The View Beyond Heronswood

On the edge of a cliff, Dan Hinkley is discovering new gardening truths

My partner and I began our second garden in the millennium year on property in Indianola, a Puget Sound-side village that one can only drive to — never through. We live near the end of a road whose speed limit is 12 ˝ miles an hour. It is a village that I want to garden in, and garden for.

I have written of the new garden before, in its infancy, in this magazine. Having used that opportunity mostly to rail against the maintenance of turf, I wrote then more of the promise held in this land than of any real accomplishment. Other than, that is, annihilating two acres of turf and dropping cluster bombs containing the complete floral kingdom of Earth on it.

Since then, I have been humbled by innumerable lessons.

That I was so cocksure of my ability to make another garden is not entirely without reason. For 18 years, in my first garden called Heronswood, up the road near Kingston, I had been indulged by munificent circumstance. Virtually everything I planted not only grew exuberantly but took on heroic proportions.

Those plants that had passed muster at Heronswood made the move to the new garden. What unfolded, however, brought to mind an article I had written on pushing too forcefully the zones of hardiness in our gardens: "First It's Ugly But Then It Dies." Legions of old friends writhed in anguish and expired.

Oddly, other plants began to flourish, only to die virtually overnight. Through these sudden deaths I became acquainted with the June beetle. The full sun and sandy soil of our new garden was prime real estate for this horrid creature indigenous to the Northwest. I am now on personal terms with its larvae, which are remarkably similar to the extraterrestrial in "Alien." And my plant inventory has been vetted to those the beetle does not find palatable.

In gardening here, I have also come to understand the concept of view. Peek-a-boo, partial, full frontal — are all powerful tools of the real-estate trade. We are trained to believe that a view is more valuable if it is owned, better yet framed between two feet on the foot rest of a Barcalounger.

It must be acknowledged that our property — five acres with 336 feet of high-bank waterfront — embraces an abnormally broad vantage. Mount Rainier and the Seattle skyline dominate; the sun erupts over the North Cascades and later takes a resplendent nosedive beyond the Olympics. I do not own this view, and I learned early on that I would need to have it practically disappear to make the garden stand on its own.

The inspiration came in part from a movie, "Enchanted April," in which a handful of charmingly uptight English women rent a villa on the Italian coast. Their assorted affairs take place in a decrepit, overblown garden on a high bluff over the Mediterranean, the water view summoned only by navigating through a tangle of scents and textures to the cliff edge.

In five years, the gesture of water and sky we see from our house and terrace has been diminished by the abundance we put in front of it, yet I believe that by restricting accessibility to it, the view has become more beautiful.

"Water, water everywhere" is the ditty that came to mind when we began. Though virtually enveloped by a marine environment, the site seemed microwaved to near-sterility. Through pools and falls, rills and rock hollows, we have fetched the sense of the water 200 feet below our cliff, and carried it to our door. These "water works" have performed exactly as intended. Without lifting our eyes to the horizon, we know the infinite attitudes of the weather, and we have become acutely more cognizant of our beloved Sound.

The fresh water, along with the expanse of plantings, have greatly enhanced the number of bird species seen year-round. And frogs colonized the pools, bringing a welcome chorus to the terrace in late winter. At 52 years of age, however, I have already rethought the inspiration of running water outside the bedroom window throughout the night.

Of the plants, those that have profiteered from the challenges of this space are many that I have never successfully grown before. South Africa is particularly well represented. Aloe striatula blossoms in late winter and late summer. Hummingbirds petulantly covet its nectar. I have planted several large sweeps of the giant honey bush, Melianthus major, whose steely blue jags of foliage are perhaps the most beautiful of any plant I have ever grown. Buddleia loricata, a butterfly bush from the mountains around Lesotho, thrives here.

From mid-July to mid-August, Agapanthus, the so-called lily of the Nile, come to the fore. The previous property owners had cultivated Agapanthus praecox, which welcomed us with large orbs of light blue rising on stems to nearly 5 feet. I have madly acquired nearly 50 more cultivars and species, which churn the garden into a summer froth of blue and violet.

Grasses thrive, too. The non-mown kind, that is. Stipa, Panicum, Molinia, Miscanthus. Diaphonous yet able to hold the sunlight, provide perches for birds and transmit the sound of rustle and rasp in the wind, they knit the garden throughout the year.

So, I have written again on a garden that is less than five years old. When I began gardening years ago, I was obsessed with maturity and abashed at the youthfulness of my garden. I now realize that the most important lessons of gardening commence long before the first shaft of shovel meets the earth. Those lessons will carry me onward as I aim to make my second garden the most beautiful one in the world.

Daniel J. Hinkley is co-founder of Heronswood Nursery in Kingston and continues to direct its operations while traveling abroad in search of interesting plants. Benjamin Benschneider is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff photographer.