhaust their sporing caps, but daily a new, differently arranged forest erupts. I could not have asked for a more wonderful surprise!

Over the next few weeks several new progress posts will pop up as I plow back into several projects wanting attention - the new walls, bed-scaping, rock transfer, bamboo planting and eventually larger pine and maple tree plantings.

At last rain!

At last rain fell last week - after nearly 6 weeks of dry and of late scorching heat, the rain finally came to the garden. You could hear the collective deep breath and sigh from every plant, moss and lichen. Beyond my garden (and my own soaring summer water bill) over on my photography/travel blog - small planet perambulations - I'm giving growing thought to water issues, and what shape my next photo/film project will take around communicating our planet's thirst.

Back in this little garden, after almost a week reprieve, the heat is returning - today 90's, tomorrow 98 is predicted - I'm back to watering... and the Anna's hummingbirds, goldfinches, bush tits, song sparrows and other are soaking it in as well.

Emergency measures in a heat wave

This wasn't my idea of a second post, but on the way to the forum a heat wave struck and I began waking each morning to more and more curled leaves and listing fronds. With temps the past few days soaring over the century mark, not at all our norm here in Portland, I needed to do something dramatic and quick. The above picture is the heart of my solution. This a tent of black woven polypropylene material - Aluminet shade cloth.

Typically our temperatures dance in the upper 80's and low 90's in late July and early august - with an occasional day above 100. Generally any temp is accompanied by some cloud covered, even if scattered throughout the day, and a breeze. This heat wave is stifling, sitting over the valley not a cumulus in sight and suffocatingly dead air. The sun just beats down on life large and small.

I chose Aluminet for a couple reasons, but primarily becasue the strands are twisted, so it reflects diffused light from many directions. I needed well diffused light to ensure even the smallest lower level plants received ample light while still continuing to be protected. Aluminet provides several benefits, including 50+% radiation/shade protection. This is the same cloth-like material many local nursery growers use. It comes in six foot wide sections and lengths up to about 230 feet on a roll. I took the remainder of a roll - 200 ft.

In addition, I purchased three bags of grommet sets (6 per bag), and a 100 unit bag of zip-ties. The grommets were critical in helping string the entire tent up via ropes to my roof and the existing fence on the north and east sides. The zip-ties were needed to "sew" the fabric together since each width was only 6ft. The resulting tent became approx. 18'x22'.

The last element was to prop the central section up high enough to allow the taller maples and Hinoki cypress gracilis breathing room to continue growing upwards. I used eight foot 2"x2" poles I had left over from another project to do the job.

What I have learned in the past couple days is as this heat lingers - even at night - propping the tent up higher not only gives the trees canopy space, but also provides for better ventilation - which I had not originally taken into account.

The whole project cost me about $150 - a small price to pay for the dozens of trees and small plants I have commited to insuring a future in my garden.

Side Benifits:
1) the tent maintains greater humidity underneath - which has helped many of the small ferns and ground mosses and lichens I had seeded the area with
2) the tent slows evaporation and reduces my water requirements
3) I moved many of my small potted maples and conifers under the tent and reduced there rapid drying out
4) birds like bushtits, chickadees, Anna's hummingbird, song sparrows and western towhees are using the shade as a respite from the sun and feeding on the increase in insects that are trying to benefit from the added shade and moisture

Since my garden had no established large trees for shade I have decided to keep the shade tent up, and will probably extend it. While not the ideal look, I'm in this for the long haul and the trees I have planted and will plant this coming winter, to form the eventual shade architecture, will take a few years to establish the required canopy height and breadth - until then the shade tent will stay in place.

You can building anything out of nothing...

It started with a simple comment - "there's nothing here", referring to the yard of house a just assumed. The innocent and unknowing reply back, "you can building anything out of nothing." That was nearly two years ago - and a lot of wandering green thoughts, half starts, a small dozer, 13,000 pounds of rock, five 10-yard drop boxes of grass sod, a ton of Mexican blue beach stone (so far), etc. It's now becoming something, evolving into something.

What I'm really building is a Pacific Northwest shade garden-strongly-Japanese Garden influenced-with a dedication to native plants from this Zone in the PNW and Japan and China. Now throw in your basic love of bamboos, maples and pines and you have a garden that keeps evolving... very organic mind you... into something that I think I will love and so will most of the small creatures that fly, swim and crawl here. It IS NOT a formal Japanese Garden, it's not a tsubo niwa (courtyard gardens) or a kare sansui (dry gardens) or any other, so please refrain from your over ego-indulgent-chastisations. If that's what I wanted I would move to Japan. I love the plants and feel of the PNW shade forest, but like architects Gustav Stickley and Frank Lloyd Wright , photographers Ernst Haas and Shinzo Maeda, and other creators, I'm influenced by the need for simplicity, my travels, my photography and the serenity and tranquility other elements afford - so adopt, adapt, and evolve. (Note - if you are banging your Japanese Garden head against the wall right now [you shouldn't be on this blog] then let me throw you this bone - I'm building what renowned garden designer Motomi Oguchi calls a native place-inspired "weed garden", so there, enjoy.)

Don't get me wrong, an authentic perfectly crafted Japanese Garden is amazing - I spend hours throughout the year in one (photo above). I'm further cursed and blessed by having as they say, "Proclaimed one of the most authentic Japanese gardens outside of Japan, the Portland Japanese Garden is a 5.5-acre haven of tranquil beauty nestled in the scenic west hills of Portland, Oregon." Sitting across town only 5 miles away the Portland Japanese Gardens is way too much inspiration and temptation! Then on top of that they go and have a member plant sale once a year - I was doomed!

So my garden is divided into four sections (I'll post a diagram soon), the front yard (west facing) and backyard (east facing) each 35'x50', and a strip on both the highly exposed south and shaded north each 6'x30'. Most of the blog will be focused on the front and back. For the near term I use the south for open storage of pots, bags of soil, etc. The north is currently being kept open for access to the back yard - which I can move larger plants, trees, stones, fencing, etc.

This is my first entry - the garden's blog beginning - but my garden is an eternity from being "complete" if one ever can be. So after numerous prodings from others I'm sharing what I have learned, questions about what I don't know, my constant mistakes, a few solutions, links to resources I discover, lots of photos, maybe a few videos as well.

What I Started With: