Field Notes
& Essays
57 pieces from the work of designing and planting landscapes that outlast the person who plants them.
Essays
13 piecesWhat is actually being inherited. The people who planted everything and left.
May 22, 2026The Ghost in the Orchard: The Man Who Planted the West and DisappearedHenderson Lewelling hid slaves under his floor, planted the Pacific Coast fruit industry, and sailed away in the dark to Honduras. A portrait of a Quaker abolitionist who couldn't stop building paradise — and couldn't stop leaving it behind.
February 28, 2026Legacy Landscapes: The Three Design Forces of Time, Experience, and StructureWhat happens in year ten? Year thirty? Temporal design treats time as the first material, shaping soil, structure, and succession before instability forces the issue.
January 7, 2026Remembering Nick Botner: The Man Who Grew ApplesHe didn’t ask how many trees I needed. Or which ones I wanted. He chose his favorites instead—the ones with a story. As we dug, he told those stories quietly, while roots loosened and trees were lifted and set into sawdust. Nothing rushed. Nothing wasted. Some stories were short. Some took longer than the digging itself.
January 5, 2026Defiance as Stewardship and Self-Reliance: Growing Perennial VegetablesMy grandparents’ garden was a closed system. Nothing essential came in from the outside. Seed stayed. Crowns stayed. Fertility cycled locally. What left the garden left as food. That kind of garden doesn’t need to be rebuilt every spring—and it doesn’t panic when supply chains fail. This is a case for perennial food systems, not as nostalgia, but as quiet defiance and long-term stewardship.
January 3, 2026Landscape as Orientation: InheritanceChildren live in a present that feels endless. Adults live in one that feels thin, about to snap. When we return to the same ground—the same creek beds, roads, bluffs, orchards, neighborhoods—we are quietly offering evidence. Not an argument. Evidence. That time didn’t erase everything. That change didn’t sever us. That a life can move forward without cutting itself loose from where it began.
December 24, 2025Landscape as OrientationEverything urges us forward—optimize, scale, accelerate—yet very little helps us answer the first necessary question: where am I right now? When that question goes unanswered, motion becomes noise. Progress continues, but direction thins.
December 19, 2025Defiance Part 2: A Woman at Work in the GardenShe did not think of it as resistance. She thought of it as work. And work, I learned later, was the best thing the garden ever gave us.
December 12, 2025You Don’t Prune Heritage Trees. You Keep Them Company.Heritage trees don’t respond to correction. They respond to restraint. Their energy is no longer spent on expansion but on maintenance—holding together what time and weather have already negotiated. When you prune them as if they were young, you don’t restore vigor. You trigger panic growth, burn reserves, and shorten what life remains. The work shifts here. It stops being about improvement and becomes about mercy: removing what has already failed, easing loads that are already breaking.
November 22, 2025Defiance, Part I: The Last Apple StandingI love this apple for its defiance. It’s the ultimate winter keeper apple. It is also one of the most balanced apples I’ve had—sweet, acidic, and without the penalty that plagues so many late hangers. The skin isn’t that tough, battlefield-leather armor you get with other winter apples. It’s firm, yes, but fair. The history, its endurance, though, makes it worth having.
November 14, 2025Winter Garden: What My Grandfather’s War Garden Still Teaches MeBefore sunrise, I walk the wind-cut rows of my winter garden on Orcas, gathering lettuce, kale, and collards for breakfast. As frost clings to the leaves, I’m reminded of my grandfather’s wartime garden—how his acre kept neighbors alive when winter meant scarcity, not inconvenience. That memory becomes a doorway into older worlds where people survived the cold without refrigerators, grocery stores, or modern rescue.
October 13, 2025Sweet After the Freeze: Remembering Growing, and Eating the MedlarLong after apples are gone and pears are stored away, the medlar still hangs—brown, frost-touched, and waiting. It’s a fruit that sweetens only after the cold, a reminder that not everything worth tasting comes in season.
October 8, 2025A Road Made of Roots: Notes on Wild Apples, Design, and InheritanceI found the tree four years ago, growing out of a ditch outside Eastsound. A wild apple, balanced and bright, that led me into older work—of grafting, inheritance, and the quiet restoration that real design requires.
July 12, 2025I'm Done Growing Annual Vegetables: An Elegy for Classic Gardening and Landscape DesignI love vegetables. I love to eat them. I’ve eaten them on porches and back steps, under summer light and winter cloud. I’ve pulled them from soil I amended by hand. I’ve bent to weed them in heat that wrung the salt from my skin. And still—I don’t grow annuals. Mix of annual and perennial vegetables in the OCS garden. Zone 8b. Pacific Northwest gardening at its best. As a permaculture designer, I’m often asked to build out classic vegetable beds for clients. And I do, because it's what they...
Field Notes
44 piecesHow a landscape is made to last. Pruning, species, timing, soil, siting.
May 10, 2026The Secret to a Beautiful, Bulletproof Landscape? Read Your Yard.Before you spend money on plants, read the site. A beautiful, productive landscape starts with understanding protection, water, sunlight, soil, and constraints before anything goes in the ground. Get those pieces right, and your yard has a real chance to become something lasting.
March 29, 2026The Fertilizer Myth: Why It Fails and What Actually Feeds Fruit TreesMost trees don’t need fertilizer, especially once they’re established and growing in reasonably intact soil. If the tree is putting on steady growth, holding healthy leaf color, and not showing clear deficiency symptoms, adding fertilizer is unlikely to improve anything and often makes things worse.
March 19, 2026Can You Prune Fruit Trees in Summer? Yes. And It’s Part of the Right ApproachCan you prune fruit trees in summer? Yes—and you should. Learn how summer pruning controls growth and works alongside winter pruning.
March 15, 2026The Pruning Mistake Creating Water Sprouts (and Costing You Fruit, Time, and Money)Water sprouts are often blamed on the tree, but they’re usually the result of repeated heading cuts. Understanding how pruning triggers this growth cycle is the first step to restoring balance and bringing fruiting wood back into the canopy.
March 12, 2026The Fire Blight Lesson and the Myth of Pruning Tool SterilizationGarden advice often insists that pruning tools must be sterilized constantly. The rule traces back to early fire blight research, but most plant diseases don’t spread this way. Understanding when pruning blades carry infection—and when they don’t—can save time while protecting your trees.
March 7, 2026The Myth of PruningBefore long the tree and the gardener are locked in a cycle. The harder the tree is pruned, the more aggressively it grows back. The more aggressively it grows back, the more pruning seems necessary. What began as maintenance turns into a yearly campaign to keep the tree in line. Many homeowners assume this is simply how fruit trees behave.
March 5, 2026Designing Edible Landscapes: The Overlooked Fruit Trees of the Maritime NorthwestDesigning edible landscapes in the maritime Northwest starts with climate. Many fruit trees will grow here, but far fewer produce consistently. This field guide gathers the trees that reliably fruit in our cool, wet coastal conditions.
March 3, 2026Growing Apples: A Practical SeriesMost people buy apple trees the way they buy fruit, by flavor first. But apples aren’t single organisms. They’re constructed. The rootstock determines size, strength, lifespan, soil tolerance, and even disease resilience. In the Maritime Northwest, where wet winters and dry summers test every decision, that foundation matters. If you choose rootstock casually, you’re designing casually. This is where growing apples begins: below the graft union.
February 27, 2026How to Landscape a Sand-Based Drainfield (Without Killing It)A drainfield isn’t decorative ground. It’s a living system that depends on air, intact soil structure, and restraint above it. In a 100% sand profile, planting must be shallow-rooted, successive, and defensively chosen for deer pressure. This guide outlines how to build a breathable meadow that protects infrastructure while carrying bloom from winter through fall.
February 19, 2026What Vegetables Can You Plant in February and March? (Cold Soil Planting Guide)Gardening in the Maritime Northwest doesn’t begin when it feels like spring. It begins when soil reaches 40–45°F and drains cleanly. This guide breaks down exactly what to plant in February, which varieties perform in cold, oxygen-limited soil, and how to stage a six-week succession so you’re harvesting before April.
January 6, 2026The Six-Tree Culinary Apple Orchard: Eating, Cider, Baking, StorageMost small orchards fail not from neglect, but from excess. Too many trees, ripening at the same moment, planted by familiarity instead of intent. Coherence—timing, purpose, and use aligned—is what turns abundance from waste into return.
November 18, 2025Defensive Design: How to Build Edible Landscapes That Survive RealityIt’s the classic social-media reflex: someone posts a leaf with a wrinkle, and five seconds later a stranger hollers leaf curl! as if pronouncing a curse.
November 3, 2025Growing Wine Grapes in Seattle? Part 3: Earth, Wind, and WireAnd so, wine grape establishment in the Seattle climate becomes less about planting and more about designing a dialogue—between root and rainfall, between leaf and wind, between earth, wind, and wire.
October 28, 2025From Soil to Cell: How Nutrient-Dense Gardens and Landscapes Rebuild Human ResilienceThe first act of cultivation is not planting — it’s inquiry. Test the soil. Read its chemistry and its silence. Some soils are burdened — with metals, residues, or exhaustion from years of extraction. Others are simply asleep, waiting to be woken. You must know which you have before asking it to feed you.
October 7, 2025The Biggest Mistake in Garden Design Isn’t What You ThinkFor millennia, fragrance guided the design of gardens — from Persian courtyards to monastic cloisters. Today it’s often missing. In the Pacific Northwest, restoring scent means designing with intimacy, ecology, and time.
September 30, 2025A Strawberry Tree Grows in Seattle: Rediscovering an Ancient Evergreen — Top 10 Permaculture SpeciesThe strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo) is an ancient evergreen too often overlooked in the Pacific Northwest. While other trees retreat into winter, it carries blossoms and ripening fruit side by side, offering color, nectar, and sustenance when little else remains. Once woven into Roman myth and Mediterranean culture, today it survives mostly as an ornamental—yet its resilience, drought tolerance, and quiet gifts make it a tree worth reclaiming for our landscapes.
September 27, 2025Growing Wine Grapes in Seattle? Part 2: Variety and RootstockGrowing grapes west of the Cascades isn’t about chasing the biggest names—it’s about matching what you plant to the heat, soil, and season you actually have. Varieties that ripen in 1400–2300 GDD and rootstocks that can handle pests, low pH, and wet soils are the difference between fruit worth crushing and years of disappointment. Like raising kids, success comes from giving them the right foundation and the right place to grow.
September 19, 2025Edible Landscape Design with Pacific Northwest Natives: Hawthorn — Top 10 Permaculture SpeciesThe Native Workhorse Hiding in Plain Sight Across the Pacific Northwest is, Arguably, the Ultimate Species for Edible Landscapes.
September 17, 2025Growing Olives in the Pacific Northwest: History, Survival, Struggle, and the Long Bet.Every olive carries history in its roots — Athens crowned with Athena’s gift, Noah reading the branch as landfall, empires rising and falling while the trees still bore fruit. To plant one here is to graft that long memory into Northwest soil, a wager that what endured for millennia might endure again.
September 11, 2025Can You Grow Wine Grapes in Cool Coastal Climates? Lessons from SeattleYou can grow wine grapes in Western Washington—if you pick the right varieties and stay ahead of powdery mildew. Forget the mystique; with soil, sun, water, and patience, a backyard vineyard is within reach.
September 9, 2025Growing Figs in the Pacific Northwest: A Practical Guide for GrowersFigs aren’t just for the Mediterranean. In the Pacific Northwest, a handful of hardy cultivars thrive with the right microclimate and pruning. Learn which varieties deliver, how to favor breba crops over late-ripening duds, and why now is the best time to experiment with figs in Cascadia.
September 8, 2025Gardening Bootcamp - 8 Beginning Mistakes That Will Cost YouFrom bad plant choices to nightly deer raids, here’s what sinks most first-time gardens.
September 4, 2025Edible Landscape Design: A Chestnut is True Generational Wealth — Top 10 Permaculture SpeciesChestnuts aren’t just nut trees — they’re living inheritance. From ancient groves in Italy still feeding families after 500 years to young orchards rising in the Northwest, these trees promise shade, food, and continuity long after we’re gone. Plant a pair today and you’re building more than a food forest — you’re building generational wealth.
September 3, 2025Edible Landscape Design: Aronia (Chokeberry) — Top 10 Permaculture SpeciesWhy Aronia (Chokeberry) Is the Shrub That Crushes Blueberries in Nutrition, Resilience, and Design
September 1, 2025Edible Landscape Design: Russian Comfrey — Top 10 Permaculture SpeciesRussian comfrey isn’t a crop you grow and forget — it’s a permanent fixture in the food forest. The sterile Bocking 14 hybrid won’t spread by seed, but once rooted it becomes a long-term nutrient engine, pulling minerals from deep in the soil and cycling them into leaves you can cut again and again. We plant it around fruit trees not only for its mulch and pollinator blooms, but also as a living barrier that keeps out runner grasses.
August 29, 2025Edible Landscape Design: Jerusalem Artichoke (Sunchoke) — Top 10 Permaculture SpeciesA dense patch of Jerusalem artichokes with tall green stalks and bright yellow sunflower-like blooms, growing along a hillside with trees in the background.
August 23, 2025Sod Off: How Big Lawn Is Killing Us (and What to Plant to Mitigate Climate Change)America’s biggest crop isn’t corn or wheat. It’s grass — and it’s complicit in cooking the planet. Here’s how we fix it without killing the lawn.
August 18, 2025Edible Landscape Design: Hazelnut (Filbert) — Top 10 Permaculture SpeciesHazelnut (filbert) is a top permaculture design species: storable calories, oil, mulch, fencing, habitat, and a living screen—all from one resilient shrub.
August 17, 2025Seriously. Stop Hard Pruning Your Fruit Trees in WinterPruning is not conquest. It’s a negotiation with biology. It should be a conversation across seasons. And the blade should be an instrument of guidance, never of amputation . Every winter the cycle repeats: trees pruned down to stubs, their silhouettes reduced to skeletons against the sky. Owners look on, wincing but resigned, convinced this is what stewardship demands. They’ve been told it’s gospel. They’ve been sold on myth. But in summer reality appears. Instead of fruit, the tree erupts...
July 11, 2025Why Your Landscapers May Be Killing Your TreesLandscape design notes from the cutting edge of Orcas Island Out here in the maritime Northwest, where moss grows on the north side of everything and trees carry the hush of old rain, you learn to watch the land closely. You learn that life and death are quiet things. They don’t come with warning signs or flashing lights. Sometimes they come with a pair of dirty pruning shears. Likely apple anthracnose. Since there are no other trees around, we suspect dirty pruning shears. Older trees will...
August 15, 2023Exploring the Nutritional Wonders of Chokeberry: A Hidden Gem in the World of SuperfoodsIn the realm of superfoods, there are a few that stand out for their exceptional health benefits and remarkable nutrient content. One such unsung hero is the chokeberry (Aronia), a small dark berry that packs a powerful punch when it comes to promoting wellness and vitality. Despite its relatively low profile, chokeberry is a nutritional powerhouse that deserves a closer look. The Basics of Chokeberry: Chokeberries are native to North America and have been prized for centuries by Native...
August 8, 2023Winter Gardening Made EasyIt came upon us fast here in the Maritime Northwest: winter! Not the season, but the time to plan our fall and winter garden. That happens now, in July and August, at the height of summer, as part of a four-season gardening strategy. Gardening in the fall can be just as productive and enjoyable as summer...and easier. To start, you won't be pulling as many weeds as in spring and summer, and the ground will be much softer, so working the dirt and pulling any weeds won't be as difficult a...
June 20, 2021Peppers in June? Easy, They're PerennialHere in the Maritime Northwest there are several reliable pepper varieties we can grow without climate hacking. These mostly produce fruit that are lower on the Scoville scale, as higher, generally, requires more heat units than we can offer in our local ecology without a greenhouse. While appropriate variety selection is important, you can be most successful growing peppers by planning to grow them as perennials and not annuals. Jump Start It’s June, and my first peppers, Shishito, are days...
December 19, 2020Easy, Fresh Greens in Winter: A Guide to Maritime Northwest Winter GardeningWondering how to feed yourself fresh greens, berries, and fruit in the maritime northwest winter without a greenhouse or a trip to the grocery store? It's not hard; it's about appropriate species and variety selection. Our maritime climate is kind to us gardeners, and we should give thanks by growing all year long, especially in winter when food is scarce. There are less pests to worry about in winter too, and no watering. Below are some of the species and varieties that are reliable winter...
April 11, 2020Four Season PNW Gardening: Planting in April - Part 2Part II: Apiaceae (Carrot Family) Carrot family members are, generally, cool-season cultivated and may not grow when the soil gets too warm. They are widely accepted as excellent companion plants due to their flowers clustered into umbels that are well suited habitat for ladybugs , parasitic wasps , and predatory flies , which prey upon insect pests on nearby plants. Members of this family that produce scents may mask the odor of nearby plants and make them more difficult for pests to find....
April 4, 2020Four Season PNW Gardening: What Do I Plant Now?Part I: Solanaceae (Nightshades), Chenopodiaceae (Beet Family), Compositae (Sunflower) You may have noticed the calendar says April, though your skin may not be in agreement with the calendar. Don’t be fooled by the colder than average temps: you already need to be knee deep in growing food, just as you do every month of the year in the PNW. Why? Because you can and should be growing or harvesting food here all year around. This is a blessed four season growing/harvesting climate, and I...
February 21, 2020Small Space? Design Smart and Taste the Pacific Northwest’s Fruit AbundanceSince the first monastery gardens of Europe, growers have wrestled with the same quiet dilemma—how to fit Eden into a courtyard. The problem is not new. Every walled garden, every cloister orchard, was a study in constraint: soil, sun, and stone dictating what could live together and what must be left out. Space has always been the gardener’s first teacher.
December 20, 2019Less Sugar, More Soul: Making Maple Syrup at Home in the Pacific NorthwestLearn how to tap a bigleaf maple and make your own Pacific Northwest syrup. A field guide from Pendragon Orchard & Vine—part adventure, part craft, and all patience—turning rain, pressure, and fire into sweetness.
July 19, 2019Permaculture's A-List Species: Helianthus maximiliani, A Perennial SunflowerIn permaculture, all things should have multi-functions. Topping my list this year is a lesser known sunflower that is perennial, edible, pollinator-friendly, drought tolerant, and just beautiful. It's Helianthus maximiliani, Maximilian Sunflower. I use this species on every project, as does our charity All Hands on Earth . Seeding is easy: sprinkle on the soil and press down lightly; water regularly until the shoots, which are edible, reach about 6-8" in height. Then let it go. I saw these...
June 27, 2019Permaculture Landscaping: Schisandra Berry (Schisandra chinensis)Permaculture Landscaping: Schisandra Berry ( Schisandra chinensis) We installed Schisandra at two permaculture sites this week, trellising the specimens on a fence. Personally, I love climbers, and if I find a suitable fence or wall, I’ll grow vertically on it to extend its function. Schisandra, native to East Asia, is a hardy deciduous climber that can tolerate shade and grows in a variety of soils. Fitting the profile of a quintessential permaculture species, meaning multi-functional, we...
June 26, 2019Yamaimo: The Strange Mountain Yam Missing from Your Garden and DietYamaimo is one of the stranger crops worth considering for edible landscape design: a quiet climbing vine above ground with a long edible tuber forming below. Grown on a trellis and harvested from deep containers, this Japanese mountain yam turns vertical space into real food production while offering a crop that can be eaten raw, grated, cooked, or stored.
March 21, 2019The Floral Language of Blossom Timing in ApplesMost backyard orchards fail before the fruit ever forms. Not because the trees are unhealthy, but because they were never designed to speak the same bloom language. Apple pollination isn’t about proximity or variety names. It’s about timing. Flowering groups, weather compression, and structural overlap determine whether blossoms become harvest or remain ornamental. In the Maritime Northwest, landscape design begins in spring, when petals open and systems either connect or collapse.- March 21, 2019Permaculture Gardening and Landscaping How To Avoid Panic PlantingSo, you got excited and bought more bare root trees than you know what to do with. Been there. The story continues... You grab your shovel and look for a place to plant them all. Suddenly, you come to your senses; then you panic looking at all those trees awaiting your decision. What usually happens next is the "panic planting" with the whisper: "I'll move them later." Well, that needn't happen. You can buy plenty of time to make good decisions by "heeling-in" your trees. The strategy...
March 21, 2019Permaculture Gardening and Landscaping: Using Stumps to Grow Native FoodOn a recent Orcas Island project, we found an opportunity to grow food and restore PNW natives without deer fencing. For those of you with property that has a history of logging, you may find old, rotted conifer stumps shoulder height or greater. These are natural "planters" for Red Huckleberry, among other species, like salal, in the forests of the PNW that deer can't reach. Rotting stumps act as a sponge, storing rainwater that is critical for huckleberry survival in summer's drought. The...