Mediterranean garden finds a new home

Published 6:00 am Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Middle Earth has moved to a 100-year-old island farm.

The nursery Mesogeo, whose name means Middle Earth in Greek, is the unique concept of Terri Stanley and Terry Moyemont, the fruit of a tour of Mediterranean gardens that convinced them that the Northwest climate was similar enough to sustain many plants from warmer climes.

The nursery opened doors at a temporary site last year, but the nursery’s new home, a historic seven-acre farm on Miller Road just west of the Day Road/305 intersection, is a happy marriage of history and geography that may produce a destination garden attracting admirers from around Puget Sound, or even further afield.

“It definitely has a history,” Stanley said. “There’s something about the fact that it’s never been broken up, it’s always been a farm. It’s gone from family to family. It’s obviously beloved by a lot of people.”

The house is scenically located in a century-old grove of locust trees, and the barn dates from 1870. The site, which unrolls down a gentle slope with southern exposure, has variously been a raspberry farm and a dairy, and has supported a range of livestock.

And, until this past June, the place was home to a 14-year-old bull named Fat Boy with a propensity for walking through fences. The bull, purchased by a neighbor, is now pastured nearby.

In the last month Stanley and Moyemont have moved, rebuilt the greenhouse and laid out a design for landscaping. In the reconstructed greenhouse, neat rows of pots contain plants with luxuriant foliage, like the ruffled elephant ear of Colacisia, a native of Asia and Hawaii, or the single blooming wand of the Knipfofias, also known as red hot poker.

“It’s amazing to me that we’ve been able to do this,” Stanley said, “but we have had a lot of help.”

They may expand the small vegetable and herb gardens of the old Mesogeo, and experiment with more kinds of heritage corns and vegetables. Moyemont plans to grow medicinal herbs.

Another plan in the works is a large plot of Wifania Somnifera, or Ashwagandha, an Indian and Middle Eastern shrub in the pepper family that claims wide-ranging benefits as painkiller, muscle relaxer, natural immune system stimulant, memory enhancer and aphrodisiac.

The true center and heart of the site is Manzanita Creek, a salmon run that bisects the property. Stanley and Moyemont are working with neighbor Robert Tange, whose Waterfall Gardens Bed and Breakfast lies downstream, to increase the salmon run by creating a pond to collect runoff from a down-sloping hill, using a system of natural filtration plants and a swale to clean the water before it runs back into the creek. Salmon will be able to spawn in the pond, increasing the salmon run as much as tenfold.

“I value that stream,” Stanley said. “It’s part of the beauty of this piece of property. It’s part of the history of this piece of property. I want to stay connected; staying connected to people downstream from me is part of this whole thing.”

Both see the farm as potentially modeled on the small intensive farms of Southern France and England. The botanical park is another model.

Both believe that the pleasant sort of agri/garden tourism they experienced abroad – being matched with the right site by the tourist center in each small town – could be duplicated here.

“There was that person in the middle who could shield farm and garden owners from having people just randomly walking in the door,” Stanley said, “and they knew the place so well – the farms and everyone there – so they could match us with the place that best fitted us.”

As the pair settle in from the move, excitement about the potential of the new Mesogeo begins to outweigh the inconvenience and trauma of the move, both say.

“I’m getting little glimmers of it when I relax at the end of the day,” Stanley said. “I look at this place and I think, my God, it’s so beautiful.”

—

An open house from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Oct. 16 celebrates Mesogeo’s new home at 12364 Miller Rd. Greenhouse hours are Tues. – Sat. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. by appointment. Call 855-9017 for information.