YardSmart

A Garden Often is the True Measure of a Man

"Live each day as if it was your last, and garden as though you will live forever."

There is no man who better embodied that wisdom than supreme gardener Jim Thompson. For the final 30 years of his life, after retiring as a colonel in the U.S. Army, Jim made an extraordinary garden.

"I was just tired of always moving around in the military. Bev and I wanted permanence. It's the only way you can garden well."

The Thompson garden lies over two acres of ground on the windswept Mendocino coast of California. The heart of it is an old tree-shaded homestead that provided Jim's house with enough wind protection for plants to survive there.

I recently learned Jim had passed away, and was struck by tragedy behind all great gardens: They exist only through the hand of their creators and tenders. When these stalwart souls move out of this life, their gardens become vulnerable to time and neglect. It is truly remarkable how quickly a garden can revert to wild thickets of suckers and weeds.

In this territory of great redwood trees, sheep farmers have created miles of rough redwood picket fences that have stood for nearly a century gathering patina. As spans were retired and replaced with wire fence, Jim took this precious material and forever enshrined it as part of his garden.

The landscape spreads out around the small cottage he built with his own hands while he and Bev made their temporary home in a massive old silvered barn now at the far back of the garden. It lies beside an aging cypress windbreak sculptured by time and elements into a work of natural art. Into low gracefully bowed branches and trunks he built a gate, seemingly a part of the very tree itself. It would indeed feel at home in "The Lord of the Rings" movies because Jim took care to match the trunk with old wood gleaned from local dilapidated structures.

The cool north coast climate is unique, and there Jim discovered that the heathers and heaths of Britain thrive. He was an avid collector of more than 100 species grown in raised beds to ensure perfect drainage. His able and meticulous hand propagated countless cuttings into this massive undertaking that yields in the summer a patchwork of vivid color.

Every time I made the trip over to Jim's garden, often months or years in between, he would have something new and wonderful added. One year it was a Victorian tree house in the largest cypress, an engineering feat that seemed impossible to my eye. It was built so his grandchildren who have a sweeping view of the sea from their gingerbread perch.

Over the years this garden changed as plants grew and died and spread. That is the most substantial truth of such intuitively created landscapes: they are always in a state of flux. Unlike a static building that stands for decades, even centuries, a garden is transient and fully dependent on the hands and strong back of its caregiver. And when that man or woman is no longer able, these beautiful gifts of nature are immediately at risk.

There's little doubt that Jim's garden will one day be sold, but I suspect his earthbound spirit will hover there long afterwards. Perhaps he'll whisper into the ear of the new gardener, subtly suggesting how to deal with the gophers. Or maybe he will remind them that the best time to pull weeds is when it's raining outside. Jim would know, too, that the yellowing heather needs iron or that the leaf miners are at the flowering maples. He'll warn them not to trample the creeping thyme and that the species fuchsias need thinning.

But no matter who tends the grounds, that Eden on the coast will always be Jim's garden.

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