Kenga Kuma: Portland Japanese Garden

I recently visited the Portland Japanese Garden after many years away, taking a tour in June 2019 as part of a Hardy Plant Society of Oregon study weekend. The focus was the new part of the garden, the Cultural Village, which opened in 2017, but I also made time to explore the earlier areas that date from 1967.

In June 2020, I enjoyed a keynote presentation by Stephen Bloom, the CEO of the Portland Japanese Garden as part of the virtual American Public Garden Association annual meeting. He stressed that the garden is a cultural entity and much more than just a horticultural collection. The Cultural Village, that includes a café, gallery, library, and learning center, is one expression of that vision, allowing the visitor to experience a broad range of Japanese arts and culture.

“Kengo Kuma: Portland Japanese Garden” is a substantial new book that tells the story of the Portland Japanese Garden, both old and new, that is written by Botond and Balázs Bognár, father and son Hungarian-American architects. Kengo Kuma is the noted Japanese architect and professor of architecture at the University of Tokyo who was hired to design the Cultural Village.

The authors begin with excellent recounting and appreciation of the original garden, and one of the best summarization I’ve read of both the Shinto and later Buddhist religions in Japan and their impact on Japanese art and design. “The symbiotic relationship between the new and the old alters them both and arguably for the better.”

The older site includes five different styles of Japanese garden design, an unusual trait as gardens in Japan are typically in a single style. These five designs are widely spaced, so that each has its own integrity – qualities well-captured by the images of several photographers.

This book is also the story of how the scope of the garden has grown. CEO Bloom, who was hired in 2005, brought an unusual background as a music educator and non-profit manager. He recognized it is easy to get caught up with the horticulture, the politics, the science – but the garden is really all about people. To hone this focus, he restructured the management, upgrading the Garden Director to Garden Curator, and creating a peer Curator of Culture, Art, and Education.

This made the Cultural Village possible. Kuma writes in his introduction: “I wanted to create a special architecture and place that also did not belong solely to either culture; it would be neither entirely American nor completely Japanese.” This approach is illustrated by the choice of building materials for the new buildings. The interiors are primarily the wood of Port Orford cedar (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana), an Oregon native, crafted by Portland builders, but as “a symbolic counterbalance,” the main doors were made from Japanese wood, constructed in Japan.

Another example of synergy was solving the need for a retaining wall in the courtyard to keep the steep hillside in place. The project team asked the question, why settle for a utilitarian solution? Castle walls are an ancient tradition in Japan, but new castles are rarely built and artisans who maintain existing walls are few. However, Bloom was able to find a stonemason, who was of the 15^th generation of a stonemason family, and able to build a new wall in the old tradition, creating a delightful feature that serves a necessary function.

Excerpted from the Fall 2020 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

DIY Mushroom Cultivation: Growing Mushrooms at Home for Food, Medicine, and Soil

Willoughby Arevalo grew up near the redwoods of northern California and developed an interest in mushrooms at an early age. He became so proficient at gathering edible, wild mushroom, that they were an important of his student diet while at Humboldt State University. More recently, he moved to Vancouver, BC, developing his skill at growing his own mushrooms in an indoor space of only 100 square feet.

He shares his expertise in “DIY Mushroom Cultivation,” taking the reader well beyond mushroom growing kits to starting an active hobby that provides a delicious and healthful food source. Intended for those with little space, the author is very thorough in taking the beginner through all the steps of securing or making necessary equipment, acquiring mushroom tissue or spores, and what to use for substrate – including yard waste and even your junk mail! Additional chapters address outdoor culture, and a selection of the best species for home growers.

Excerpted from the Fall 2020 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

The Inspired House Plant

Jen Stearns is the owner of Urban Sprouts, a houseplant specialty nursery in Renton, WA. Her new book, “The Inspired House Plant,” aims to make your indoor space more festive by promoting a great diversity of indoor plants and teaching you to be a good plant parent. The emphasis is on foliage – so no African violets or orchids, but that doesn’t mean the selections are dull.

Successful display is critical for enjoyment and various options are considered, including bowls, terrariums, and plants in containers of water – fish are optional. Vertical and hanging plants are encouraged and one chapter is devoted to using your plants to enhance your overall interior style. Of course, there is some promotion of the author’s business, but the cultural advice is sound and this nicely designed book will encourage your creativity.

Excerpted from the Fall 2020 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Legacy of a Passionate Gardener

Pat Roome has been a gardener for almost all of her 87 years, has lived and gardened at the same Bellevue home for 56 years, and has been a Master Gardener for 45 years. That’s a lot of experience, and she decided it was time to share her accumulated knowledge in a self-published book, “Legacy of a Passionate Gardener.” We are all the beneficiaries.

This is an informal book, with many charts and how-to sheets that I could imagine as handouts for a Master Gardener clinic. Examples include “How to Grow Tomatoes Easily” (in the Seattle area) and a homemade “Soil Composition Test.” The chapters cover a comprehensive list of topics relevant to the home gardener with many examples, all helpful and many amusing.

“Don’t even think of digging out a full-sized Juniper by pulling it out tied to the bumper of a pickup. I have seen this done with disastrous results.” This illustrate one of Roome’s common themes: don’t try to do everything yourself – money to bring in a pro is well spent. I found her chapter on tips for the older gardener to be especially good, with advice relevant to the physical well-being of gardeners of any age.

She freely admits her mistakes and encourages continual learning to make a garden that gives one pleasure without a lot of stress. She takes this advice to heart in concluding “my garden continues to give me a lot of happiness and satisfaction.”

Excerpted from the Fall 2020 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

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