JARS v63n1 - The Peaceful Spot

The Peaceful Spot
Bill Miller
Tacoma, Washington

Let me start out by saying that I am E. White Smith's son-in-law, you know, the editor of the Vireya Vine newsletter. He also helps operate Bovees Nursery in Portland, Oregon. My wife, Julie, and I live on a one-acre lot in the city of Tacoma. This property had belonged to E. White's in-laws, Neta and Elwood Budil. They were my wife's grandparents. The Budils had started growing rhododendrons during WWII so the property is full of 50-60-year-old plants. The greenhouse was on the property when they bought it during the war. The Budils were very interested in all plants and the Tacoma Chapter of the American Rhododendron Society was started in this house.

For about two years, I heard the same refrain from Julie. It went something like this, "I wish I could just sit in this greenhouse and read a book." The greenhouse in question is a 60+ year-old glass Lord and Burnham 24'w x 26'l x 14'h with an interior iron frame. Inside the greenhouse were benches made from pressure treated 4x4 frames with thick cedar boards on top. All the plants were in pots sitting on the benches or hanging from overhead pipes. Plant size ranged from 2-inch to 3-gallon. It looked like a mini-nursery instead of a home greenhouse.

The redwood rafters were spongy and the last couple of years of 80+ miles per hour windstorms with the tree branches coming through the glass roof made the rebuilding decision easy. The roof had to be taken down. The 150+ plants were removed to a shady spot under a big fir tree and the very careful removal of the roof glass began. It is amazing how focused you can be when you are on top of a 12-foot ladder and handing down a 20" x 24" piece of glass down to your wife. The removal of the 60-year-old straight-grained redwood is actually painful to remember. I have never handled such beautiful wood like that before. Very few pieces were salvageable.

While all of this destruction was happening, one of our curious neighbors came over to watch and supply some advice. He mentioned offhand that his brother had some greenhouse "corrugated plastic" stacked up behind his garage. He made a phone call and we went over to look at what his brother had. We were thinking he had some fiberglass and we would be saying thanks but no thanks. We drove away with eight sheets of 4' x 12' twin wall polycarbonate and enough scrap to do the vent. Our cost was eight pints of homemade jam. That left only four sheets of twin wall to buy. Total cost for lumber and polycarbonate was $800 and the jam.

The thought of reassembling the 4 x 4 framing was just too much. My wife and I looked at each other and decided that it was now or never. The "new" greenhouse was going to have a conservatory style planting with no pots. If I had known how much work was going to be involved I may have put the frames back up. The greenhouse floor had to be leveled a bit. The pathways around the benches had been packed down over the years. Then a trip to the Wilkerson Sandstone Quarry was made where we scavenged some beautiful pieces of sandstone off the tailings pile. The quarry is in the small town of Wilkerson east of Tacoma about 15 miles. Sandstone material from this quarry was used to construct many of the large buildings in the Puget Sound area. One thousand pounds of rock ($20) and a bouncy 45-minute car ride home was just the beginning. The rock was lifted again, moved to the greenhouse in a wheelbarrow, lifted out of the wheelbarrow to the ground, and then, inevitably, moved at least twice more to make my wife happy. That makes 1000 pounds times five moves. Ugh.

Then came the 20 yards of planting mix. We used a compost the city of Tacoma makes called Tagro Mulch. It is 80 percent ground up fir tree branches mixed with 20 percent sterilized sewage waste from the treatment plant. It continues to compost itself until all the fertilizer value is gone. It drains extremely well. We mixed in about 5 percent Perlite to try and hold some moisture.

The greenhouse door is centered on the 24-foot-wide north end wall. Julie has tiled the bottom three feet of this wall with some amazing 3D tiles. An eclectic mix of frogs, dragons, and cherubs greet us as we enter. Inside to the left are some artsy looking stacked clay pots from the old days. Dead center is an oval shaped 16' x 8' planting of vireyas, ferns, streptocarpus, orchids, African violets, elephant ears, and banana plants. It is planted to be seen from the doorway so the small plants are in front and the bananas are behind. Inside to the right is the small natural gas furnace. The gas line is run through the house meter. The rest of the greenhouse is planted all around the walls in a horseshoe shape with the sandstone providing a barrier to hold back the planting mix which is about 4 feet wide and 1 feet deep. Orchids and Maddenia rhododendrons are closest to the glass while ferns and vireyas are in the front. We are trying to figure out which vireyas want to grow straight and tall and which ones want to lie down. The ones that lie down are transplanted to the very front so they can drape over the sandstone. It is a stunning effect.

There is a full-length shelf at eye level along the south wall where some decorative pots and cactus are dutifully ignored. We also recycled a small rigid plastic pond liner and put a couple of goldfish in it. The pond is useful for keeping our outside pond plants alive in the winter as well as providing some humidity in the summer. Last summer we tore down most of E. White Smith's chimney in Tacoma, cleaned the old brick, and placed it on the floor of the greenhouse in a circular herringbone pattern.

Oh, and by the way, most of the vireyas love the mix and being in the ground. The average growth is 8 inches this year with some growing 15 inches. The ones that are not happy will be put in hanging pots to see if their disposition changes for the better. Most of our vireyas have obviously come from Bovees Nursery but we have many that have been grown from seed. We have plants that came from Bill Moyles collected seed. Our most closely watched plants are the R. hellwigii x R. konori crosses that came from John Rouse collected seed in 1991. They started blooming last year and we have had some spectacular colors including a white with red striping into the throat of the flower. We will let them bloom one more time and then we will begin taking cuttings of the best and shipping them down to Lucy Sorenson Smith at Bovees Nursery so she can work her magic with them. Maybe one of them will even be registered!

Several chairs have been put in the greenhouse but have all been found lacking at this point in time. Once the yard sale season begins, maybe we will find the perfect chair in which to do some reading.
The only thing missing from the greenhouse is a potting bench...sigh.

Bill and Julie Miller are co-presidents of the Tacoma Chapter.