Nature Obscura. Kelly Brenner
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to leave traces of the landscape’s history. By leaving the enormous downed logs, he recognized the history of logging in this place while contrasting it with the surrounding second-growth forest. By removing the undergrowth and leaving the trees and the ancient logs to be claimed by moss, Haag created a space that breaks free of any traditional landscape style.
The towering western hemlock trees, the bare roots tipped up vertically, the decay and decomposition, the damp earth, and the intimacy of the space make the garden feel primordial, as it’s often described today. It’s a walk back in time, where the ghosts of 700-year-old trees, gone for a hundred years, remain in the shapes under the moss.
Coming to the end of the Moss Garden, I stepped out of one room and into the most iconic place in the reserve, the Reflection Garden. In this room, set in grass, is a long, rectangular pool surrounded by a long, rectangular yew hedge. The room sits, almost impossibly, surrounded by towering trees, which are reflected in the smooth water. Linear, simple, obviously human made, it’s the opposite of the Moss Garden. And yet it complements the previous room with its green hues and lofty trees. Haag designed the Garden Sequence this way intentionally; the four rooms alternate between the obviously crafted to the more natural, although still heavily cultivated, spaces. They complement one another and lead the visitor through a pattern of interpreting nature in different ways.
Leaving the Reflection Garden, I wandered aimlessly along a wooded path, and while the ground wasn’t covered in moss, it still grew in thick patches along Douglas fir trunks and mixed in with licorice ferns. I crossed the road again and entered the lower portion of the Japanese Garden, not part of the Garden Sequence, where I found two ponds, one large and one small, split in half by a walkway. Along the undulating edges of the water, large boulders grew sweaters of moss and lichens, and a wooden bench sprouted moss from its corners. The smaller pond, punctuated with traditionally pruned pines and Japanese maples, reflected the image of the guesthouse perched on the hill above. The building is beautiful, with wide glass windows and a glass roof supported by large wood timbers—a merging of Japanese and Pacific Northwest design styles. Walking farther, I ended up at a Japanese rock garden—what used to be the Garden of Planes—situated behind the guesthouse at the top of the Japanese Garden.
Echoing the form of the Reflection Garden, a long, rectangular rock garden dominates the space. Nestled in the raked sand are two clusters of boulders, and surrounding the garden is a checkerboard of alternating squares of concrete stepping-stones and grass. The rectangular garden was originally a swimming pool before Haag’s redesign filled it with two pyramid shapes—one inverted and extending down into the former pool interior and the other rising up within that space right beside it. This was his Garden of Planes. Haag first envisioned the pyramids becoming slowly colonized by mosses. The surrounding checkerboard did not originally include grass, but moss squares alternating with the concrete stepping-stones.
Sadly, or perhaps ironically, the very year Haag won the prestigious President’s Award of Excellence from the American Society of Landscape Architects for his Garden Sequence design, the Garden of Planes was replaced with the rock garden and his Garden Sequence forever broken. According to Haag in an interview in Landscape Architecture Magazine, one reason, besides some internal politics, was because a fox had a den under a nearby stump and “every morning, the fox would come out and leave his morning offering right on top of the gravel pyramid.”
As I wandered around the rock garden, I noticed that the concrete stepping-stones were slowly being consumed by moss. The large boulders were similarly being enveloped by thick green clumps. After I had made my way through the reserve’s gardens, one fact seemed clear: moss simply grows, mindless of the grand designs of any human.
Having spent time in Japan, Richard Haag likely took inspiration for the Bloedel Reserve’s Anteroom from one of the world’s best-known moss gardens: Saiho-ji, in Kyoto. While Saiho-ji was first built hundreds of years ago, it wasn’t until after it fell into neglect and mosses claimed it that Buddhist monk Muso Soske embraced moss as part of the garden and experience. Today moss is a standard element in traditional Japanese garden design worldwide, including at the Seattle Japanese Garden.
I had been granted permission to visit the Seattle Japanese Garden during its annual winter closure, a time that allows the landscape crew to undertake major work. It wasn’t my first visit, but it was my first winter visit. The morning I arrived, a couple of weeks after I had visited the Bloedel Reserve, the weather was cold and crisp, with frost lining the grass and the edges of fallen leaves. My guide for this visit was Pete Putnicki, senior gardener at the Seattle Japanese Garden. Although Pete had only been the head gardener for a couple of years, he is intimately knowledgeable about the garden and has a tremendous eye for detail.
As we walked through the back gate and into the garden, he explained that while the mosses may look effortless to maintain, they’re really not. In autumn the crew must rake the leaves fallen from the garden’s many Japanese maples and other trees to prevent the leaves from damaging the mosses. Metal rakes can pull the moss out of the ground, so the crew uses traditional Japanese bamboo rakes to sweep up leaves and other debris, a slow, delicate process.
Pete pointed to a patch of moss with a rusty tinge and told me that this moss is one of their favorites in the garden: Sugi moss. Also known as Sugi-goke, meaning cryptomeria moss, it is popular in Japanese gardens. The name comes from the moss’s resemblance to the Japanese cedar tree, Cryptomeria japonica. When pulled out from the dense mat, the individual plant looks uncannily like a miniature cedar tree. Part of the appeal of Sugi moss in the garden is its tolerance of the conditions in Seattle, where the groundcover withstands the wear from raking and changes colors during the year from bright green to red and green when the red-stemmed capsules sprout.
We squatted down to take a closer look at the Sugi moss, and as Pete talked about encouraging this particular moss to grow, he rubbed his hand over the red capsules, sending a cloud of spores into the cold morning air. It was easy to see how the moss spreads on its own, with spores so small and light.
Still, some of the garden’s mosses were intentionally planted, and that winter break, the crew had been doing just that. They had shifted the main path slightly and added a rope barrier here and there, leaving behind bare patches of soil. They had collected moss from other parts of the garden, mostly areas out of view along the fence, and set the moss out in little clumps, right on the soil, like cookies set on a baking sheet. According to Pete, in only three years the moss will have spread enough to cover the bare soil and in only five years will look as if it has always been there.
Next we made our way up the stone stairway to the tea garden, a small fenced-off area open to the public only for weekly tea ceremonies. The tea garden was designed to feel as if it’s set deep in the woods, and as we walked up the boulder-lined steps, Pete explained that there are no cut stones in this part of the garden—they are all natural. Pointing out the moss growing in thick mounds between the stone steps and up along their edges, he commented that although this garden was built in 1960, the moss adds a patina that makes it appear much older. At the top of the stairs we headed to the left, where a series of stepping-stones set in a sea of moss leads to the teahouse. Slowly, I tiptoed from stone to stone, balancing carefully after each deliberate step so as not to tread on any moss. The uncomfortable placement of stones is intentional, serving to slow visitors down, encouraging mindfulness and focus as we pay more attention to our surroundings and the moment.
The moss sprouting up between the stones was a deliberate part of the garden, a desired urban patina. Some of it had been intentionally planted and gently managed, but moss is going to grow where it will. Maybe it’s time we embrace it.
A World in a Petri Dish
Water is life’s mater and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.
—Albert Szent-Györgyi, Hungarian biochemist
When I finally found one, I couldn’t help shouting out in excitement. I’d been on a search all afternoon, on a microscopic safari over a petri dish. I’d plucked a world from outside and brought it inside to live on my desk, where I scrutinized it under my microscope. In what was just a small