Spirited Stone: Lessons from Kubota’s Garden

I had the opportunity to visit the Kubota Garden in southeast Seattle last fall as part of a staff enrichment day for the University of Washington Botanic Gardens. It was my first visit in decades, a time in which I have visited many notable public gardens throughout North America and in parts of Europe. For all my travels, I had been overlooking a garden treasure very close to home.

My enjoyment from that visit was enhanced by learning that a new book, “Spirited Stone: Lessons from Kubota’s Garden,” was in production. It is amazing!

A major part of this book is a biography of Fujitarō Kubota (1879-1973) with contributions by several different authors. Growing up in a rice farming family on one of the smaller Japanese islands, he was mostly self-taught in botany and the aesthetics of gardening. His humble background precluded him from being trained in the rigid traditions of designing Japanese gardens.

He left his family and after several stops, he completed his emigration to Seattle in 1910. He eventually purchased five acres in the Rainier Valley but only with help, as a Japanese citizen he was not allowed to own property outright. That was the beginning of the garden he developed and nurtured for the next 50 years. It was also the base for his livelihood as a garden designer and installer, and the site for growing his extensive nursery stock.

Kubota created demonstration gardens along a roadway that allowed customers to drive through and choose their favorites from various garden vignettes, which he would reproduce at their homes. A typical contract included the expected details of construction and landscape materials, but the choice of plantings were at the discretion of Kubota. His story captures much of the history of garden design practices and nurseries in Seattle in the first half of the 20^th century.

Kubota’s garden also became a center for the Issei, or first generation Japanese community, and the many immigrant and minority communities that settled in the Rainier Beach neighborhood. Critical to nurturing this cooperative spirit were Kubota’s spiritual beliefs. He was a practitioner of Konkōkyō, a 19^th century development out of Shinto and Buddhist animistic traditions. From this comes his understanding of the spirited stone of the book’s title. One of the books essayists, Jason Wirth, summarizes this quality: “The garden nourishes and heals because it channels a kind of archaic earth awakening.”

The richness of this book is the mix of essays written in prose or poetry, or expressed in photographs, by many different authors from a variety of backgrounds. Some are by the expected landscape architects and historians, while other chapters reflect personal journeys, influenced by the garden, written by noted members of the Asian-American, African-American, or mixed race communities in the neighborhood or the region.

Many of these stories are stark, including the incarceration of Kubota and his family during World War II and his heartbreak of coming back to a neglected garden. But this story also shows his strength, in designing a garden at the prison camp in Minidoka, Idaho, and tackling the hard work of restoring the Seattle garden upon his return.

It is difficult to select a primary author for this book, but for the excellence of the extensive photographs, the Library of Congress record appropriately gives credit to Gemina Garland-Lewis. Historical photos further enhance the reader’s enjoyment, as do the quiet, black-and-white images by Nathan Wirth. The whole of “Spirited Stone” is best captured by writer Betsy Anderson: “Kubota Garden is a complex palimpsest of culture and nature that merits examination from an almost endless number of perspectives.”

Excerpted from the Fall 2020 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Growing Berries and Fruit Trees in the Pacific Northwest

Tara Austen Weaver became smitten on growing fruit in Seattle after planting raspberries during an extended summer visit. Later, she moved here permanently to a house with nine mature fruit trees and proceeded to add 14 more plus many berry plants. Her new book, “Growing Berries and Fruit Trees in the Pacific Northwest,” is based on that experience and is an excellent choice for the beginning fruit grower in Washington, Oregon, or British Columbia, especially west of the Cascades.

I found the book is especially helpful for cultivating berries by giving recommended varieties and culture methods specific to this region. The emphasis is on the most popular, including strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries, but the author is adventuresome. She maintains a small but controlled (she claims) patch of Himalayan blackberries and recommends trying wild fruit such as our native huckleberries, or even salal. Her definition of “berry” is broad and she also recommends kiwi, lingonberry, currents, and even elderberries.

Excerpted from the Fall 2020 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Wisteria: the Complete Guide

When I was nine, our family moved to a new home in the Sammamish Valley that included a wonderful, if somewhat overgrown, garden that fostered my interest in horticulture. Near the back door, plopped in the middle of the lawn, was a strange, dense thicket of a plant that was a perfect place to hide, mere feet from where my mother was calling for me.

It was some time before I learned this monstrous green blob was a wisteria, left to its own devices with nothing to climb up. The new book, “Wisteria: The Complete Guide” by James Compton and Chris Lane, has enlightened me that wisteria can indeed be grown in a pleasing, shrubby form, but only with careful pruning that the specimen of my childhood never received.

Of course, wisteria are much better known as climbing vines magnificently draping from buildings, arbors, or even large trees. This book walks you through the many selections available, with excellent photographs to distinguish the many close shades of blue, lavender, and purple, and will help you manage one of these labor intensive but oh-so-spectacular prima donnas.

This is the third in a series of excellent Royal Horticultural Society monographs on garden worthy genera and like the others titles the natural history and environmental niche of the plants are extensively examined. “As befits a vigorous and twining climber, Wisteria has a rather tortuous taxonomic history” and includes as principle players the great Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus and Thomas Nuttall after whom Cornus nuttallii, the Pacific dogwood, is named.

The cultural history of wisteria, especially in China and Japan, is another highlight while other chapters profile spectacular specimens – they can live for hundreds of years – from around the world. There is one notable example in Sierra Madre, California. Planted in 1894, it “took over the house it was originally planted on and now spreads through the gardens of two neighbouring houses.” It covers about 1.25 acres and “has entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest blossoming plant.” I never realized the peril that threatened my childhood home!

Published in Garden Notes: Northwest Horticultural Society, Fall 2020

Greenwood: A Novel

[Greenwood: A Novel] cover

In the year 2038 Jake Greenwood works as a tour guide at the Cathedral eco-resort on Greenwood Island near Vancouver, British Columbia. It’s one of the last stands of living trees to survive after the Withering killed off most forests around the world, leaving a dusty, grim environment. Jake’s choices in life are limited: mired in suffocating student debt, she’s a dendrologist in a world without trees. So a job at the Cathedral suits her even if it is operated for profit by the soulless HoltCorp. When a former flame suggests she might be a direct descendant of the timber baron Harris Greenwood or even possibly the heir to J.R. Holt, founder of HoltCorp, an incredulous Jake wonders what difference it could make.

Four generations of Greenwoods, all troubled in some way, emotionally, financially, or faced with difficult choices, are united by the theme of trees. In 20th century Canada that means forests, timber, sugar maple tapping, radical tree advocacy, fine woodworking, and dendrology. Author Michael Christie slowly unveils the Greenwood family history one generation at a time, going backward for most of the novel to 1908 and then forward again to 2038.

The plot is complicated with mysteries of birth and circumstance revealed bit by bit as we delve deeper into each character’s relationships with brothers, parents and lovers. The complex story is never confusing, although one wonders what motivated some characters to make relationship-ending decisions. Overall, it was a diverting and thought-provoking summer read.

Published in the Leaflet, September 2020, volume 7, issue 9.

In Search of Meadowlarks: Birds, Farms, and Food in Harmony with the Land

[In Search of Meadowlarks] cover

Professor Marzluff sets the scene for his exploration by camping in a cornfield in Illinois to survey birds. After an early morning walk he reports: “It takes me an hour and a half before I hear my first meadowlark—an eastern—belting forth a high-pitched, if simple tingaling from an abandoned grassy field.” After 3 hours he counts only 6 meadowlarks, the lowest count ever on that stretch of road. In North America, in fact, “the estimated population [of meadowlarks] has decreased by 71 percent since 1966.” Yikes! The reasons for the decline are complex, from habitat loss to decrease of prey insects due to pesticides. In Search of Meadowlarks: Birds, Farms, and Food in Harmony with the Land covers case studies and field trips to farms, vineyards and ranches from Montana to Costa Rica and Washington to California in order to discover which agricultural practices sustain birds.

What more can farmers do to help the environment than just avoiding pesticides? I’ve never thought about how farms could provide habitat to wildlife and support birds. I assumed wildlife conservation was something that happened in wilderness areas or abandoned fields. Marzluff points out that creatures also inhabit farms and ranches, albeit in declining numbers. Pasture and fallow fields can resemble natural grasslands while hedges resemble forest edges. Regenerative agriculture is a new buzzword to describe practices on farms and ranches that might build soil health, sequester carbon, prevent storm water pollution or support wildlife. The regenerative practices must also produce food and be economically sustainable. That last part is tricky, but the example farms that Marzluff visits have managed to make it work.

One simple example employed by California vineyard Tres Sabores involved installing bird boxes to house nesting owls. Research shows an owl family consumes more than a thousand rodents over a summer. This saves vineyard managers considerable time and money controlling grape-damaging voles, rats and gophers. Another example that surprised me was how tightly-controlled cattle grazing in Montana improved river ecosystems. Cows eat invasive grasses and compact the ground to allow vernal pools to last longer into early summer, providing habitat to amphibians.

Marzluff explores how some farmers spare land on the margins to support wildlife while others embrace sharing the land, by delaying pasture mowing, for example, to allow birds to fledge their young. The book concludes with a hopeful chapter on actions consumers and policy makers should take to assist the farmers who provide for birds.

In an ideal world, farms and ranches practicing sharing and sparing methods would form networked corridors to wild lands to boost biodiversity and reduce the risk of localized extinction. Readers wanting to dig deeper into the scholarly background of themes revealed in this book should also read Nature’s Matrix: Linking Agriculture, Conservation and Food Sovereignty by Ivette Perfecto, John Vandermeer and Angus Wright (2009). In Search of Meadowlarks is enjoyable reading for anyone interested in wildlife conservation or regenerative agriculture.

Published in the Leaflet for Scholars, August 2020, Vol. 7, Issue 8.

Big Lonely Doug

[Big Lonely Doug] cover

Harley Rustad’s Big Lonely Doug is the story of one superlative tree spared from the saw by a forester who recognized its value. Later this tree was named Big Lonely Doug by members of the Ancient Forest Alliance, who hoped to use the 1,000-year-old Douglas fir to inspire a new initiative to preserve Vancouver Island’s remaining old growth forests.

Rustad covers the history of British colonial exploration, including the Scottish botanist named David Douglas. He also compares the development of timber extraction as the foundation of British Columbia’s economy and with the more recent growth of environmental activism trying to save isolated patches of virgin forest.

The author intends to give a complete picture of a complex situation without sentimentality. The reader understands from the start that Rustad sympathizes with the activists and treasures the ancient forests and giant trees. However, his treatment of the loggers is respectful. He represents the loggers’ sensibility as intimately knowledgeable about forests, and he accepts that trees are a resource to be harvested. Cutting down the forests provides jobs and supports communities. The corporate owners don’t get off so easily when Rustad reveals how local sawmills closed down while raw logs got exported and processed in Asia.

Reading about the virgin forests with giant, ancient Western red cedars, Douglas firs and Sitka spruce (Thuja plicata, Pseudotsuga menziesii and Picea sitchensis) made me nostalgic for the times in college when I hiked among equally giant and awe-inspiring redwoods on the Northern California coast. I’ve never understood why all the rare fragments of remaining old growth were not cherished by everyone and preserved in national parks. We know how to log sustainably without leaving a clear-cut wasteland behind, so why are clearcuts permitted?

Celebrity trees like Big Lonely Doug, saved by a logger, capture the public’s imagination. Activists learned over the decades how to harness that celebrity to generate support for increasingly protective logging regulations. And now ecotourism’s beneficial economic impact acts as a counterargument against the reasoning that logging equals jobs so logging must continue unchecked. Harley Rustad documents the story of one remarkable specimen while leaving readers feeling hopeful that ancient forests may finally gain some official appreciation and protection.

Published in the Leaflet for Scholars, July 2020, Vol. 7, Issue &.

Entangled Life : How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

[Entangled Life] cover

Only a few pages into Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life, my mind expanded like a puffball, fit to burst from the wildly proliferating spores of ideas. This is so much more than a book about mushrooms, the showy fruiting bodies that tend to dominate our attention to the fungal world. Merlin Sheldrake, son of biologist Rupert Sheldrake, holds a Ph.D. in tropical ecology for research on mycorrhizal relationships. The book should appeal to scientist and layperson alike, as the author excels at communicating complex concepts in lucid and literary prose, while retaining a sense of humor, wonder, and above all, hope. What role does hope play? Reading the book at this time of pandemic and social inequity, the notions of mutualism, symbiosis, and involution (involution—distinct from evolution’s focus on competition–attends to patterns and strategies of cooperation) ramify beyond the realm of mycelial networks, their implications readily extendable to human interaction.

Sheldrake wholeheartedly embraces imagination and creativity in the realm of scientific research. He does not shy away from describing fungal ‘communication,’ and the ability of organisms that do not possess brains to make ‘decisions.’ Conventional science may frown upon anthropomorphism as soft thinking, but if we eschew it entirely, we might close our minds and dismiss observable phenomena. Biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer points out that the Potawatomi language “is rich in verbs that attribute aliveness to the more-than-human-world,” while English offers no alternative way to talk about other living organisms without reducing them to an inanimate ‘it.’ Kimmerer says, “Biological realities are never black and white. Why should the stories and metaphors we use to make sense of the world—our investigative tools—be so?”

The book calls attention to the groundbreaking research of scientists, many of them women (Suzanne Simard’s work on carbon transfer between plants; Katie Field on mycorrhizal solutions to agricultural problems; Lynne Boddy on mycelial networks; Lynn Margulis’s endosymbiotic theory once dismissed as “evolutionary speculation”). Sheldrake describes his meetings with Pacific Northwest innovator and fungal theorist Paul Stamets (who has recently been working on fungal antiviral compounds), and mycoenthusiasts and entrepreneurs like Peter McCoy (founder of Radical Mycology, a group that promotes citizen scientist education on things fungal, such as mycoremediation and mycofiltration). Farther afield, in New York, the versatility of fungi is being harnessed to make biodegradable packing and building materials and furnishings as alternatives to plastic. Imagine ordering a grow-your-own-lampshade kit, or sitting on a fungal stool!

Each chapter presents surprising observations that may dismantle and rearrange the reader’s preconceptions. We humans tend to think of ourselves as discrete, separate individuals, but each of us is actually an ecosystem “composed of—and decomposed by—an ecology of microbes” that make it possible for us to function (to digest our food and reap nutrients from it, for example). We are not unique in this. Symbiosis is widespread.

An example that reveals the decision-making abilities of organisms without brains is an experiment done in Japan. Scientists set slime mold in petri dishes that replicated the layout of Greater Tokyo, with obstacles represented by bright light. The path the slime mold took was a close match for Tokyo’s rail system. Mycelial networks, too, can function in a brain-like way, responding to electrical, chemical, or other sensory impulses to communicate about surrounding conditions, directing growth accordingly.

Why should truffles (the subterranean fruiting bodies of certain kinds of mycorrhizal fungi) attract humans and other animals with their smell? Because they are underground, they cannot disperse spores without a partner. Their odor coaxes us to dig for and consume them, thereby dispersing their spores above ground. This is an example of mutualism which is beneficial to both partners.

Until reading this book, I did not know that the term ecology, coined by artist and biologist Ernst Haeckel in 1866, was influenced by observations about lichen. Ecology is the interrelationship of organisms in their environment, and points to nature as an interconnected whole, “a system of active forces.” In 1869, Swiss botanist Simon Schwendener presented a “dual hypothesis of lichens,” showing that lichen is composed of two different entities, a fungus (to offer physical protection and nutrients) and an alga (to harvest light and carbon dioxide). By 1877, German botanist Albert Frank coined the word symbiosis to describe this fungal-algal partnership.

The idea that one organism originates from two different lineages defies the tidy categorization that taxonomy prefers. Trevor Howard, curator of University of British Columbia’s lichen collection, refers to the “lichening rod effect,” whereby lichens strike and splinter apart familiar concepts into new forms. It gives us a new way of thinking about life. Sheldrake points to biologist Lynn Margulis and her visionary theories on the coming together of different organisms, the “intimacy of strangers.” Margulis says: “Lichens are remarkable examples of innovation emerging from partnership. The association is far more than the sum of its parts.” It turns out that lichens may be made up of more than two partners. Lichenologist Toby Spribille discovered by chance that lichen DNA contained several fungal and bacterial partners, so a lichen might be seen both as an individual, and/or as a microbiome. We need perspectives that transcend rigid categories in other spheres of existence, too. Cultural theorist David Griffiths was inspired by lichen symbiosis to write a paper entitled “Queer Theory for Lichens.”

This book is the work of an adult who has retained the his childhood curiosity about the world, who built piles of leaves and embedded himself in them to see if he could experience their decomposition. He continues to be a fungal experimenter, brewing and fermenting, and exploring the many possibilities of partnering with fungi to mend the planet. I highly recommend immersing yourself in this book. Merlin Sheldrake’s enthusiasm is contagious.

Rankafu: Orchid Print Album

Japanese horticulture is known for intense specialization with certain plants; chrysanthemums are an example. Less well known is a more recent – less than one hundred years old – infatuation with orchids. Much of this is due to one man, Shataro Kaga (1888-1954), a banker by trade, who established a major orchid nursery at Oyamazaki near Kyoto in the 1920s.

Kaga hired a business partner who was skilled at orchid cultivation, while he concentrated on the promotion of the orchids grown and the hybrids developed at Oyamazaki. For marketing, he turned to the long practiced Japanese art of wood block printing. He was fortunate to find a skilled artist, Zuigetsu Ikeda (1877-1944) who created many watercolor images that were the basis for these prints.

This story and the art are captured in “Rankafu: Orchid Print Album,” a publication by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew featuring several authors. They argue that the practice of woodblock art, which has an equivalent form in Europe, reached an epitome in Japan. “The quartet of publisher, artist, carver, and printer all contribute to the quality of the woodblock print. It is rare that these four stars are in such perfect alignment that an exceptional example of this art form is created. The Rankafu woodblock print set is such a type example.”

It took long determination by Kaga to achieve his goal with the dangers for his country during World War II (and to himself, for his quiet opposition to the war). The prints were not issued until 1946 but became prized collector items. In “Rankafu,” the complete set of 83 prints are presented together along with many watercolors by Ikeda that were not developed into woodblocks. It is a beautiful book, but also a fascinating story of the intense, collective effort by many to produce lasting beauty.

Excerpted from the Summer 2020 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Japanese Garden Design

Marc Peter Keane has published several books based on his landscape architecture degree from Cornell University and the 18 years he spent in Kyoto designing gardens. “Japanese Garden Design,” his earliest, has stood the test of time.

The first section is a well-illustrated introduction to broad concepts such as Zen gardens, tea gardens, and stroll gardens. The author emphasizes the context that led garden designers to create these “new forms of gardens and, more importantly, new ways of perceiving what a garden is” (author’s emphasis).

The final third of the book is about design: the principles, techniques, and elements. I wouldn’t recommend relying on this book for developing your own garden but rather for understanding the intentions of the creators of established gardens. In those intentions, Keane sees a myriad of perceptions, including the garden “as a living entity with a spirit, or by perceiving the garden as a painting, an object of contemplation, a spiritual passageway, or as a work of religious art.”

Excerpted from the Summer 2020 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Flora Japonica

“Flora Japonica,” published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is really two books in one. The first part provides a rarely documented history of Japanese botany with an emphasis on the literature and illustration of the native flora. The oldest surviving example dates from 1274 and surprisingly was intended to identify plants used by veterinary surgeons. It is considered to be very comparable to European works of the same era.

Botanical illustration flourished in Edo period (1603-1868), a time when Japan was politically stable and closed to other cultures. This book includes many beautifully reproduced examples of this era, again with many parallels in style to European publications of the same time, despite very limited interaction.

The main part of this book is a celebration of botanical illustration by Japanese artists of today. The nearly one hundred works were originally commissioned for an exhibit presented at Kew, “chosen to represent the unique richness of the Japanese native flora and the influence of Japanese plants on gardens in the West.” These works are beautiful for the artistry, and the extensive notes provide considerable botanical and horticultural background for the subjects.

Excerpted from the Summer 2020 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin