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.
Featuring Dan B – A small piece of Whidbey Island in Puget SoundPost + Comments (43)
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.