Sometimes a garden calls you to create it.

In the fall of 2002, we began the Dragonfly Garden. It really all started when Anthony came home from Dorothy Hungar's farm one day, full of excitement about her wonderful garden. He said that I had to meet her and see her garden. She had moved to Orcas when she was in her 20's, to live a peaceful life and garden. Now in her late 70's, she was still going strong and living her dream.

Since I was considering retiring from serious gardening for various reasons, he used this opportunity to encourage me to reconsider. He took me down to our meadow and asked me to just imagine what my dream garden might be like—if I were to ever have one. Well, it was a beautiful day and I couldn't resist. So I told him everything that I ever wished for in a garden...lots of blueberries and raspberries and... After that he said, "Okay, let's do it! It will need to be this big!" I looked at him like he was crazy, but he persisted until I couldn't resist.

From that moment on, I always wondered about this garden. There were a lot of reasons why it did not make sense to do it. However, there was always this feeling like it had a soul and that it wanted to be born. It became clear that it was leading us and that our job was just to follow and see what would happen.

After plowing up the ground in late October, we planted a soil building green crop (a mix of Austrian peas, vetch, fava beans, and winter rye). It was our first time doing this and it took more time than we had realized.

We carefully followed the directions that came with the seeds and rolled them in a mixture of milk and molasses to help the powdered inoculant (a nitrogen-fixing bacteria) adhere to them. By nightfall we were still raking in seeds—and only half finished.

We were exhausted, but we couldn't stop because the seeds were all wet. We will never forget the feeling of that evening. The night sky was clear, and gradually a full moon rose over the hills. We marveled at the beauty and the ambience of planting under the moonlight. We felt the spirit of the garden touch us and we knew that we were connecting to something very wonderful.

The green crop thrived through the winter and by spring it took off. The soil was too wet to work, so we let the crop grow until June. By then it had reached about 5 feet and we needed to hire a friend to cut it down with his weed-wacker. We raked the long cuttings to the side of the garden fencing and used them as mulch after we had prepared the beds.

We found a fellow on the island who is an expert at tilling gardens. He was the master of his tractor, whom he proudly called "an animal", and assured us that it would not break down like our neighbor's had a few days earlier. We were really impressed with his skill in not leaving any tire tracks as he finished the garden.

The farmer in me loves the sight of fresh tilled soil. It is a yearly ritual that makes me feel alive and connected to the earth. I love working with it and sculpturing the first beds. I rarely have a design in mind ahead of time, but prefer to work spontaneously and let ideas emerge on their own.

Anthony was sensitive to give me the space I needed to create the design for the Dragonfly Garden. He was patient and supportive of my process, and after the tilling he encouraged me to take my time. So I stood at the entrance to the garden, with my rack in my hand, and in the peace and quiet of the moment, communed with the beauty of the newly fluffed soil.

It wasn't long before I had a visual impression of a center bed and a nudge to start making a soft flowing path toward the center of the garden. From there I used my rake to create the outside edge of the center bed. I had seen a design a few weeks earlier in a children's gardening book that had garden rooms with walls of tall flowers—places to lie down in and feel cozy. I suddenly felt that this could be a very good idea for this central bed. Maybe Anthony and I would even sleep in it? After all, the center of this garden was the place in the meadow we had chosen for napping, star gazing, and sleeping on summer nights. So I raked a path into it and made a 3 foot bed for the flowers.

From there the puzzle pieces of the overall garden design started coming together. I could see that we should make straight paths from the center out to each of the four corner garden posts to create a strong support to the center.

Curved, wandering paths would go to each of the garden gates. Within each of the four quadrants that were emerging would be smaller winding paths that would define freeform beds of varying sizes. Two long straight beds would go along the edges of the fence for the rows of berries and for providing additional strength to the design.

Anthony (bless him) followed the design of my rake, as my imagination took off, and shoveled out each path, placing the soil on the top of the bordering beds. This initial deepening of the paths has continued to be a yearly practice and helps to keep the raised beds at an optimum height.

See a map of this garden design.

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