On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Dan B sent these photos as part of On the Road, but he is so talented when it comes to landscape design that I consider him an artist. Many artists, sp many mediums.
This myopic travelogue set on Whidbey Island, a 50 mile long Island in Puget Sound, came about from a project for a home in Medina, the place across the street from Microsoft’s Chief Technology officer and around the corner from that Gates fellow.
I started that project with no clue so just drew wild scribbles on bug sheets of paper until something coherent emerged. I showed Chuck and his wife my manic slashes and wild doodles. Chuck gasped, “You’ve drawn the ley lines!” I’m not a believer but there are some things that guide designs for every site. One of them, on a different note, was the 6 inches of water on the brick of their new addition. A vernal pond and swale solved that.
Several years later Chuck made a lot of money getting paid in futures from marketing a startup tech business. He decided to pay back thus good fortune by purchasing a plot of land with three lakes on Whidbey Island. The goals were ecological restoration, spirituality, and art. It was named Earth Sanctuary. I was asked to help design it and thus began many years of restoration design and wrangling massive stones to create magical spaces – we hope.
This drab spot, stripped of invasive Himalayan Blackberries, sits between a seven acre lake which has a several acre floating fen dating to the end of the last glaciation. Sundews and other fen denizens pickle the logs that support them. 150 year old conifers are less than fifteen feet tall due to lack of nutrients.
We installed immense Columnar Basalt stones with the help of Albert Gabelein, whose family builds roads on Whidbey. He’s got immense skill and an artistic bent. The entry to his house is on bridges across a 30 foot by 50 foot pond.
This photo is from early December, not the most forgiving weather – very rainy.
The long shadows of mid December show off this tallest Standing Stone Circle in the world. I feel that this is one of the best times to visit.
The crushed rock is surrounded by native plantings since its within 100 feet of two ponds, a wetland setback zone.
A few weeks later it snowed while I was back to plan another project.
The second project was sited on a peninsula in the Middle Pond, a lake created by a local fishing and hunting club. It was very successful with the greatest abundance of waterfowl and habitat. Chuck wanted a grassy labyrinth with stones between the paths. Since it was in the Required Setback only native species were allowed. Native grasses are clump formers – not fun to walk on and destroyed by foot traffic – so I proposed flagstone paths with Salal in between. It was surrounded by native trees and shrubs.
The peninsula in the Middle Pond was covered with 10 – 15 feet of blackberries. Clearing was by hand. It went slowly until one of the consultants made a circular metal jig. The crew wrapped the vines around the jig, bunched them together with twine and dried them. They turned from green to warm russet red. They were placed in many locations and configurations. Blackberry clearing accelerated. Having an artistic outcome was a morale booster.
Between the Midfle Pond and the Entry Pond Chuck designed a Dolmen of lichen covered sandstone slabs from Montana. I recall dodging rattlers while selecting them. I designed the steps and plantings.
A Dolmen is standing stones, typically slabs, topped with a stone slab roof.
When it was new the stones were spectacular. A local tribal leader burst into tears when she first stepped inside. Unfortunately the lichens have not prospered in Western Washington. They are best suited for a dry climate.
Here’s Albert, our technical and artistic genius, checking the heavy nylon straps. The Dolmen standing slabs were installed “dry” with only crushed rock containing fines (miniscule particles that pack the bigger pieces together). The tall Columnar Basalt in the center of the Standing Stone Circle are linked by reinforced concrete. We do have earthquakes here.
Unlike other observers I did help Albert push some slabs around. It took careful positioning to make sure that the Standing slabs perfectly contacted the roof slab.
There are also other features like a full sized Stupa and other sites. The forest restoration is based upon the old growth forest on the east unit of South Whidbey State Park – not far away and worth a visit to experience how an old growth forest layers itself so birds can fly through easily.
Earth Sanctuary is open during daytime for a small fee. There is a website.
You Just Never Know – One Person Making a Difference
Denali5
Thanks for sharing! I would love to visit.
MomSense
Oh my goodness this is so amazing. I recently knit a pattern named for Whidbey and was looking at photos. Worlds collide in the best way. I am so impressed by this project.
Cant wait to share this with my Aunt who has designed some major botanical gardens. She will love this.
WaterGirl
I think this is just amazing!
Barbara
This is just awesome. Such a wonderful thing to see, I am sure it was just so inspiring for everyone who was part of it.
way2blue
Those basalt columns! Very cool how they mimic old growth tree trunks and create a similar quiet space. Thanks for sharing.
Another Scott
“There is a website.” Yes, and…??!
https://earthsanctuary.org/
;-)
Thanks for the photos and the narration. It looks and sounds great.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: Thanks, Scott! I added the link to the post.
Yutsano
I’m not that far away from Whidbey where I am right now. Maybe I’ll check that out tomorrow while I’m out and about. I’ve decided to be a lazy sluglord today.
trollhattan
Very cool!
My Whidbey childhood trips are relegated to foggy memories of a very thick and green place with occasional views of the Sound. And that’s about all. Bainbridge had more stuff to do, but one was not “away from it all” either. Walking onto the ferry in the morning, walking to their job in downtown Seattle, then reversing at day’s end was a kind of dream that some folks actually pulled off. That was before the area was discovered–maybe it still happens.
trollhattan
As one crosses the Sound, a bit of history to ponder.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/shipwreck-in-puget-sound-180983317/
Redshift
Very cool!
Mai Naem mobile
This is cool. Very stonehengey looking.
scav
Awfully close to Whidbey doughnuts. If you’re into such things. Granted, the nursery was the usual main attraction, but the lunch and doughnuts added charm. Will have to stop in at the gardens next time we’re over.
CaseyL
Omigosh! I go to Whidbey a few times per year (love the place), and frequently drive past the signs for Earth Sanctuary. Always wondered what it was. I assumed it was some kind of hippie commune. I should check it out in person sometime.
Earth Sanctuary is so very different from what another rich person did when they bought a huge piece of land. About 15 years ago, I had the chance to see JZ Knight’s compound down in Yelm, a city near Olympia.
(JZ Knight, for those who don’t know, is a woman who made a fortune in the 1970s-90s by claiming to “channel” a Paleolithic warrior named Ramtha. It became quite the cult – think Gwyneth Paltrow self-improvement woo mixed with Scientology pseudo-religion – and people with more money than brains just shoveled millions of dollars her way. She achieved some more late-breaking fame during the pandemic by denouncing masks and vaccines.)
The property was lovely, but the various follies, novelties, and meditation gardens she had built there make the place seem exactly like what it is: A playground for very rich woo merchants.
It’s nice to see someone with that much money using it to preserve and enhance the land, instead. The standing stones, dolmen, and landscaping blend into what is naturally there rather than being alien and completely out of context.
You do great work, Dan B!
Dan B
@CaseyL: We have a friend who has a house and acreage in Yelm. He never mentions JZ Knight.
Thanks for the compliment. I work hard at getting the practical aspects right. The ‘design’ emerges from somewhere unknown. I just go with the frequently weird flow, if that’s what it’s called.
OzarkHillbilly
Pretty damned cool. Many thanx Dan.
CaseyL
@Dan B:
Heh. Maybe ask him about her next time you see him. To be fair, I think that outside of her compound, Knight keeps a low profile. Also, at least back in 2009, she’s only in Yelm about 3 months of the year, according to the friend who took me there. The resident staff is very professional, and very protective.
Scout211
Very nice, Dan B. So beautiful and mystical.
We visited Whidbey Island several decades ago when a family member was stationed at the Navy Base there. We did some traveling around the Island and really loved it. These beautiful installations are much nicer than the Navy Base.
@CaseyL: My daughter and her family lived in Yelm for about 5 years before they moved to the Olympia-Lacey-Tumwater area. Everyone who lives there knows about JZKnight and her woo-woo compound. They alternately resent the group and value them. They have created many businesses in the area and upgraded a lot of the community services but don’t mix with the locals and bring lots of traffic into the little burg on regular basis. I really liked that tiny town but my daughter and her family prefer the hustle and bustle of the big city
ETA: The back gate to JBLM is very close to Yelm and the housing there is more affordable than around Tacoma so many military families are buying homes there and that has caused the town to expand with new homes and now the impact of JZKnight’s Ramtha community on the town has lessened somewhat.
Dan B
@MomSense: The restoration plantings have been a mixed bag. The maintenance crew was laid off in the recession. Weeds overwhelmed some sites. I mentored five, or so, ecological restoration sites along the road undertaken by students from the UW. Nothing has survived from those sites. Watering and weeding are essential for the first year or two. Earth Sanctuary is on the edge of the Olympic rain shadow. It receives 3/4 of the rain of Seattle which is very pronounced in summer. This summer Seattle got a bit more than an inch of rain between mid June and early October. This compares to 24″ – 30″, or more, in the same period in the east coast and upper Midwest.
Dan B
@CaseyL: Our friend may be at a party at my partner’s rental house tonight, but his husband / partner just had Covid and my partner doesn’t want to be jammed into the house with 60 or more “petri dishes”*. The garden is grand but the forecast is not promising.
*quote from my partner.
CaseyL
@Dan B:
“Petri dishes,” yes, that’s a term I’ve used as well. It’s apt. All kinds of germs mingling in what they must regard as a veritable Club Med of growth media: many humans all packed together in one place.
I don’t blame your partner one bit. Idle curiosity about a Yelm celebrity is definitely not worth risking Covid for!
Mike in Oly
Wonderful installation. Maybe we’ll take a day trip up there one of these days to see those awesome stones.
munira
Wonderful – will have to visit sometime.
Dan B
@MomSense: Kevin Fetherston deigned the forest restoration. It’s most noticeable in the eastern half and around the Stupa. I asked that include trees from California to go with the 500 year plan. There are Sequoias that should be okay. On the drive from the ferry dock at Clinton to Freeland, near Earth Sanctuary, annual precipitation drops from 40 inches to 25 inches. Native Hemlocks and Western Red Cedar are stressed and dying.
There’s an article in the Associated Press on “Assisted Migration”* which embraces the planting of trees and shrubs from further south, like we did at Earth Sanctuary.
I designed a planting at the retreat house at the southeast corner of the site and along the road at the eastern boundary. They’re probably looking nearly mature by now.
*’As Northwest tree species decline, “Assisted Migration” gains ground’
Dan B
@Mike in Oly: Great! South Whidbey State Park is nearby and has old growth forest on the east side of the road that can evoke the feel of a cathedral. There’s beach on the west side of the road. I haven’t hiked down to the beach because I’ve always been on deadline for work.
Dan B
@CaseyL: We’ll probably go to the New Year’s Eve party at our friends’. They’re having it in Garage Mahal, the former woodworking shop / garage that’s their basement – two feet above street grade. We had a meet-up there when Satby was in town. 13 1/2 foot ceilings are impressive. My partner us replacing a couple MR11* LED’s and installing a mirror ball.
*MR11 is: Mirrored 11 millimeter. These are floodlights.
MomSense
@Dan B:
It’s so hard to deal with how fast the climate is changing. How do you restore a place that is changing in such a fundamental way?
Lapassionara
This is fantastic! What a lovely, peaceful place. (Yes I looked at the website). I wish you would say more about the blackberry eradication. I tried to figure out the process, but I seem to have missed a few steps. Did this actually remove the blackberries? I ask because my friend in Bellingham has the same issue in her neighborhood.
thanks for sharing.
Dan B
@Mike in Oly: The Labryinth and the Dolmen are near the parking area. The Standing Stone Circle is mid-site. In winter you can see both the Middle Pond and the Fen Pond from there. The trail to the Standing Stone Circle goes uphill through an Alder grove that looks lovely in winter. There are springs on the hillside that support Maidenhair ferns and Skunk Cabbage but make for a couple muddy spots. The trail continues along the north shore of the Fen Pond and passes under an Osprey nest. Be quiet in Spring.
Dan B
@Lapassionara: The blackberries were cut down. They had built up a ten foot plus tangle. Then the roots were dug out. It was hot miserable work. There were a couple places amounting to less than a half acre. The remaining areas were forested so there was not too much to clear.
Lapassionara
@Dan B: thanks. That’s the process I imagined.
Dan B
@Lapassionara: I had Himalayan Blackberry and English Ivy in a client’s 15 foot rockery. Removing the roots would have risked destabilizing the rockery. We scraped the bark layer down to the cambium, painted with Roundup concentrate, and covered it all with several layers of newspaper and moist soil. This killed the roots. Roundup is very controversial now so your friend might have to resort to vinegar – not as immediately effective so multiple applications may be necessary. Applying enough paper to seal the vinegar in may be necessary. Vinegar kills everything so it’s a tradeoff. Roundup is reported to be carcinogenic. I believe that’s because it wipes out gut microorganisms.
BRW The rockery was wiped out by a pinhole leak in the water main a couple years later. The house nearly fell in but the pricey automobile that was buried did not recover. Big rocks!
JaySinWA
@Dan B: I’ve had some luck in removing blackberry and Ivy infestations from my property by pulling them up by the roots repeatedly over the years. It’s gotten better now with new neighbors that have removed theirs.
One neighbor had a service come in and cut down the blackberries and left the dead stalks over the roots. The claim was that it killed the roots. I’m not sure if they didn’t sneak in some weed killer, but they claimed not to have. It’s been at least 4 years and the blackberries haven’t come back. I thought it was nonsense and that the stalks would root but it seems to have worked.
ETA The neighbor’s blackberry removal was late spring or early summer and the stalks dried up quickly. I think they left them on the surface for a full season.
Ivy roots tend to run just under the surface so they kind of roll up as you pull them out.
cain
This is really lovely .. I think at some point I would like to check it out
Dan B
@scav: Bayview Gardens are a treat and the food options were great. It’s very close to Earth Sanctuary.
Yutsano should stop in at the grocery for sandwiches.
Dan B
@JaySinWA: I’ve rolled up huge sods of Ivy. Fortunately I never encountered the “Big Mousies” that are rumored to be denizens.
Origuy
Very cool. I was supposed to go to a competition on Whidbey Island in April 2020. Of course that, along with everything else, was cancelled. It might be a few more years before I get a chance to go back to the Seattle area. I should take a trip to Whidbey when I do.
Dan B
@Origuy: The San Juan Islands are amazing but it’s much easier to get to Whidbey, except at rush hour or Friday afternoons in summer. Ebey’s Landing has a loop trail that ascends a windswept bluff and goes along a beach with a lakelet. It’s at the eastern end of the Straight of Juan de Fuca so the wind blows direct from the ocean. Much of the island is sparsely settled. If you can splurge Kenmore Air flues float planes from Lake Union just north of Amazon’s mass of skyscrapers to the San Juans. From Roche Harbor on San Juan Island you can walk to the Hotel de Haro. You’d be close to Vancouver Island. The south end of San Juan Island is in the rain shadow and has few trees. It’s the site of the Pig War between the US and England. Kenmore’s planes fly at 3,000 feet. Views of the Olympics. Cascades, and islands / Puget Sound are some of the most breathtaking I’ve ever experienced.
Geoduck
My father, his parents and his sisters lived on Whidbey, in the town of Coupeville when he was young, so I visited there a lot as a kid, even after he personally decamped to the big city. My aunt was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the Whidbey Conservation District, an official entity that protects the central island from over-development. I’d like to think there are still suburb-builders out there cursing her name.
Maxim
This is amazing. Thanks for sharing.
Wapiti
@Dan B: One year I bought a pair of tour tickets on Kenmore Air for the spouse. We flew from Kenmore (birthday was on 4th of July, so Lake Union was closed for fireworks), up to the San Juans and back, never leaving the plane. About three different landings for people with real tickets, it was a lot of fun.
Dan B
@Geoduck: That’s probably the reason for the untouched farms around Ebey’s Landing, growing wheat in Western Washington! Beautiful!!
Dan B
@Wapiti: Kenmore is nice but taking off and flying forty or fifty feet from the Space Needle while banking hard is awesome. And coming in to land while the boats skeedadle is also fun. It is amazing to see the number of tiny islands in the San Juans. There are things that you’d never see any other way. For instance there is a beautiful blue lagoon near Roche Harbor surrounded by private homes. Airplane or boat are the only options, although a kayak might work if you can navigate around the billionaires’ yachts.