Full Contents as pdf File - Natural History Museum

Our final stop was the Paradise visitor centre. This was my second trip to Mount Rainier,
having travelled there with three naturalists from the Delaware County Institute of Science
in Pennsylvania as a graduate student in May 1964. What I remembered most was the
profusion of wildflowers and the compression of seasons from the coast – summer, to the
glaciers of Mt Rainier – spring. This time was no disappointment. The alpine meadow at the
foot of the glaciers was spectacular. A sampling of wildflowers in bloom included:
Castelleja parviflora, shooting-star (Dodecatheon jeffreyi), avalanche lily, Eupatorium
occidentale, Lilium columbianum, blue lupine, Phyllodoce empetriformis, false hellebore
(Veratrum viride) and bear grass (Xerophyllum tenax).
Bainbridge Island Library and Jocelyn Horder’s Garden (Tuesday) Robert Sykes
Our day began, as the best days should, with a ferry trip across Puget Sound, the snowcapped
peaks of the Olympic Mountains along the western horizon and a mug of excellent
Seattle coffee in hand.
First call was the fern garden of the Bainbridge Island Library. This is a creation of the
Hardy Fern Foundation as part of its mission to encourage the use of ferns in the garden. It
is set in a long strip of ground behind the library, shaded by trees. A ditch along one side
took the drainage from the car park and provided a congenial setting for osmundas and
other moisture-loving plants. It was established only three years ago and was masterminded,
with volunteers, by John van den Meerendonk, a practising landscape gardener and newly
installed as president of the Hardy Fern Foundation. After initial problems with a heavy
clay soil, it was improved by rotavation and a heavy mulch with rotted bark. Not all the
ferns had survived, and currently the Arachniodes simplicior ‘Variegata’ was struggling,
but most ferns were flourishing and there were particularly fine stands of Woodwardia
fimbriata and Polystichum neolobatum. John had some new ferns ready for planting. It
provided plenty of interest for our group of specialists and certainly fulfilled well its
objective as an educational demonstration garden.
On to Jocelyn Horder’s wonderful garden at Poulsbo, where she greeted us and told us the
history of the property. Apparently the site had originally been occupied by the local pastor,
who in the absence of any roads used to row around the creek to service the needs of his
flock. The garden is by the water, facing west to the Olympic Mountains. The main room of
the house has a wall of glass to take advantage of the view. The sunsets must be superb. A
narrow peninsula runs out from the house dominated by a huge sculptural dead tree,
bleached by the weather. It must have taken courage to leave it when it died, but the effect
is spectacular.
We were greeted at the gate by Denise Kelly, the gardener, and left free to wander. It is a
garden of many elements – a pond surrounded by a rockery, a colonnade hung with
Wisteria seed pods – you don’t see that in England, a great bleached tree root, a trademark
of Dan Robinson, whom we had met at the Elandan Garden and who did part of the design,
a bonsai display, walks by the water; and always the smell of the sea. Some fine ferns too: a
very elegant Polystichum setiferum ‘Multilobum’ with some light cresting, Matteuccia
orientalis, brought as a Blechnum from Korea and unfamiliar to many of us. Jocelyn has a
sure touch with Cheilanthes – a fine pot ornamented the porch and there was a wonderful
great patch of Cheilanthes fendleri in the rockery at the front.
Our journey then took us round the coast to Port Angeles. There was no time that evening to go
up the ridge behind to snatch a view of the Olympics, but we did go as far as the visitor centre,
and a few of us went up a wooded valley on the Peabody Trail. There we saw Polystichum
munitum, Athyrium filix-femina var. cyclosorum, Dryopteris expansa, Gymnocarpium
disjunctum, Adiantum aleuticum, Polypodium glycyrrhiza and Equisetum telmateia. These
seemed to constitute the typical woodland floor pteridophyte flora of the region.
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