Under New Management
Landscape Architecture Magazine, January, 2007

How did a famous botanic garden become the front yard of a boutique hotel?

From the grassy field just above the Axis Fountain, where the Oregon Way begins its zigzag path down the hill toward the Bosque, there is an extraordinary view of the Willamette Valley. Oregon is an epicenter of the nursery trade, whose roots are deep in this rich valley and whose volume constitutes the largest agricultural industry in the state. Nurserymen, turf growers, flower hybridizers, and orchardists have painted the land with their growing things, texturing it like a green quilt that covers the fertile soil and fades away into the rumpled edge of the Coast Ranges.

The extraordinary view is what Moonstone Hotel Properties is counting on. This grassy field will soon be home to a 103-room hotel, restaurant, and bridal suite. Moonstone is here because The Oregon Garden, 240 acres of themed horticultural, agricultural, and sylvicultural displays sprawling on the hillside below, could not pay its bills.

The story of the Oregon Garden goes back to the nursery industry, then traipses through more than a decade of fund-raising, master planning, design, and construction, followed by low attendance, financial difficulty, and finally, in 2005, the entrance of Moonstone. It begins as far back as the 1940s, when the Oregon Association of Nurserymen first decided that, as the representative of one of the leading industries in the state (and the largest agricultural industry), it wanted a world-class facility to showcase its diversity. It started rolling in earnest in 1993 when the association formed a task force to formulate goals and create a conceptual plan. In 1994, the Oregon Garden Foundation (OGF) was formed, and in March of 1995 a site was selected: Silverton, Oregon, a historic town with a population of about 7,500 approximately 50 miles southeast of Portland. Silverton was selected primarily because of a unique partnership opportunity.

In 1995, the City of Silverton was developing plans for a new wastewater treatment facility, and was considering using wetlands for final treatment. This final treatment, or "polish," would utilize bioremediation and infiltration to remove phosphorous and nitrates, as well as to cool the water to a temperature appropriate for discharge into a salmon stream. The agreement between Silverton and OGF would put the Oregon Garden on city-owned land, which the OGF would lease. Silverton would contribute funding to the planned wetlands, as well as irrigation in the form of treated wastewater. The OGF would operate the entire facility on a non-profit basis.

By July of that year, the OGF had raised $2 million and formed master plan steering and technical advisory committees. In October an initial public symposium was held. Then, in April of 1996, the OGF convened a five-day charette that included landscape architects, architects, artists, and hydrology/biology experts. The master plan that resulted generally called for a central axis, with a variety of gardens hanging from it like fruit. The resultant complex of wetlands and aquatic showcase became known as the A-Mazing Water Garden.

The OGF had started off on the right foot with a high-powered charette of local visionaries, who were then assigned further design work based on their experience and expertise (see sidebar).

The various gardens were implemented beginning in 1997. In 2001 a grand opening celebration was held, though other gardens continued to be built.

In this system, known as Complex A, water moves through 15 cells, trickling or (in some places) gushing exuberantly over clay weirs or through pipes under walkways to the top of a six foot basalt waterwall. The water pools behind this precipice and much of it is drawn off at this point for irrigation. The remainder trickles down the face of the curved black wall into the primary public use space in the A-Mazing Water Garden, which also serves as the principal gateway to the Oregon Garden as a whole. The basalt arc traces part of the circumference of a great circle flooded with quiet water and a mix of native and ornamental plants. Along a skein of pathways, it is easy to scare up frogs and water-loving insects.

Any overflow from Complex A moves (in pipes) a great distance to Complex B, and then to Complex C, both of which are located near the main entrance to the Oregon Garden at the lowest point on the site. Complex C utilizes a system of purification which involves siphoning water downward through the soil to accomplish a binding of phosphorous in the earth. "This can be done by plants," explains Koonce of Inter-Fluve, Inc., "but when plants die, [phosphorous] is re-released into the water." Koonce designed a series of pipes and valves that lie under the soil profile of each treatment cell. When the valves and pipes are open, water is pulled downward through the soil, drops its nutrients, then returns to the surface in the next cell. The water is forced up and down through the soil, charging the groundwater as it goes, and eventually trickles into Brush Creek.

The year 2005 was crunch time. Portlanders actually thought the garden was closed.

"We were never closed," stresses Purdy, "but we did get smaller." In June and July, most staff members were getting termination notices. In August the garden went into receivership management by an outside company. The entire staff was let go, then about a dozen were rehired by the company to continue operations. The receivership lasted until April 1, 2006, when Moonstone agreed to build a hotel adjacent to the site and took over management of the entire property, including employment of the garden's staff (this was when Purdy became general manager). The theoretical win-win is supposed to work like this: Moonstone's hotel and its management of the garden will boost attendance. Greater attendance (and the possible increase in donations) will allow the OGF to repay the bond on the land. Moonstone will make money on rentals and rooms at the hotel, which in turn will be boosted by the increasing quality of the garden.

This is all predicated on the fact that Moonstone knows how to run a botanic garden. By all accounts, it does. Founded in 1986 by garden lover Dirk Winter, the company operates a network of 11 garden-themed hotels in California and Oregon, as well as a nursery. Moonstone has staff on its various sites design, install, and maintain lush gardens. It hosts garden-focused events throughout the year. It seems to be, in essence, already running botanical gardens.

Moonstone, in fact, learned of the Oregon Garden's existence (and difficulties) from one of its own staff, Cindee Eichengreen, who had been a volunteer there before Moonstone hired her. Eichengreen, who has now become one the primary design influences at Silverton, says her main task is to bring some more cohesiveness to the garden, and she will also be designing and installing the landscaping around the hotel. She says that Dirk Winter "likes to see beautiful gardens, and will do what it takes to make them happen."

Landscape architects involved in the original master plan and subsequent designs generally feel that something needed to be done. On the other hand, the legacy of the 1996 master plan may be in even more jeopardy. This plan, envisioned through a week of uninterrupted collaboration, informed by national botanical garden and entertainment experts, and based on a simple but unique public/private/environment partnership, has been, by many accounts abandoned. And now there is practically no institutional memory. Purdy, who has longer tenure than many, was not involved in the early days. Eichengreen, destined to be the design lead from here on out, has no connection to the design team nor to the landscape architecture profession. Still, "if there is a white knight," Perron admits, "you can't turn your back on that."

True, for otherwise the garden would simply close, and, as Huntington puts it, "No one else has made any offers to pull it out of its financial bind," including, one could note, the nursery industry itself.

The big question is how landscape architects will be involved going forward and whether the master plan will be followed. Moonstone, however, does not typically hire landscape architects, as it uses its own horticultural and garden staff to design and install the gardens on their properties.

"I think it is a dangerous approach to put a horticulturist in charge of design," laments Huntington. "I have seen too many garden tours of gardens where someone is a great plant collector and has great plants, but has no sense of design -- of gardens as an artform with a composition and theme."

Eichengreen and Moonstone are good at what they do, as evidenced by Village Green Resort in Cottage Grove, Oregon (about 100 miles south of Silverton), a well-tended oasis. To Huntington's point, however, Village Green does have somewhat of a garden-by-garden specimen-by-specimen approach to the overall design. The Oregon Garden could benefit from a revisitation of the original master plan by a similar or secondary group of design professionals, especially when such a huge addition as a lodging facility is being considered. Both Moonstone and Oregon Garden staff are trumpeting new beginning, but beginnings need grand plans, not piecemeal additions.