Blueberries in mist

Blazing rows of cultivated, northern highbush blueberries, Vaccinium corymbosum.

The weather doesn't seem to be able to make up its mind. Sometimes, we get all four seasons one single day, as the weather flicks through all its options like a bored teenager browsing the offerings of the cable channel. On Tuesday, I drove to Larsen Lake early in the morning, my sunglasses tightly on my nose, to snap some pictures of the blueberry fields before the glistening, horizontal autumn sun got too high. When I arrived, the weather had decided otherwise. The sun was hiding, and the whole plateau was covered in moist, milky mist that muffled all sounds and wiped out every trace of the surrounding busy suburbia, seemingly transferring the little blueberry farm back in time to its early days of glory more than a century ago.

The Thode log house from the 1890s. Originally situated by the nearby Phantom Lake, it was transferred to the Larsen Lake Blueberry Farm in the 1990s.

Somewhere out there... blazing red blueberry fields covered in deep mist.

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Larsen Lake is one of the many places near Seattle with Scandinavian connections. It was named after Ove Peter Larsen, who built his homestead and farmed potatoes and other vegetables there in the 1890s. Ove Peter's sons used to pick huckleberries and cranberries on the wetlands. Their harvest was transported to the young and fast-growing city of Seattle, first by horse to the Medina or Yarrow Point landings, and then with the ferries to the city. Farming business bloomed and many immigrants followed Larsen's example, covering vast areas of Seattle's eastside with vegetable, fruit and berry farms. Today, few of the farms exist and most of them are used as recreational areas by the busy, suburban eastsiders. Some, like the Larsen Lake or the nearby Mercer Slough Blueberry Farm, are leased out and cultivated as working farms, making nostalgic reminders of Seattle's not-so-distant, rustic past, when all its now world-famous tech companies were unheard and probably even undreamed of.

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As the sun crawls up behind the huge fir trees, blueberry bushes emerge from the mist.

Dunn Gardens, a miniature Olmsted in north Seattle

A paperbark maple, Acer griseum, showing off its coppery bark against native salals and Rhododenrons.

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Last Friday, I wandered through the lush, dripping shrubberies of the Dunn Gardens in Broadview, some five miles north from Seattle city centre. A piece of living garden history of the Pacific Northwest, they were designed in 1916 by the renowned landscape design firm Olmsted Brothers, and built by prominent Seattle business man Arthur Dunn, who had made his fortune (amongst other things) in the salmon canning business.

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Beds filled with Epimediums, Hellebores, ferns and other woodland plants.

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A square lawn that used to be a tennis court, meets the visitor like a small surprise after all winding paths that lead to it from different parts of the gardens.

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At that time, the Olmsted Brothers was one of the most prominent landscape design companies in the United States. Its initial founder, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) had designed several notable parks and gardens, such as the Central Park in New York, the grounds of the US Capitol, Stanford University in northern California, and the huge Vanderbilt-owned Biltmore House in North Carolina. His son, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr (1870-1957) continued the work, and established the Olmsted Brothers together with his stepbrother John Charles Olmsted (1852-1920). These two designers were invited to develop a park plan for Seattle city in 1903, a commission they filled more than satisfactory during the following three decades. Their legacy in the Seattle area gardens and parks is immeasurable; not only did they deliver the park plan, but also designed tens of parks, avenues, playgrounds and public and private gardens in the area. The Dunn Gardens are one of the few surviving private ones.

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Luscious seedpods of the giant Himalayan lily, towering three meters above the ground. They have self-seeded themselves prolifically in the gardens, forming commanding focal points in the most unexpected places.

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Doll's eyes, Actaea pachypoda, is native to the eastern North America. The whole plant and especially the dotted, porcelain white berries are highly poisonous.

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The Dunn Gardens bears all the characteristics of a typical Olmsted design. It is well adapted to the topography of the site, and its design takes into consideration the sloping site and the distant sea view. Meandering paths wind around the gardens, and reveal the overall plan and sights only gradually to the viewer, which makes the garden feel larger; also, borrowed views have been used for the same purpose. Native plants are used throughout the gardens, and existing trees and other vegetation have been saved and included in the plan when possible. There is even a small water feature, another typical element for the Olmsteds, even if this was added to the design by Arthur Dunn's son, Edward Dunn, who just like his father was an enthusiastic gardener. Edward continued to take care of the gardens until his death in 1991.

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Beautiful stone steps, an original feature by the Olmsteds, was found only recently under a layer of soil and debris that had gathered on the unused tennis court..

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The work of the Olmsted Brothers forms an important part of the history of appreciation of native landscape and plants in North America, that began with the first landscape gardens laid out by presidents George Washington in Mount Vernon (in mid to late 18th century) and Thomas Jefferson in Monticello (late 18th to early 19th century), and continued with Andrew Jackson Downing's hugely influential book A Treatise on the Theory and Practise of Landscape Gardening Adapted to North America (1841), the first book that advised American gardeners to use native plants and to adapt their designs to suit the surrounding landscape. Many others, like landscape designer Jens Jensen and garden author Frank Scott, expressed the same ideas in their work, but none had probably as wide-spread and lasting legacy in this area as the Olmsteds together.

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A selection of pots filled with lush greenery, their contrasting leaf forms complementing each other.

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As I wandered through the Dunn Gardens, after almost a century from their creation and with the surrounding suburbia creeping close onto them on all sides, I felt how they still quietly relayed the original Olmstedian goals that had guided their design. The paths lingered, never revealing what was waiting around the next copse, headlands of plantings pushed into the vast lawns, and behind the boundaries, distant trees invited my eyes to explore the scenery further away. Many of the plants, like the towering Douglas firs and huge Rhododendrons, had clearly grown out of their optimal size and sometimes overtook the scene. Despite this, these majestic, native plants continue playing an important part in the story of the Dunn Gardens, just like the Dunn Gardens play an important part in the history of gardens in the Seattle area.

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Five abundant acres - Wells Medina Nursery

Feathery, spiky, cascading, golden... hundreds of conifers mingling together at the Well's Medina Nursery.

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Some temptations in life are more difficult to resist than others, and for plant people like me, nurseries can be scenes for great mental battles. How many times haven't I been there, asking myself all the right questions: do I really need the new plant; do I know where to plant it in my garden; do I really have the time & commitment to make it thrive... and so on, until I resign, knowing that however hard I try, life is just too short for so much sensible reasoning.

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Bounty & beauty for autumn containers...

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And now, I'm living within walking distance of Wells Medina Nursery, with five acres filled to brim with an amazing selection of well-tended temptations, many of which are rare and unusual, and all of which are in excellent condition. Japanese umbrella pines mingle with golden Metasequioas, Trilliums and Dodecatheons hold up their elegant, nodding blooms in chorus, young Arisaemas and Anemonellas of the shadow plant section beg to be noticed and admired... So many times, I've fought my urgent cravings to dash down the street just to see what's in season, fully aware of the risks. A couple of times, I've almost bumped into another car as I've managed to drive past, but then stretched out my neck to catch a speedy glimpse of the seasonal arrangements that fill the front. Was it meant to build my character, living so close to those abundant acres, full of goodies for plant lovers like me? In that case, I'm making no progress worth mentioning...

* Autumn color at the shrub section. I love wandering the paths of a well-stocked nursery, browsing the name tags of the plats; a lovely opportunity to get to know new ones and to see things from magazines and books "live"...

There is no such thing as a too common plant...

Glowing white snowberries in the forests of the Pacific Northwest.

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While diving into the history of gardens and gardening here in Pacific Northwest, I constantly bump into old plant friends from the other side of the Atlantic. Little did I know how many of them originate from this area, and how already two centuries ago their seeds were exported by adventurous plant hunters to Europe and sold for high prices for the stateliest of gardens there. It is interesting to read how Mahonias, for example, were imported from nurseries in the eastern parts of the US until local nurseries started growing them here - all at the same time as they were happily carpeting the floors of the lush, evergreen forests of the area. And how they, together with another Pacific Northwest native, the flowering currant, Ribes sanguineum, were favorite messengers of spring in the English gardens of the Victorian era, long before the permanent Euro-American settlement took roots in the areas they came from.

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Some of the Northwest natives have become so common in the gardens of Europe, that we seldom think where they came from. A good example is snowberry, Symphoricarpos albus, a humble and hardy member of the honeysuckle family that arrived to Swedish gardens during the second part of 19th century and became one of the trendiest garden plants from 1930s to 50s. Today, it is considered almost a weed despite its actually quite distinguished history.

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The snowberry was discovered in the Pacific Northwest by early American explorers Meriwether Louis and William Clark, who were commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to find a river route from the eastern US to the Pacific Ocean. During their expedition in 1804-05, they collected seeds of hundreds of plants. Many of them were given to President Jefferson, who gave them to his nurseryman friend Bernard McMahon (after whom the Mahonia was later named). In 1812, McMahon presented Jefferson with several young snowberry plants. They were planted at Jefferson's home Monticello that became the first garden to grow them in America. Snowberries were famed for their slender stems and unusually white berries, and they became an instant success after being exported to England in 1817. From there, they rapidly spread to the finest gardens of continental Europe and Scandinavia.

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In my garden in Sweden, there is a difficult spot where the garden makes transition into the surrounding parkland; a small slope, set against a group of young fir trees. Many times I have thought of planting there a clump of snowberries, being fond of the idea of the glowing white berries against the dark branches of the firs, but every time, I've written off them as far too boring and common. But as usual, the more you know about something, the more interesting it gets... and now I think that snowberries are exactly what I should grow in that spot. They will suit my 1930s house perfectly, and with their befitting origin and background, they'll be a wonderful reminder of these years in the Pacific Northwest.
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