I meant to write a summer quarter reflection, but my fall quarter began very busy and did not let up until near the very end, so I’m writing an abridged version now as I take the Greyhound bus back to my childhood home.
The simple joys of summer
Returning home always brings a much needed period of relaxation after the highs and lows of college life and the stress of schoolwork. Although I struggled to make connections in my hometown and the Tri-Cities, where I don’t have the built-in community of college, this also presented a break from the anxieties of social life.
I enjoyed the summer sunsets, gardening at my parents’ home, and checking up on the progress of my native plant garden. Some of my favorite times this summer were spent driving to my internship in the Tri-Cities, where I got to blast some of my favorite tunes on the family car’s speaker system.
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Internship with Tapteal Native Plants
Of course, my summer internship brought much more besides an opportunity to sing along to music as I traveled the rural roads of eastern Washington. I was honored to get to work with Tapteal Native Plants on a variety of projects, all of which grew my ecological knowledge of the shrub steppe. I helped out with the native plant nursery operations, repotting plants, sorting seeds, and gathering copious amounts of yarrow from their lawn. Most of the nursery work took place at the nursery’s site, which covered a good area, stretching from streetside native gardens to a sloping lawn and garden, to the nursery below and pasture beyond. It was a lovely enclosed native plant sanctuary to work in several times a week.
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However, I also spent a fair bit of time off-site. I took excursions with my boss and coworker to varied habitats throughout the Tri-Cities area to gather seeds, and visited different sites to gather species lists of diverse plant communities to aid Tapteal Native Plants’s efforts in understanding what plants grow well together in what environments. I was fascinated by the variety of different habitats within the shrub steppe, and the micro-climates that influence what plants grow in what areas. Some plants were only seen on particular slopes of sites, while others were seen throughout entire plants. These hikes also provided beautiful views and space for reflection.
Since my boss, Ann Autrey, knew of my interest in landscape design, she tasked me with creating a design template for a small plot of land in an urban area. I chose hardy plants which I knew could survive in a harsh urban environment and envisioned this bed nearby a bus stop. She also asked for my input on various planting design projects, some with other clients and some at the nursery. Beyond the usefulness of Tapteal Native Plants’s broad catalogue, I highly recommend supporting their small business since my boss Ann Autrey and my coworker Kelsey Kelmel were both very kind, supportive, and passionate about their work, and Ann provided a stipend for my internship despite having limited funds with a small, niche business – something which many large companies do not provide despite having plenty of ability to do so.
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Benton county museum heritage garden
Besides my internship with Tapteal Native Plants, I deepened my relationship with the shrub steppe through native plant gardening at my parents’ house and a design project I worked on for the Benton County Museum, a local history museum in Prosser, Washington.
The Benton County Museum has a small basalt rock planter in front of its front entrance which used to be filled with roses and other ornamental exotic plants. The museum director, Alys Means, cleared the planter with the hopes of putting something new in, and I was invited to create a planting design. I included mostly low-growing dry native plants due to the size of the planting bed and its height off the ground, but I also included a gutter that directs water down a rain chain and into a gravel-filled trench to support water-needier native plants – Idaho Fescue (Festuca idahoensis) and bigleaf lupine (Lupinus polyphyllus) among others. I installed the gutter and rain chain just before leaving and returned in the fall to plant the first batch of plants (more will be coming in in the spring). This occupied my last days back home – one reason why I’m writing this now.
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My summer quarter provided the relaxation and distance from Seattle I needed, and also provided the connection with and education about the shrub steppe I sought. I left town ready to dive back into college life and UW’s landscape architecture program.