This 24-acre private property is both a wildlife refuge, an acclaimed garden and a 2000 sq. ft post-and-beam house located north of Redmond and Bellevue, Washington. The site includes a suspended wetland constructed by beavers. The current owner, Terry Welch, has managed to integrate English and Japanese garden traditions into a natural Pacific Northwest landscape. The site includes several beautiful outlooks, a network of paths.
The site can be reached via a long gravel drive to and entry gate. The home looks out from a hillside onto the wetland and includes a wrap-around deck, koi pond and walled garden.
Richard Hartlage, director of the Elisabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden in Seattle, Washington. "Garden Sanctuary for the Children of the Moon", Pacific Horticulture, Summer 1999, pp. 32-39.
Japan a great stone garden in the sea.
Echoes of hoes and weeding,
Centuries of leading hill-creeks down
To ditch and pool in fragile knee deep fields.
Leafy sunshine rustling on a man
Chipping a foot-square rough hinoki beam;
I thought I heard an axe chop in the woods
It broke the dream; and woke up dreaming on a train.
It must have been a thousand years ago
In some old mountain sawmill of Japan.
A horde of excess poets and unwed girls
And I that night prowled Tokyo like a bear
Tracking the human future
Of intelligence and despair.
