Article by Debbie Teashon published by Westsound Home and Garden, September-October 2015 issue.

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Article written by Jim McCausland and published on Sunset magazine, November 2014 issue.

Walking Washington’s Gardens

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Journalist Terri Gleich reviewed the Albers Vista Gardens in her article published on July 24, 2014.

BREMERTON — Albers Vista Gardens might be the best-kept secret in Bremerton.

Perched on a sunny, southwest-facing slope overlooking the Port Washington Narrows, the tiny garden is an unexpected gem set in a residential area with sweeping views of Mount Rainier and the Olympics.

John Albers designed and built the garden from scratch, starting with a 2-acre orchard and adding 2 acres of horse pasture that was covered with blackberries and Scotch broom. He recently purchased another .2 acres to save a towering California redwood.

Since 1999, he’s crisscrossed the property with paths that link 14 distinct garden areas, and created swaths of four-season color across the hillside. More than 1,000 species and cultivars from around the world fill the space.

Albers and his wife, Santica Marcovina, both medical research professors at the University of Washington, moved to the hillside from West Seattle in 1998. She fell in love with the house; he with the land.

Growing up in southern Illinois, Albers’ family always had a large vegetable garden. But he developed his passion for ornamentals when he moved to Washington after completing his education. Despite a demanding work schedule, Albers boasts of taking nearly every UW horticulture class during his 43 years as a professor.

In 2007, Albers created a nonprofit foundation to preserve the garden as a permanent tribute to his wife, whom he calls his inspiration. Garden tours began in 2008, primarily attracting visitors from Seattle and Tacoma. He believes the garden’s future depends on pulling in more locals.

“The only way we’re going to be successful is with the involvement and support of community volunteers,” he said.

In the long term, Albers wants the garden to be an educational center where visitors can learn about sustainable practices, such as using plant selection, compost and mulch to reduce the need for water and fertilizer. His 2013 book, “Gardening for Sustainability,” details how he put those practices into place and what he learned along the way.

“Everybody’s yard and garden can make a difference in the environment,” he said.

Highlights at Albers Vista include:

A woodland garden of striped-bark and Japanese maples created to shade a one-of-a-kind rhododendron collection

A northwest Asian garden planted with dwarf conifers, succulents, lace-leaf Japanese maples and witch hazel

A biofiltration garden above the septic drainfield that features shallow-rooted, drought-tolerant perennials, including yarrow, sunroses, salvia, heather and lavender

A Stroll Gallery that includes 55 different heaths and heathers and masses of colorful flowers designed to attract pollinators

Sam’s Conifer Reserve, named after a home-schooled volunteer, which showcases 100 dwarf conifers

A hilltop screened white gazebo and rose garden developed for Albers’ wife

A woodland area featuring all northwest natives, including a century-old madrona

Albers hopes his work will inspire imitators. “If one person can develop this huge site, then you as a gardener should be able to do the same thing at home. It’s basically inviting you to form a partnership with nature.”

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Journalist Barbara Mc Michael reviewed John J Albers’ book “Gardening for Sustainability” in Kitsap Sun on Sunday, July 6 2014.

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Article by Craig Sailor published Wednesday, April 23, 2014 on The Olympian.

In a shadowy glade near Bremerton, a garden grows. From a small forest of maples and rhododendrons, it rises onto a sunny slope of lavender and citrus trees. From there it climbs through viburnums and rare conifers to surround a gazebo that has a panoramic view of Phinney Bay and the Olympic Mountains.

Just when a visitor thinks the garden can’t possibly go higher, it does. Farther it climbs, now hundreds of feet from where it began. Finally, it ends in a woodland of madrona trees.
Albers Vista Gardens is the vision of two medical researchers who have created a preserve of rare plants and a model for sustainable horticulture.

“We collect, but we want something aesthetically pleasing. I think we’ve accomplished both,” John Albers said.

Albers and his wife, Santica Marcovina, found the property in 1988 while they were living in Seattle. The pair were both research professors of medicine at the University of Washington. They bought the 2 acres and made it their home.
At first there was little more than lawn and an old fruit orchard. Rock by rock Albers laid out paths of granite steppingstones and rock dust on the southwest facing hillside. Then the couple began to plant.

Today, a mind-boggling variety of conifers provide a backbone for the garden. A dwarf cedar of Lebanon (“Green Prince”) looks like a fairyland tree as it grows on a Japanese styled “island” in a sea of gravel. Nearby, a Korean fir displays young purple colored cones.
On a higher slope, a newly planted section contains dozens of dwarf conifers in colors that range from blue to yellow and forms that cover weeping to upright. The area looks like a dog park for odd little pooches. After the first conifers were added, broadleaf trees were brought in. A maple with bark that looks like snakeskin and another that looks like a cobblestone street border the only patch of lawn in the garden.
On a higher, intermediate slope Albers has planted citrus trees, including tangerine and Meyer lemon.

“We’re experimenting. We’ll see if it makes it,” he said looking at the tangerine. The garden also has persimmon trees but they have to ripen the fruit indoors.
After the couple had completed their garden with shrubs and perennials, they bought 2 more adjacent acres filled with highly invasive Himalayan blackberries and Scotch broom. The couple removed the invaders and planted natives and ornamentals that require no extra water or pest control.
It’s all part of the couple’s sustainable horticultural philosophy. They plant only drought-tolerant plants (no supplemental water is used in the garden), species that are resistant to pests and plants that require no fertilizer. Albers believes that even urban dwellers on standard city plots can greatly increase the botanical diversity of their plants. A thriving patch of trees, shrubs and perennials demand less and give back more than an unused but over maintained section of lawn.

“We depend on plants to give back clean water and clean air which we take for granted,” Albers said. Though the couple actively searches out new plants that fit their philosophy, they don’t ignore the beauty that a garden can provide. Marcovina has integrated art throughout the garden, which has 14 themed areas and a view of Mount Rainier.

Albers, 72, and Marcovina, 75, both still conduct medical research. Albers likes to point out that they’re following in the footsteps of early botanists who were also physicians.
Albers took classes from Northwest botanist C. Leo Hitchcock after Albers arrived at the University of Washington in 1971. Gardening helps him to unwind from the pressures and detail- focused world of medicine.

In 2007, the couple established the nonprofit Albers Vista Gardens Foundation to preserve the garden for generations. They will soon erect a building to house a library and hold workshops. They believe in education and sharing their garden with the public. To that end they have several open garden events during the year. The next two are scheduled for May 4 and 11. Albers Vista Garden is bringing its namesake a second career of sorts. “In many ways my life is just getting started,” he said.

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Article by Valerie Easton published Sunday, February 2, 2014 on the Seattle Times’ magazine.

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John Albers is a research scientist, University of Washington professor of medicine and passionate environmentalist. For years he squeezed horticulture classes into his busy schedule and gardened wherever he lived. Then in 1998, he and his wife, Santica Marcovina, bought a hilltop home near Bremerton. They started with two acres of native woodland and lawn, then bought a weed-infested horse pasture for a total of four acres now in cultivation.

Albers grew up raising vegetables in Illinois, but he’s taken to gardening here as if born to mountains, seascapes and glacial till. Undeterred by Himalayan blackberries, morning glory and Scotch broom, Albers set in to make a garden showcasing plants that adapt to Northwest conditions as readily as he has. And what rich cultivation it is, with thousands of plants from around the globe growing harmoniously together on this Northwest hillside. “I favor plants that look compatible, as if they should be living here. I wouldn’t plant a monkey tree,” he says.

Albers dug out invasives by hand, creating a pile of ivy that towered 15 feet high by the time he finished. He adds compost and mulch to improve the clay soil, planting ribbons of lavender through the sandy areas of the garden. Albers constantly culls plants that don’t measure up. “Ceanothus is off my list, it’s too short-lived,” he declares.

How can one person, even with part-time help, maintain such a huge garden? “I don’t think globally . . . you’d go nuts. I work one area at a time.” In the woodlands, he edits out invasive plants and lets natives fill in. Is he daunted by the garden’s steep topography? “Never,” says Albers. “I get my exercise out here.” The newest garden of roses, planted for his wife, is way up top. A pergola offers a widescreen scene of a garden tapestry so complex and textural that it competes with the view of Mount Rainier.

“I’m a collector, obviously,” Albers admits. About a quarter of all the plants at Vista Gardens are natives, from robust madrona trees to patches of ankle-high, Pacific Coast iris. Whether he’s working with natives or ornamentals, Albers adheres to his goal of sustainability by planting a garden that consumes as few resources as possible.

Once plants are established, Albers expects them to stay healthy with a minimum of pruning, watering, fertilizing and deadheading. From swathes of ground-hugging conifers and helianthus to meadows of wildflowers, the plants seem to live up to his expectations. And how about self-seeders? “Forming a partnership with nature is part of sustainability,” says Albers, who lets most volunteer plants stay wherever they happen to pop up.

Conifers are a specialty; he grows 150 kinds. He’s turned an old driveway into a Japanese-style garden with islands of dwarf conifers softened by sedums. The bio-filtration garden, over the septic system, is an open, sunny meadow planted in grasses, native flowers, rosemary and lavender; no supplemental water needed.

The four acres are divided into garden rooms, with a pollinator pathway, a rain garden and a stroll gallery featuring bamboo and various grasses. When a friend gifted Albers a number of unique rhododendron hybrids, he planted a canopy of Japanese and stripe bark maples to shade his new collection. All the gardens are woven together with pathways made of stone hand-picked and laid by Albers. Planted for seasonality, the garden ebbs and flows around the permanence of stone and artwork placed to distinguish the various rooms.

This ambitious gardener is working on what he considers his most important projects yet. He’s writing a book on preserving biodiversity in urban environments. Close to his heart are his hopes to preserve his own masterpiece of a garden in perpetuity. “I’ve planted all these oak trees for future generations to enjoy,” says Albers.

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Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer.

Click here to read the review of Gardening for Sustainability: Albers Vista Gardens of Kitsap.

Gardening for Sustainability: Albers Vista Gardens of Kitsap

This beautiful book will introduce Albers Vista, a little known botanical gem in Kitsap County, to a wider audience. The first section strolls the reader down each path, highlighting specimen and topography, which brought back fond memories of my visits there.

Throughout the pages, the evolution of the landscape is revealed, as is Albers’ deep knowledge and appreciation for plants. Part two discusses principles and methods for gardening with, not against the land, but the title might have been reversed, as the true and delightful focus is the garden itself. The book ends with a superb list of selected references (books and web pages) which also conveninetly appear in the text where applicable.

Colleen Miko
The Perennial Bookworm

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