Walk of the Town: “We thrive where we thrive”
Part two in a series inspired by yards & the art of walking
By Sarah Cook
“Two stumps. A concrete walkway that led to no porch. Dead grass. Zero trees.” This is how my conversation with Harley Newland and his wife, Julie, began. Their house is a quick jaunt downhill from my own, a couple houses east of The Riv on 10th Street. And for those readers who know exactly what house I'm talking about, you might wonder what in the world Harley could be describing, given the absolute explosion of foliage and color and, yes, trees and a porch, that can be found at this landmark front yard.
It was 1980 when Harley first moved here and became a witness to the description above. He was a middle school teacher who had the summers off—“well, sort of,” he gently corrects—and step by step he began the hard work of turning the tree-less, grass-less, porch-less home into the immaculate year-round display we see now. Though Harley clearly has a penchant for this stuff, he makes it known that it hasn’t always been an easy process. The transformation involved, for example, digging up and removing about 9 wheelbarrows of rock from the yard; and the cosmos, if left unchecked, will turn into a reseeding mess, creating “a virtual fence” around the fence-less, inviting yard.
Then, about 16 years ago, Julie came along.
Julie chats with me while we stand in the beautiful hand-built greenhouse in her and Harley’s backyard.
Let me re-paint the picture I started above: Aspens. Irises, stunning even in partial bloom. Roses and Russian sage. Salvia, which the hummingbirds love. Olive trees. (“Don’t feel obligated to eat them all,” Julie said kindly at the exact moment I was inhaling the last of a small pile of olives. They were salty, and oily, and delicious.) A striking Sky Pencil, a type of Holly that grows straight up into the air like a mailbox. A Lace Maple that began as a teeny tiny thing—what doesn’t?—and belonged to the sister of a sister-in-law, Tammy, who passed away from Cancer about five years ago. It was decided that it would be a shame for the plant to not be given a good, new home. It was decided that Julie and Harley’s place was said home. It was a good decision.
Lace Maple, a living memorial.
I was led to Julie and Harley’s home via precarious directions from another local resident who, when asked where they thought I should go next for my series, wanted to send me somewhere beautiful. When I found myself standing before Julie and Harley’s place, I knew this was it, and I was not surprised. My partner and I have long admired this house and yard while taking our walks, consistently in awe of its blend of curation and wildness, how it manages to be both aspirational and full of personal touches.
Such balance has everything to do with evolution, and there’s nothing static about this yard. Harley speaks of a time, for example, where they had “over 100 roses” at once. Even more startling is his confession that he’d almost torn them all out last year after a couple of less-than-impressive seasons. As if in direct response to his threat, they are now breathtaking.
This rose, which Harley calls “Pleasure,” is also part of what he refers to as a “protest” in response to his harvesting threat. There is palpable relief in the air that the flowers decided to finally speak up.
There still isn’t a lawn here, “by design,” Julie emphasizes. Instead, there are wild color combinations, remarkable textures, and a plethora of endless gems. Such treasures include an Iris that is “absolutely stunning in full bloom,” and even some plants that were “borrowed” and blown in from neighboring yards.
This beauty apparently only gets better.
This way of framing things within a sense of community—flowers crossing streets, neighbors sharing plants—seems to be a natural extension of how Julie and Harley move through the world.
Clad in orange to promote gun violence awareness, they speak enthusiastically about the variety of passersby who, either surreptitiously or assertively, admire their yard. There are the teenagers on their way to lunch, and the adults rubbernecking as they drive by. What delights Julie and Harley the most though are the children, who often declare unabashedly, “I like your yard!” There is a conspicuous sense of inclusion and gratitude when speaking to the couple about their own awareness of what their space offers others. They seem to love people, and the intergenerational diversity of this town, and the general direction—social, political—that it’s slowly but steadily moving in. They lament the distinct and vital progress still to be made, but that doesn't stop them from loving the golden yellows endemic to our shrub-steppe ecosystem.
Even with the amount of expertise clearly residing in this household, the reality of gardening is that things aren’t always planted in the right spot from the beginning, and nature often takes an unpredictable course (remember the protesting roses?). Their Spanish lavender, for example, is now butting up against some peonies that have taken off in a way neither of the gardeners could have anticipated.
Thriving peonies, sharing intimate space with Spanish lavender.
Life’s unpredictability, and the need for us to control what we can and relinquish the rest, is only the first lesson I uncover while speaking with Julie and Harley. It doesn’t take long for me to realize that I am interviewing magical people, so I ask, directly and bluntly, what their superpowers are? “I don’t have the eye that Harley does,” Julie states modestly, summing up her power as “keeping things alive” before finally confessing that she’s really good with the micro stuff: pruning, keeping the coreopsis in check, and doing the work to support Harley’s keen eye for placement. It’s that vision for design and arrangement that constitutes Harley’s superpower, a gift likely amplified by his years of experience with photography.
I stay at Julie and Harley’s long enough, caught up as I am in their hospitality and the sense that we’re already old friends, that I am given a tour of their mottos. “Do or die,” Julie says at one point with a big laugh, and it can’t be argued that tough love is a prominent tool in their tool belt, as they go on to describe their relationship to plants thusly: “We planted you, we watered you—now it’s your turn.” I’m surprised, after years of gawking at this yard, to learn that they don’t do a lot of pampering or fretting, that there’s nothing precious about their gardening work. “Watering is the hardest part,” Harley states. But beyond that? I suppose the garden knows these two mean business, and isn’t afraid to protest as needed.
But it’s another motto, said quickly and almost in passing, that sticks with me the most: “Things thrive where they thrive.” It was said by Julie, and I don’t remember if we were talking about the lavender-peony situation, or the single daffodil, or the long-stemmed rose growing alongside the body of a tree, tucked within its branches. What I remember is the feeling that I was learning not just about an individual front yard but the city I live in as a whole. And what I remember is the immense gratitude—a lush, leafy feeling—that I carried with me on my walk home that day, and most days since then.
We thrive where we thrive. I hear it as a translated extension of their earlier motto, and that the where is just as important as the what. That having or not having or refusing or protecting a relationship with place has everything to do not just with how we perform, but how we grow. Like plants, we sometimes need to tend the innermost parts of ourselves with tough love. Like people, our plants need a healthy blend of diversity and collaboration in order to do their best.
Do we just rip it all out and put in cacti?” There is no shortage of jokes throughout our time together.
At one point, Julie leads me along a little pathway in order to reveal something she calls a She Shed. A half-secret storage area, this is where Julie keeps tools and project materials, and the space is equipped with repurposed windows and a small patch of artificial turf, the only “grass” on site. The whole thing feels both private and magical, like a utilitarian clubhouse. She points out some fake ivy along the fence, and when I comment that I would’ve never noticed it wasn’t real, she asserts, never one to skip a beat, that “cobwebs will make anything look real.”
Julie’s She Shed.
I was lucky enough to have gotten a full tour, not just of the sprawling front yard and She Shed but of their wrap-around deck that contains—you guessed it—more plants, along with a variety of chairs, stools and lounges: 36 seats in total. When I ask, feeling quite comfortable by this point, if they really use all 36 chairs, Harley responds, “not in the same day,” punctuating the phrase with his signature grin.
The vibe while standing on the back deck is hard to describe. There’s the more predictable stuff—the view of Mt. Adams, a visible patch of the Columbia River. But it’s more than luxury: It’s enchantment. A Quaking Aspen, growing up from the ground level of their house out back and peeking over the fence, greets us. “This was another volunteer,” Harley explains, and I’m shocked to hear that this tree, with leaves that I’m told rattle melodically in the wind, wasn’t planted here intentionally with this exact future moment in mind. As if on cue, a five-second breeze moves in, causing the leaves to chime.
Julie and Harley’s place is a result of many things: Their relationship and compatibility. Their attentiveness to the local climate. Their belief that their yard is a kind of “public service.” (Trust me, it is.) Their willingness to tend their creative outlets. It is also simply the result of their natural love for being home. “We were always homebodies,” they clarify, referring to pre-pandemic times, “but now we’re hermits.” They say it with the same joyful tone that carries most of their words; there’s truth in their exaggerations, and silliness in their truths.
This lovely plant is housed in a re-purposed toilet brush container.
But the archetype of the Hermit is a meaningful one to think about in the context of place and community. As Jessica Dore writes in Tarot for Change, the Hermit isn’t merely about retreat or withdrawal, as the word often indicates in casual usage, but about balance. “The lesson of the Hermit,” she writes, “is learning to dwell inside liminal space between extremes, because poles are illusory by nature and breed suffering.”
Edible plants: nasturtiums.
Edible plants: olive trees.
Julie and Harley are both retired educators, but there are many echoes between teaching and gardening, and it’s the Hermit who asks us to look for the wisdom of their mutuality. Both teaching and gardening occur in seasons. Both contain lessons we often only learn through repetition. Both are steeped in the reality of constant change. At one point, Julie uses the phrase, “appropriate risks,” and though we’re talking about gardening, she shares here that it wasn’t until her 40s, after nearly 20 years of working in education, that she decided to go back to college. Her goal was to obtain her degree by the time she turned 50.
She received it, a Bachelor’s in Education, at age 49. “That’s what I always taught the teenagers I worked with,” she states, reflecting on the fear that accompanied taking on such an enormous pursuit at a non-traditional juncture. “How to know you’re safe—but then, how to push past that edge of fear.” It’s one of the Hermit’s most vital lessons: The generative balance between inside and outside; the liminal space between our home and our community. We retreat, but only in order to come back stronger, more centered. We deadhead, but only to promote more blooms.
