Pacific Northwest
Garden History

What Did They Grow and When Did They Grow It?

A Northwest Gardening Timeline to c1900

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Pre-18th Century

• Native Americans use fire to preserve and manage highly productive prairies where useful plants, including camas, Garry Oaks, trailing blackberries, and others flourish. These prairies spread for miles across the Willamette Valley, Nisqually Plains, Calispell Valley, in meadows around Lake Coeur d'Alene, and other areas.

1778

• Captain James Cook, of Britain's Royal Navy, is the first European to study the region's flora. He notes many plants, including two trees that might prove useful in repairing vessels and several possible food plants.

1786

• Captain James Strange, a British fur trader on leave from the East India Company, arrives at Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island and assigns one of his crew the task of planting a garden of European vegetables.

1787

• British botanist Archibald Menzies makes the first of two trips to the Northwest Coast. His duties – investigate the region's natural history, collect plants and seeds, and determine the coast's agricultural potential. He notes some 200 plants.
  
  

1789

• Esté José Martínez and his men strengthen Spain's claim to the region by building a garrison and planting a garden at Nootka Sound. They grow cabbage, turnips, radishes, lettuce, onions, and potatoes.

1790

• Spain sends Captain Pedro Alberni and the Catalonian Volunteers to Nootka Sound. They build Fort San Miguel at a bay called Friendly Cove, and plant a garden of 19 crops, including grains, legumes, and vegetables. The garden is the region's first test plot. In it, Alberni conducts trials to find out if the garden can produce enough food to feed the men at the fort. Alberni digs ditches to carry water to the garden. It is the first irrigation system in the region.

1792

• Joseph Whidbey, sailing with British explorer George Vancouver, finds "some square patches of ground in a state of cultivation" in the Queen Charlotte Islands. The crop in these Native American gardens – a local tobacco now extinct.
• Salvador Fidalgo and his men plant the first European-style garden in what would become the State of Washington. It is located at Puerto de Nuñez Gaona, later called Neah Bay.
• Spanish botanist José Mariano Moziño Suárez de Figueroa spends the summer at Nootka Sound, and classifies more than 200 species of plants, animals, and birds.
• Captain Robert Gray, an American, recognizes that the Columbia is a river not a bay, sails across the bar, and goes exploring.

1803

• Lewis & Clark and the Corps of Discovery begin their expedition to the Oregon Country. They will reach the Pacific in November, 1805, and spend that winter at Fort Clatsop near present-day Astoria. Among their duties – study the plants of the Trans-Mississippi West.

1810

• Would-be fur entrepreneur Nathan Winship is the first American to plant a garden in the Pacific Northwest. His garden, which was located about 40 miles from the mouth of the Columbia, lasts less than a month. Winship loses his crops in a spring flood. When he moves his outpost to higher ground and tries another garden, hostile Indians force him away.

1811

• Employees of John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company plant a variety of seeds in a garden at Point George, near the mouth of the Columbia. That fall, they harvest potatoes and turnips. Although the results are meager, this is the first successful garden planted by Americans in the Pacific Northwest.
• Daniel Williams Harmon, a North West Company employee, plants a garden at Stuart Lake, later called Fort St. James. It is the first garden on mainlaind B.C. Crops include potatoes, barley, turnips, and others which Harmon does not identify.

1813

• The North West Company acquires Astoria and other assets of the Pacific Fur Company.
• At Spokane House, North West Company workers plant the first vegetable garden in the Inland Empire. The crops, which included turnips, potatoes, cabbage, and other vegetables, apparently do well.

1818

• Botanist Thomas Nuttall names Oregon Grape Mahonia in honor of Bernard M'Mahon, one of the leading horticulturists of the day. M'Mahon, author of the classic American Gardener's Calendar operated a seed store and nursery through which many of the plant species first seen by the Lewis & Clark Expedition were introduced to American gardeners.

1821

• The Hudson's Bay Company acquires the North West Company.

1823

• Botanist David Douglas, on a collecting expedition for the Royal Horticultural Society, makes the first of several visits to the Oregon Country. He will eventually introduce some 50 trees and shrubs and about 100 herbaceous plants to England. The most famous – his namesake tree, the Douglas Fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii .

1825

• The HBC starts building Fort Vancouver, headquarters of the company's Columbia Department. Dr. John McLoughlin serves as Chief Factor. His workers plant three acres of peas, one-quarter acre of beans, and one hundred bushels of potatoes.
• The William Prince Nursery in Flushing, NY offers Oregon Grape. The plant is common in the Pacific Northwest, but has only been in the nursery trade for a short time. The cost – an astronomical $25 per plant.

1826

• Aemilius Simpson, who comes to the coast with the HBC, introduces cultivated apples to the Pacific Northwest.
• The Horticultural Society of London sends seeds to Fort Vancouver at the request of botanist David Douglas.

1827 – 1830

• HBC voyageurs and coureurs des bois retire and start the first farms in the Willamette Valley. The area, located between the Willamette and Pudding Rivers south of present-day Champoeg State Park, becomes known as French Prairie.

1829

• Fort Colville, another HBC facility, has a kitchen garden, but it is not a success. Botanist William D. Brackenridge sees the garden twelve years later in 1841, and blames the garden's failure on bad seeds or bad management.
• The garden at the HBC's Fort Langley has three hot beds with glass panes.
• Francis A. Lemont, a sailor on the Owyhee, introduces peaches to the region.

1833

• John Ball, yet another would-be fur trader, is the first American to plant a garden in the Willamette Valley.
• William Bruce becomes the region's first professional gardener. An HBC employee at Fort Vancouver, he tends a seven-acre kitchen garden that produces dozens of crops.
• Dr. William Fraser Tolmie brings dahlias from Hawaii to Fort Vancouver.

1834

• Methodist missionary Jason Lee arrives at Fort Vancouver. He will soon start missions with gardens at four sites in the Oregon Country.

1835

• Rev. Samuel Parker sees citrus growing at Fort Vancouver.
• Fur trade wannabe Nathaniel J. Wyeth builds Fort William on what is now Sauvie Island, Oregon. There, he grafts apples and perhaps other fruit trees. Although grafting was common elsewhere, Wyeth may have been one of the first to bring this skill to the Pacific Northwest.

1836

• The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sends Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and others to start missions in the Oregon Country. The Whitmans settle at Waiilatpu near present-day Walla Walla, Washington. They plant the first Euro-American fruits and vegetables in that area.

1837

• Anna Maria Pittman marries Jason Lee, and receives a 'Mission Rose' as a wedding present.
• Red Wolf, a Nez Perce leader, plants apple trees at Alpowa Creek near the Snake River in southeast Washington. He is probably the first Native American in what is now eastern Washington and Oregon known to have a European-style garden and orchard. Red Wolf's trees lived for decades.

1839

• The HBC launches the Puget Sound Agricultural Company (PSAC), an enterprise devoted to farming and livestock. The first of its farms is located at Cowlitz Prairie, but the PSAC will later have farms near Fort Nisqually and Fort Victoria. All will eventually fail.

1843

• The Great Migration brings American emigrants overland to the Oregon Country. In the decades that follow, between 200,000 and 500,000 people (experts still do not know for sure) will take the Oregon Trail west. For most, the 2,000 mile trek is grueling. Disease, accidents, exposure, exhaustion, starvation, drought, violence, and other tragedies will claim perhaps 1 in 10.

1847

• Nurseryman Henderson Luelling introduces choice, varietal fruit to Oregon. He brings two wagons loaded with about 700 selected fruits, nuts, berries, and grapes overland, and starts a nursery at Milwaukie, Oregon.
• Dr. Perry Prettyman settles on a donation claim near Mount Tabor in Portland. To treat his patients, he plants a medicinal herb that is now notorious – dandelions.

1850

• The U.S. Congress enacts the Donation Land Law, which grants certain men a half-section of land (320 acres) in Oregon, providing they occupied the land and cultivated it for four years. Wives who met eligibility requirements could receive an additional 320 acres. The act was later extended and modified, reducing the amount of land to 160 acres, making provisions for purchasing land after two years, and other changes.
• The Hudson's Bay Company creates one of the region's first parks. It is a traditional camas meadow overlooking the Straits of Juan de Fuca in Victoria. Within a few years, it is known as Beacon Hill Park.
• Fort Victoria's garden includes mignonette, stock, hollyhocks, and several other flowers.

1851

• Founding mother Louisa Boren Denny brings seeds of the sweetbrier rose, Rosa Eglanteria, to Seattle from Illinois. The roses, which may be the city's first introduced ornamentals, flourish. A plant said to have been grown from a cutting off one of Denny's original plants still survives.

1852

• Chief Kamiakin of the Yakima builds the first irrigation ditch in the Yakima Valley. The ditch waters his garden of Euro-American vegetables, and demonstrates that such crops could flourish in the arid valley.

1853

• Portlanders Asa Lovejoy and Francis Pettygrove plat downtown Portland. They set aside a public square in the south end of town and a corridor that came to be known as the "Park Blocks."
• Preston W. Gillette, at Astoria, Oregon, receives a shipment of plants with which he will start the region's first nursery specializing in ornamentals. The plants, which come from his father's nursery in Ohio, include several flowering shrubs, shade trees, hedge plants, peonies, and more. The shipment also includes 20 or 30 different roses.
• Lewelling & Meek, a nursery in Milwaukie, Oregon and three other locations, has 100,000 trees for sale. The trees sell for $1.00 to $1.50.

1855

• Mary Waunch's dooryard garden in the Centralia, Washington area includes sweet mullein, sweet William, and bachelor buttons. She grows the flowers from seeds she brought west on the Oregon Trail.

1858

• San Francisco seedsman J. P. Sweeney takes out an ad in the Puget Sound Herald , a Steilacoom, Washington newspaper. He offers seeds for several vegetables, lawn grass, and field crops, which he will send to his customers on the ships that ply the coast.
• John Bennett, once described as the "Luther Burbank of Puget Sound," arrives Sehome, now in Bellingham, Washington. He will later have a garden there that will include roses, flowering shrubs, choice landscape trees, and more. He will also introduce several new fruit cultivars, including the 'Bennett' plum.

1859

• Oregon becomes a state.

1860

• The U.S. Congress enacts the Homestead Act, which allows qualified settlers to claim 160 acres of public land, providing they live on it for five years and cultivate the land.
• Hiram Francis (Okanogan) Smith plants the first orchard on the eastern shore of Osoyoos Lake.

1862

• Philip Ritz opens a fruit tree nursery in Walla Walla. Within a decade, it would be described, perhaps accurately, as the largest nursery on the West Coast.

1864

• William Simmons' St. Helena Nursery in Marion County, Oregon issues a catalog listing at least 54 different roses.

1865

• Portland seedsmen Knapp, Burrell & Co. send out free catalogs listing an assortment of vegetable, herb, field, grass, and other seeds. They offer to ship seeds in packets or bulk to customers anywhere on the West Coast.

1871

• British Columbia becomes a province.

1873

• Frederick Law Olmsted, the nation's most influential landscape architect, submits his design for Tacoma. Like other Olmsted designs, it makes the most of the natural features of the land, preserving views, creating parks, nestling building lots in the contours of the land, and threading curvilinear streets among them. Tacomans, accustomed to cities with square blocks and streets that meet at right angles, are appalled. They reject the plan and dismiss Olmsted.
• Thomas Jefferson Howell, a self-taught botanist, starts a native-plant nursery on Sauvie Island in Oregon and issues a catalog offering 2,000 species for sale.

1875

• Seth Lewelling introduces the 'Bing' cherry. He names it in honor of his foreman, Ah Sit Bing, who had worked at the Milwaukie, Oregon nursery for years and cared for the rows in which the cherry was found.

1877

• Seed companies operated by horticultural luminaries James J. H. Gregory and James Vick advertise in the Willamette Farmer. These national seed companies give Northwest gardeners access to the best horticulture has to offer.

1883

• Workers complete the transcontinental railroad.

1884

• Seattle founders David and Louisa Denny give the city land for its first park. The five-acre parcel, which was part of their original homestead, is known today as Denny Park.

1885

• Orchardists alarmed at the downturn in Oregon's fruit industry organize the Oregon State Horticultural Society. They elect Dr. J. R. Cardwell as their first president. Cardwell, a dentist and orchardist who had earlier founded the state's prune industry, will hold that office for 22 years.

1888

• Leschi Park, a large amusement park developed by a private entrepreneur, opens in Seattle. Visitors can go roller skating, attend a concert at the bandstand, gamble at the casino, visit the zoo, see a vaudeville show, or rent a boat.
• Portland socialite Georgiana Burton Pittock hosts a rose show in a tent near the rose garden in her back yard. The event will become an annual festival known first as the Portland Rose Carnival and later as the Portland Rose Festival.

1889

• Peter and Caroline O'Reilly entertain Victoria's social elite in their garden at Point Ellice. To complement the Italianate home, the landscape features elegant borders and beds of choice ornamentals, including roses, lilacs, hardy fuchsias, holly, elms, redwoods, and more. In addition to the plants, the 2.2 acre grounds are appointed with a tennis and croquet lawn, a rose garden, a kitchen garden, and other amenities.
• Architect Henry J. Cresswell wins Victoria's competition to design Beacon Hill Park. Three and a half weeks later, for reasons still unknown, Victoria changes its mind, and decides to hire landscape gardener John Blair instead. Blair's design for the park will be on display in September, and work on the park begins almost immediately. Improvements will continue for decades.
• Washington becomes a state.
• Seattle real estate developer George Kinnear sells the city land for its second park. Located on Queen Anne Hill, the 14-acre site has panoramic views of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains. The price – $1.00.

1890

• Tacoma hires nationally-recognized landscape gardener E. O. Schwagerl to design Wright Park.

1892

• Seattle hires E. O. Schwagerl, late of Tacoma Parks, as its new park superintendent. He completes Denny and Kinnear Parks, and prepares a comprehensive plan for Seattle parks and boulevards. He also proposes an arboretum, a Japanese garden, a demonstration orchard, and a major botanical garden. His plan, though accepted and praised by civic leaders, goes nowhere.
• The Southern Oregon Chautauqua Association in Ashland, Oregon begins building a huge lecture hall next to Ashland Creek. While the men are busy with construction, the Ladies Chautauqua Club beautifies the grounds. They plant trees, grass, and flowers, and the grounds are the first park in southern Oregon. Today, the site is part of Lithia Park, and some of the original trees survive.

1893

• The City of Seattle's nursery is stocked with 117,000 plants. The collection includes natives, landscape ornamentals, perennials, grasses, and more. The plants, which come from vendors throughout the U.S. and Europe, include many choice species and cultivars new to Seattle.