About Me

I have always been a gardener.  My “formal” training at University (UC Santa Cruz) was with Alan Chadwick, in French Intensive Biodynamic Gardening. After University there were many vegetable and cut flowers crops for local sale. It was the beginning of Organic Farming in California.

In the early ‘70s, I acquired an aging and neglected apple orchard and along with Dan Guyer, restored fruit production, tree health and soil fertility.  A collaboration with UC Berkeley entomologists led to the commercial introduction of  the granulosis virus, for the control of codling moth. Our project, Pike Mountain Apples, became California’s first organic apple orchard.

Along the way, I have grown many beautiful gardens, full of food and flowers, taught ag sciences to high schoolers and helped start Peaceful Valley Farm Supply.

I began working on an old mining claim near Nevada City, California in 2000. It was a barren tailing site with large pine trees and rocky, granitic soil.  This garden has been my learning lab for the last 20+ years. What began as an English cottage garden has grown into a wilder (and more thoughtful) landscape. Propagating almost all plants on site, it is a multilayered, biologically diverse garden that supports a neighborhood of insects and birds. Aside from the study of other naturalistic gardens and conversations with perennialists globally, I have lived and roamed the wild places of the Sierra, observing the plant communities that thrive here. The northern Sierra has been one of my greatest teachers.

If you'd like to be invited to the fall Open Garden Tour and sale of unusual perennial plants, provide an email.