Good Shepherd Center Gardens 1980 to Present

04/26/2021

Apple trees at the Good Shepherd Center? Want to make a few?
Today-At 10 AM and 430 PM we will zoom grafting classes, 40minutes each. Cost is free, donuts provided, Donations humbly accepted.

Gil Schieber is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Gil Schieber on Grafting 10AM

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5379343796?pwd=dFZrbFhPZG1valZOYnYyTVczNzdKUT09

Meeting ID: 537 934 3796
Passcode: 8tgmmr

And the 4:30PM meeting is-

Grafting Apple Trees
Time: Apr 26, 2021 04:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82113333519?pwd=M0Q1azA0elVVZUxKVTdMSzFINW1LQT09

Meeting ID: 821 1333 3519
Passcode: 8tgmmr

Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board, confer...

08/23/2018

The local Wynoochee Early Apple, easy, bug free, scab-free

10/09/2017

Skipley Farm, next endeavor to showing off nature!

Gardens are healthiest when they have diversity. As I set out plants, the ultimate size, shape, texture, color and especially the environmental needs are taken into consideration. With drought tolerance being a major factor, the diversity choices narrow significantly. The tens of thousands of plants that will grow in the NW drops to a list that is more like 4000-5000. If you only include xeriphytes, that list drops again to about 2000.
Edibles and wildlife forage/shelter are another key factor in selecting plants for the healthy diverse garden. Here is a feature plant often overlooked that is impressive in it's ability to grow and provide food, architectural beauty and it sustains itself through good initial soil preparation. Cardunculus spp. are tough and have stood the test of time at the Good Shepherd Gardens.
I miss the measurable diversity that once set this garden apart, illuminating designers, landscape architects, artists and associates in horticultural fields.
At the end of Gil Sciebers tenure, attention to the garden shifted. There was an assumed void: years of "natural selection" took place, the diversity halved. The sanctity and balance created over 25 years had a burp of disregard in 2008 with the common ignorance of "superiors". Challenged by economics, nature assures us it's role in destruction and resurrection.
Time tells a story. Historic Seattle PDA is linked here to a once richly diverse period, setting precedence through an administrative blind insensitive to the gentle strokes of Schiebers work. Efficiency, brilliance and a gardeners' ethic to be compared to. There is the end of a blossom with the developing seeds held deep within.
Schiebers' latest creation is Skipley Farm, quickly gaining recognition as a model of diversity.

In the humanities, the health and our well-being are enhanced by the paradise nature can offer. We can steward our existence with attention to the lightest footprint as the blight of copulating humans steams into a global renaissance. Have a little faith.

09/26/2016

It has been a long journey to realize roi or return on investment. As an employee (collectively non-hierarchical) my free-to-practice passion at the good shepherd center was the investment in time, community building, creating a place of learning and inspiration. Somehow I believed this was written into the good shepherd center's employee handbook. I have a broad-stroke mantra and subsequent mission to cause happiness with a passion for plants, gardens and the influence they carry (starting with family).
25 years here gathering experience to be sufficiently confident to farm (at age 50), my abrupt exodus left me feeling that I had not finished writing the book, that guide to sharing that mission.
As my life arrives, process and order arrive. Within passion is purpose, a hungering to be tickled by aspiration. Individually, personal health is a first step. The self-work that leads to elimination of stressors. Apples to apples, we all share this phenomenon from birth.
Breath. Pronounced breth or breethe, to take-in, aspire, the autonomous life-feeding lung-cycle. Within every breath lies hope. So we start there.
From this simple foundation, the undoing of violence to ourselves, the shedding of kleshas-rooted in ignorance, attachments, and aversion-there is much to learn in Buddhism. Infact passion-desire is one of the confused

09/19/2016

Gardens are healthiest when they have diversity. As I set out plants, the ultimate size, shape, texture, color and especially the environmental needs are taken into consideration. With drought tolerance being a major factor, the diversity choices narrow significantly. The tens of thousands of plants that will grow in the NW drops to a list that is more like 4000-5000. If you only include xeriphytes, that list drops again to about 2000.
Edibles and wildlife forage/shelter are another key factor in selecting plants for the healthy diverse garden. Here is a feature plant often overlooked that is impressive in it's ability to grow and provide food, architectural beauty and it sustains itself through good initial soil preparation. Cardunculus spp. are tough and have stood the test of time at the Good Shepherd Gardens.
I miss the measurable diversity that once set this garden apart, illuminating designers, landscape architects, artists and associates in horticultural fields.
At the end of Gil Sciebers tenure, attention to the garden shifted. There was an assumed void: years of "natural selection" took place, the diversity halved. The sanctity and balance created over 25 years had a burp of disregard in 2008 with the common ignorance of "superiors". Challenged by economics, nature assures us it's role in destruction and resurrection.
Time tells a story. Historic Seattle PDA is linked here to a once richly diverse period, setting precedence through an administrative blind insensitive to the gentle strokes of Schiebers work. Efficiency, brilliance and a gardeners' ethic to be compared to. There is the end of a blossom with the developing seeds held deep within.
Schiebers' latest creation is Skipley Farm, quickly gaining recognition as a model of diversity.

In the humanities, the health and our well-being are enhanced by the paradise nature can offer. We can steward our existence with attention to the lightest footprint as the blight of copulating humans steams into a global renaissance. Have a little faith.

06/21/2016

Did you know there were nearly 2500 species planted at the Good Shepherd Center over a 25 year span?

06/18/2016

I shall write a book that includes the 25+ years in this sanctuary. A lesson of love and devotion.

06/17/2016

A lovely garden to visit by all means

05/05/2016

Featured Plants from a collection imported from the UK in 1988 to 1994

01/02/2016

With the number of heirloom varieties of apples on the site, it would behoove the Gardeners to secure scionwood from the collection for propagation. At least be cognizant of waiting to prune until February or March, that way there is a period of time to procure scion for dissemination to the general public.

01/02/2016

Every year there is new growth, new losses, and the continued development of the site to record. My involvement is limited to notes, conversation, photo journaling.

10/22/2015

Propagating season. A thousand unique plants. Discretion in thinning.