We went to Kake to install a landscape around an Elder Housing Project built by Tlingit Haida Regional Housing Authority (THRHA). We carried our plants, fertilizers, soil conditioners, hoses, tools and a couple of capable young men who have learned to plant from Margaret. The ferry schedule gave us two days to prepare and plant.
Over the few days we were in Kake, we met many people who knew us via our radio presence. It was delightful to meet them in person, including the ferry agent who was planting foxgloves around the terminal, and her mom, who blessed us with a bag of dryfish.
We were lucky enough to have the assistance of the THRHA crew and volunteers, including, Hank, Ben, Harland, Skyler and Jesse, all of whom were invaluable.
This was a design featuring fruiting and edible species in a low maintenance landscape. Our mission was to design, deliver and install a landscape that would thrive with minimum care, and would be able to provide fruit as long as the season would allow.
It has been almost 30 years since I was last in Kake, I was impressed with how many homes had old established plantings. People have been planting and gardening in Kake for a very long time. There were apples, plums, rhododendrons, spiraeas, and some of the most beautiful roses I have ever seen in Alaska. Big bushes in full bloom in bright pink, magenta, deep red and clear white, several I have never seen before.
It is inspiring to see established landscape plants, some must have been close to 75 years old. I saw the largest potentilla I have ever seen in a yard near the beach, along with a rhododendron that was taller than I could reach. Several generations had grown up around these plants and known them as familiar parts of the home.
Landscape planting is a cultural tradition that reaches back into antiquity. We find evidence all over the world of people choosing some particular plants to include in their home settings. Most are edible perennial plants like fruit trees or perennial vegetables, (raspberries and rhubarb are the choices in Juneau), but a close second are ones that feed another appetite.
Beauty nourishes us in a way not immediately obvious. We will not starve without it, but our lives are inestimably richer for its presence. It is a link between generations. We cultivate plants reminding us of those we were introduced to by our grandparents, or a favorite neighbor with whom we shared a bond of friendship.
Margaret and I went to her great-grandparent’s home and dug up their peonies, now blooming in our yard, at least 150 years old.
This is not to say the planted landscape is of greater value, interest, or beauty than the wild, we gain from the patterns and harmony in the natural world, inspiration for our created ones. On the beach, a stream running into the ocean among multiple layers of foreshore vegetation, is an opportunity to sink into the delight that landscape provides. Admiring Hemlock clad slopes and wetland forests is soul cleansing, and creativity inspiring, the sense of wonder and appreciation for the myriad ways life manifests itself increases our sense of well-being.
Natural landscapes have resonance and rhythm, providing a glimpse into the same eternal as the night sky. Forested mountains, endless sand dunes or undulating grassy plains, all become doors of perception. They open us to that which is greater than ourselves, and that same sense is what we seek when we create a landscape suited to a particular site.
Our planting in Kake is not just a group of food plants to keep a harvest nearby, nor is it a manicured arrangement depending on total control for beauty. The created landscape providing harmony and delight draws on the lessons of the larger world, it has pattern, repetition, and seasonal change that allows it to be different every time it is entered.
Kake is another beautiful place in the natural world, where people both find and create beauty, and by interacting with the wild make their individual places in it more satisfying. Thanks Kake, see you next time.
• David Lendrum and Margaret Tharp operate Landscape Alaska, a nursery and landscape business located on the Back Loop Road in Juneau. Visit their website at www.landscapealaska.com, or reach them at landscapealaska@gmail.com. This column “Landscape Alaska” appears every two weeks.
