Garden On, Vashon

You know that principle of gardening: You Thought You Did Everything, But Turns Out There’s More To Do?

  Mike McKelvey and Bea Johnson know this in spades.

If you went on last year’s VAA Garden Tour, you too probably visited this hillside garden on a southeast slope of Maury Island. It starts off conventionally enough: you enter the west front lawn through an elegant metal fence and walk along a paver path next to a mixed planting. Ahead is the rose garden, inside its own fence since it was created earlier. There’s a charming guest-house that beckons past the rose garden to the southeast corner.

And then, for a moment, the garden disappears. You have to step forward and crane out your neck out to see “Oh, it’s down THERE!”, then decide whether your tour-addled limbs are up to the return climb.

McKelvey & Johnson’s back garden is on a 40% slope. And, the property is near a “critical area” known for slides—Mike told me, “In the 90s, I remember driving out and the road on 47th below us was completely washed out.”

So in 2004 before they could build on their property, McKelvey had to fulfill some King County mandates: build a cistern to collect ALL run-off from roof and driveway. And build a second water- collection system across the entire bottom of the property. You’d think that would take much of the water-burden off their 40% slope.

Apparently not.

DIG put in the initial rockeries to create a flat place for the rose garden. Mike said, “We were going to stop there, let the rest be natural: rocks, grass, scotch broom. Then one day I came home and Bea had started weeding the hillside below the east deck. So I got the idea of buying those big pre-fab aggregate blocks to build stone walls, and I started building the stairs.” Bea then decided this stairs needed the rose arbor touch.

“There had been a lot of rain that autumn. And as I built from bottom to top, that’s when I noticed the big bulge in the slope, just to the south. And I thought, ‘This is not good!’ because the septic system was right above where the land was moving. So we decided to put in more rockeries to stabilize the slope.”

Mike did all the hauling and placement of the blocks himself. He worked out from the Archway stairs to left and right, finishing one then deciding “that’s not enough!” There are at least four terraces, from 7′ to 3′ high, traversing and containing the entire slope.

Bea came behind, creating the paths and adding plants. It’s in these paths that the McKelvey/Johnson garden reaches past its High Function and goes for Magic. Cobbles were sorted for size and color, then laid in complex mosaics, in patterns very reminiscent of the patios in the Chinese Garden in Portland, Oregon. The blue cobbles come from a place in the University District called “Mexican Pebbles”; the earth-toned stones are “good ol’ Maury Island natives.”

Mike said his wife tamped the stones into the soil: “she has the patience to do that with her wooden hammer.” Laying them into the soil allows mosses and creepers to grow amidst these stones—but how does Bea keep out the weeds? I hope Bea has a Dragon Torch weeder—or is getting one for Christmas!

Besides the artful mosaics on the paths, the garden also sports several birdhouses, planted pots, and pieces of artwork. The Guesthouse, a gift from Bea’s mom, they use as a reading room because a couch they couldn’t fit into the house found its home there. “A guy here on the Island had a model sitting near Vashon Electric: they come in a kit form from Russia and it’s all metric. The guy built the house for us. 2×6′ tongue-and-groove white pine with a metal roof and completely insulated.”

One of the most delightful sections is in an unlikely space that most gardeners have trouble with: under the deck. Here, Bea created a tiny garden room for shade plants. The yellow spike flower is Eucomis autumnalis, commonly called  pineapple lily. Coleus mingles with begonia and small ferns. A metal-work screen makes the sharp slope, only inches away, disappear.

This garden just has to demand a ton of attention. “Put a lot of time into gardening?” I ask. He laughs, “That’s what we do. 

“We’ve changed so many things even since the garden tour. We like nothing better than spending all day at Molbak’s.”