Planting returns to historic garden

Planting of old-fashioned shrubs and flowers got under way on Thursday at Spokane’s Moore-Turner Heritage Garden, the latest step in restoration after 75 years of neglect.

Nine years ago, remnants of the residential landscape were uncovered by city parks staffers while cleaning up a tangle of brush and trees in the upper reaches of Pioneer Park on the lower South Hill.

Through extensive research and design, the restored garden is emerging this spring as a faithful replica of the original, which dates back to 1889.

“It’s going to be exciting for people” once the garden opens to the public, said Lynn Mandyke, director of the Corbin Art Center at Pioneer Park and leader of the effort to preserve the Moore-Turner Heritage Garden.

Work is scheduled to end in June, but parks officials want to give the new plants a few months to establish themselves before opening the garden to the public in mid-August.

The garden is set on a slope of native woodland between Seventh Avenue and Cliff Drive, just west of Stevens Street.

Terraced planting beds, a 70-foot concrete pond, teahouse, 75-foot-long pergola, a small reflecting pool, paths and staircases built with native basalt rock are among its main features.

A “mask of Pan” medallion similar to an original reflection pool ornament is being ordered from England.

Timbers for the pergola and teahouse have been cut to match the original structures. Stone columns are being rebuilt with new structural material concealed inside.

Richard Hartlage, of Dietz/Hartlage Landscape Architecture, of Tacoma, said he researched old photographs of the garden and other resources to come up with a list of plants that will reflect, if not fully replicate, the original look.

He said it appeared that many of the plants were single-season annual flowers, but the restored garden will rely more on perennials and shrubs, which are less labor-intensive. He said the garden will give visitors a feel of the past even though the original estate mansion is gone. It was torn down in 1940.

The terracing of the beds should show the garden’s colors and textures in a way that only the original owners or their guests could enjoy.

“It’s going to show itself well,” Hartlage said.

A lilac grove, a craggy linden tree, massive poplar tree and a few antique tulips are among the plant survivors from the original garden.

The perimeter is ringed with native plants and trees as well as some of the original estate plantings. “It’s always been important to maintain a balance between the native woodland and the garden,” Mandyke said.

Looking to the northeast, the garden takes advantage of a choice view of downtown and Mount Spokane.

A.M. Landshaper Inc., of Spokane, is the contractor.

The original 1889 mansion was designed by Kirtland Cutter and initially occupied by F. Rockwood Moore, first president of Washington Water Power Co., now Avista Corp. He died in 1895.

A year later, the home was acquired by Judge George Turner and his wife, Bertha, who expanded the grounds with stonework and plantings and used it as a gathering place, possibly to further Turner’s fortunes.

“She was quite strategic about using the garden to further her husband’s political career,” Hartlage said of Bertha Turner.

Judge Turner helped draft the Washington state Constitution in 1889 and won a single term in the U.S. Senate in 1897. In 1903 he greeted President Theodore Roosevelt at the home on a presidential swing through the West, but had left the Senate by then, according to a news story of the visit.

Bertha Turner moved away in 1932 after her husband died, and that’s when the garden began to decline. She died in 1939, a year before the mansion was removed, but donated photographs and other records to Washington State University, which became a starting point for the project.

While research, design and some restoration took place over the years, full reconstruction was made possible through a $1.2 million donation from Myrtle Woldson, a businesswoman and neighbor to the south of the garden.

Other smaller grants and donations also were used in the project. Mandyke said the Woldson gift is being recognized on bronze medallions that will be mounted along large gateposts at the main entry.

“It came together because it was supposed to,” Mandyke said.

Over the years, she said, she was told that the garden project was not worth the trouble or the money. Now that it is nearly completed, the results speak for themselves, she said.

“It’s like a living thing,” she said. “It really belongs to the Moores and Turners.”