When’s the last time you visited the Bloedel Reserve?

Didn’t think so. We can’t remember, either.

While it sits in our collective back yard, the sprawling, spectacular botanical garden at the island’s north end may well enjoy a higher profile in national and international circles than it does amongst islanders. (A feature-length spread in the New York Times will do that for you.) But a new spirit of outreach could push the gardens well forward in the local consciousness, above its curious local status of “that park where you need an appointment.”

As it nears its 20th birthday, the reserve is evolving away from close control by the Bloedel heirs and their Seattle-area associates toward a broader, yet more Bainbridge-centric guidance. Prominent islanders including Debbi Brainerd, Andy Maron, Steve Davis and Paul Kundtz are among those on the newly expanded board of directors, and Chris Endresen will represent North Kitsap. And as reported on today’s front page, the organization is considering new ways to bring in guests through events, while still maintaining the “one with nature” gestalt – the upshot of a strictly metered visitation policy – that defines any stroll about the lush grounds.

It’s a welcome move. It may also remind islanders just why the Bloedel family name is significant, for unlike other clans prominent in local lore, they made their name (and their fortune) through their exploits off the island. Most folks can associate the Bloedel name with timber baronry, back when the wholesale felling of forests was still considered progress. But the authoritative clearinghouse History Link reminds us that a prescient Prentice Bloedel embodied a conservation ethos as well, pioneering recycling on an industrial scale decades before the term entered the vernacular.

When in the 1930s Bloedel took the helm of a family lumber mill in Port Alberni, British Columbia, History Link notes, it entered the vanguard of operations using sawdust and other wood waste – called “hog fuel” – to generate power. Bloedel “believed integrating a pulp mill with sawmill operations would get the most out of every stick of timber, and the mill became one of the first waste-based operations” around. That idea found fuller fruition still when the company began producing fuel briquettes from compressed shingle waste, marketed for consumer use as “pres-to-logs.”

Bloedel was also a pioneer in the replanting of land laid barren by clearcuts. As History Link notes: “In 1938, Bloedel guided the company into a reforestation program and the firm became the first company to plant seedlings. A decade later, the firm was responsible for 70 percent of all the reforestation carried out by private industry in British Columbia. During the 1930s and 1940s, Bloedel began buying land in Whatcom and Skagit counties that had been clear-cut and abandoned. He became treasurer of Bloedel, Stewart and Welch in 1942 and continued to implement innovations to the industry.”

Bloedel and his wife Virginia eventually settled on Bainbridge Island at the north-end estate that in later years they would set aside as a botanical preserve. Yet implicit even in their industrial heritage are the conservation values embraced by today’s island. More of us should share it, appointments and entry fees notwithstanding.

“The only reason we charged a fee,” Executive Director Dick Brown noted drily last week, “was to attract the interested, rather than accommodate the disinterested who happened to stop by.”

Touche. We’ll be making an appointment.