By Louise Rose
Reprinted by permission from the McMinnville, Oregon
News-Register of June 10th, 2000

Norm Jacobs and Deb Zaveson of Yamhill generously, patiently answer the questions that inevitably come up when they show visitors their garden. Even a veteran gardener may not recognize all the plants, some of which are extremely rare.

Both Jacobs and Zaveson can discuss a plant's needs, its botanical name, close relatives and where it originated with the scholarly air of botany professors. But their faces beam with the joyful enthusiasm of true plant lovers.
Their garden includes almost 1,000 different varieties of plants in a relatively small, but expanding, area on their rural Yamhill farm. "We keep moving the fence out a little more and a little more, as we come up with ideas for more garden rooms we'd like to develop," said Jacobs.

The couple moved in 1984 to this peaceful spot in a valley where pheasant and blue heron are their closest neighbors. They had spent every spare moment for two and a half years on the hard work of building the house with their own hands. Boulders that look like a natural part of the wooded, hillside garden were pulled out and set aside during excavation for the house's foundation, then placed in the garden with help from a friend.

The couple also hand-quarried tons of flat rock to build natural-looking settings for ponds and seating areas. "You can get a permit from the Bureau of Land Management to take rock from several abandoned quarries in formerly logged areas near Mount Hood," Jacobs said. "The permit is not very expensive, but it's hard work." He and Zaveson used crowbars to pry loose the rock slabs, then incurred even more sore muscles as they loaded, transported, unloaded and installed them.

Both commuted from their peaceful, hillside haven to fast-paced, stressful corporate jobs in the Portland area for several years. But they treasured the leisure hours spent working on the garden hardscape and amassing a diverse collection of botanical species. They had no intention of starting a plant nursery. "Then we finally realized, this is our passion, this is what we choose to do all the time - let's quit the rat race and just do what we love," Zaveson said. Since she has a degree in botany and Jacobs has extensive experience in garden design and plantsmanship, the idea wasn't just a wild hare.

Because their property was in a relatively remote location, they decided it wasn't practical to operate a retail nursery on-site. Instead, they opened a store offering their nursery plants and a variety of garden art, garden books and supplies in Carlton.

Arbutus Garden Arts, 119 W. Main St., opened this year. Though they acknowledged there were risks in giving up their careers to become small business owners, the couple's faces reflected a deep sense of happiness and fulfillment with their new careers.

"It's important to find a way to make a living doing what you love," Zaveson said. They sometimes use their garden as a test lab to determine whether a plant will be successful in Western Oregon's quirky climate.

The garden consists of a succession of "rooms," explained Jacobs. "When you're designing a garden, a good way to look at it is to create rooms within your `walls.' Our walls are the taller trees in the woodland around us." Within those boundaries, the couple has divided the space visually in a variety of ways.

He built the redwood archway that gracefully marks passage from the lower garden, with somewhat formal beds, into the woodland setting above it.

The pair's enthusiasm for particular plants is monumentalized in extensive collections that are planted in proximity with like varieties. "These are all hardy geraniums," Zaveson said, pointing to a large bed of plants. "There was a year we were fixated on those. After the geraniums we had our hellebore 'fad," she added with a wry smile.

The large collection of heathers includes several different shades of foliage and one plant that is currently in flower, much later than most heathers. The quest for unusual bloom times also led to their "hellebore phase." Lenten Rose hellebores have been blooming since February and they pair nicely with epimedia that turn red in the winter. Both are shade lovers.

"Suiting the plant to the right location is the key to low-maintenance garden design," Jacobs said.
Zaveson concurred, adding, "We tend not to want to grow plants that need a lot of fussing, and putting them in the right place really helps reduce the need to fuss."

Their garden is a place that promotes smiles and sometimes even laughter.
"You have to have a sense of humor to appreciate some of these odd-looking plants," Jacobs mused about some of his favorites, such as the strange-looking Jack-in-the-Pulpits.

The pair also has an ongoing affection for Japanese maples. They have collected one variety with tiger-striped leaves, another with extremely narrow leaf lobes that resemble bamboo and two varieties with extremely compact forms.

Jacobs' eyes twinkled as he recounted the fascinating stories behind the unusual plants. Some are among the few surviving descendants of plants discovered in the remote wilds of Oregon or the far reaches of China. His face turned serious when he quickly added that no original plants were removed from their natural habitats. They were either propagated from small tip cuttings and grafted to host rootstock, rooted on-site and the resulting new plants harvested later, or grown from carefully preserved seeds.

A vine maple with finely cut, almost shaggy leaves is a descendant of one found growing near Mount Jefferson. "A hiker found the parent plant and he noticed it had this really unusual leaf form," Jacobs said. The man propagated the tree without disturbing the original specimen by notching a lower branch, leaving it connected to the tree and burying the notched area in the soil to develop roots. He returned a year later and harvested the new sapling. Others who came along later were not so kind - someone eventually bulldozed the parent tree.

A trillium that is rarely seen flourishing outside its narrow range in Northern California was given to the couple by a Yamhill dairy farmer. "It seems quite happy here," Jacobs said.

A magnolia with a true yellow flower - "it's canary yellow," Zaveson said - is a descendant of one discovered in the Carolinas 25 years ago. Only four seedlings were salvaged before the parent plant died. One went to nursery owner Roger Gossler in Eugene, but it was eventually washed away in a flood. Over the years, three seedlings were known to have died and the other's whereabouts were unknown. Gossler recently discovered that one had gone to New Zealand and survived and obtained some of the precious plant tissue for propagation.

As the couple continues to pursue new penchants for fascinating plants, the fence around the garden may soon be moved again. "I'm developing a formal Japanese garden with a dry streambed up here Jacobs said, pointing to an area perilously near the fence.

Bonsai Tutorial (pdf)