EricaceaeValentine's Japanese Garden with Oregon Natives garden

When we bought the house, the sloped back yard was a scary mess. It had probably been landscaped at one point, as evidenced by the well-composted bark mulch and occasional random trees including plumbs and giant sequoia (totally out of place under a GIANT big leaf maple and 80 year old doug fir). This landscaping had been let go for so long that the birds’ gifts of Himalayan blackberry, laurel, holly, and best of all, ENGLISH IVY had become VERY well established. The first attack was just me and a friend tearing out as much ivy and blackberry as we could, just to tame it and see what we had. After another year of neglect, due to our attention turning to our home remodel, it was like that initial weeding never took place. I had moved a lot of earth during our remodel to get the front yard draining correctly, so I used my new found earth-moving skills in the back. I moved all the piled up soil from the front yard and started terracing the back yard so we could enjoy a few flat areas. I was able to use the excavator and bobcat to bulldoze a lot of the ivy and blackberries, although much of it relied on absolutely agonizing hand pulling. English ivy is very difficult to remove if it’s had years and years to get established. There are many root bits that get left in the soil if one isn’t careful and the problem starts all over again. The back yard is probably a half acre, so this involved a lot of dirt. I created one large flat area, and a series of smaller terraces and meandering trails connecting it all. I brought in some very large boulders to work as retaining wall and decoration. Some of these boulders threatened to tip my excavator as I moved up and down the muddy hill. It was quite an adventure. There comes a point when you’re making more of a mess than it’s worth with heavy machinery, so I switched to wheel barrows. I start refining a lot of the work I had done with the big equipment, trying to create more natural looking, meandering trails and naturally undulating terrain. I started bringing wheel barrow after wheel barrow of 3-way soil blend to my planting areas. Some areas still had very nice top soil due to the fact that there was decayed bark mulch and many years worth of maple leaves and seeds and fir needles composted into the soil. Other areas were down to bare mineral soil and needed a fair amount of top soil. Traveling long distances with loads of soggy soil, up and down hill does wonders for your physical stamina, especially in this very wet, muddy weather we had over the winter of ‘07/’08. I finally reached a point where I felt I could bring plants in. I was able to salvage some tiny remnants of native plants which had miraculously survived the ivy desert. There were about 16 sword ferns, some cascade Oregon grape, and lots of fringecup. I put these in the ground and set to work on my main structure plants. I probably planted another hundred sword ferns. These are blessedly easy to plant and maintain, and the fact that they were already present made me pretty sure they’d like it there. I wanted my main ground cover to be salal. It’s very hardy once established, evergreen, good at out-competing weeds, and part of my favorite group of plants, the ericaceae. It also has decently edible berries for wildlife and humans. Next, I added quite a few vine maples to create a second layer under the large tree canopy. There are also young western hemlocks which will become part of the understory until many years down the road when I may have to re-evaluate… The crown jewels of this understory layer are a pacific flowering dogwood, a western yew, and several red huckleberries. These are three very special and nostalgic plants for me, having grown up in western Oregon. The dogwood will need to be watched carefully as it is susceptible to an introduced fungal pathogen. The yew seems to be pretty bulletproof. The red huckleberries require a decent amount of nerdiness and technique when planting, then become quite easy (I’ll go into more detail on many of these plants in other parts of this web page). After I had some of my basic structure, I started working on areas of focus to create a natural feeling of plant diversity, but in a slightly more ordered way than one might find out in the woods. I tried to maintain the Japanese gardening idea of recreating nature, but in an idealized way. I wanted to create little visual surprises and focal points. The interest is either in the form of varied plant structure, such as an area with tiny ground covers curling around rocks, with successive layers of canopy over-hanging the same rocks; or it might be the subtle beauty of a large patch of one of our many excellent native ground covers such as oxalis or wild ginger or vanilla leaf. As I was planting, I tried to pay specific attention to micro-climates and habitats. This is an area where I really had to consult nature. Each plant has its little nitch, and some are pickier than others. If you can recreate these little ecosystems, the plant swill thrive without too much coddling. One of the realizations I had as I created this space, was the vastly different soil conditions that can be obtained in a suburban garden, versus what exists in a Western Oregon forest. There is an enormous amount of biomass on the forest floor, giving the soil a constant injection on nutrients, and it’s almost impossible to recreate that in your backyard. I buried as much woody material I could get my hands on in the topsoil with the intention of creating that amazingly interconnected world of fungus and decomposers and roots which is found in a natural forest. Some plants aren’t too picky about this. Others, like huckleberries, bunchberries and many of the native mosses, are. I began nabbing rotten wood and logs from the side of the road anywhere I felt it wouldn’t be missed. Even with all this, I would like to have vastly more decaying wood in the garden. Part of this is purely aesthetic: I love the little ecosystems thriving on nurse logs and dead stumps. It really creates a rainforest feel to me. Anyway, I started filling in with smaller plants, or more rare plants which I can’t obtain in large numbers. I created many false stumps for my red huckleberries. Finally, I placed dark hemlock bark mulch around many of the plants, to help suppress weeds and act as a slow release amendment for the soil. On the trails and flat areas I added cedar chips so my kids can run around and enjoy the new forest. As spring has finally arrived, many of the plants are really taking off, and it’s a joy to see this new layered canopy. With an area this big, I had to plant many many plants. I think I made the native nurseries here in Portland very happy. In a few years, I think many of the plants will be established enough that they’ll require less water and weeding. I can’t wait until the entire thing is lush and slightly out-of-control.