Karen enlisted me to go on my first tree-tagging expedition today (tree-tagging is something that landscape architects do… basically, they go to nurseries and hand-select trees that they will later install at jobs they are working on) — I admit that I wasn’t very excited about it, but a walk in the woods sounded like a good enough reason to tag along (bad pun intended). We drove north of Seattle for approximately 40 minutes and arrived at a nursery owned and operated by a landscape architecture legend, Rich Haag. Rich’s most famous projects are probably Gas Works Park, in Seattle, and the Bloedel Reserve, on Bainbridge Island.
He was a fantastic host — we quickly got our of our car and hopped into his Subaru Outback, and for good reason — the property is more of a passion/hobby than what you’d think of as a for-profit nursery. Basically, the property is in a flood plain and at certain times of the year will be well submerged (5-10 feet of water?!?), but on this day, it was merely ‘moist’ throughout — we crisscrossed the property to find trees that fit Karen’s needs, along the way discussing the lives of slugs (which I’m particularly interested in, actually), the histories of the different plants, and the fact that he’s owned the ~70 acres for more than 40 years.
All in all, a fantastic day — it was really great meeting Rich. Also reminded us both that we’d really like to invest in some property — the idea of heading out of the city each weekend to ‘play’ in the woods, is enchanting, no?