A Brief History of Our Favorite Organization

Once upon a time, there were some special people who met each other at a Hardy Plant Society Study Weekend, long ago. Some of them were also members of the Rock Garden Society, and they decided that they wanted to meet more than once a year. Their collective goal was to indulge in their favorite pastime: expanding the collection of plants in their gardens. Being very eager for knowledge about flora and its cultivation, they made an aggressive attempt to find their niches in the Puget Sound gardening community, soon becoming the Northwest Perennial Alliance.

At this time, nursery offerings ranged from rhododendrons to flowering cherries, with a viburnum or Japanese maple thrown in for good measure. However, some of these gardeners had been to England, and had their appetites whetted by the amazing human talent and the resulting tremendous variety of plants that they discovered there.

The first meeting

This avid group instigated a series of planning meetings, resulting in the first NPA meeting in 1984 at the home of Eleanor Carnwath, where Jerry Flintoff showed spring offerings. Stories of special plants, flowers and the unknown were the order of these early days. Meetings spurred the people to go on treasure hunts to find the most unusual and uncommon plants. There was a live-wire undercurrent of one-upmanship in plant competition. As to be expected in any worthwhile organization, food also played a major role in its founding. Kevin Nicolay’s beef stew in a roasting pan and apple quince crisp are remembered, as well as his charismatic spark and insistence on raising the bar in Northwest gardening. In the words of Dan Borroff, “The downward reach was just not in his lexicon.”

Mousemilk, Bullslops and Treacleberries

The hallmarks of our organization were present from the start: education, plant sales, open gardens and seed exchanges. The first NPA Study Weekend, "Mousemilk, Bullslops and Treacleberries", was held in Mary Henry’s home.

Over the next several years, local and worldwide speakers were invited to talk at meetings. Among them were Pamela Harper, Christopher Lloyd, Graham Stuart Thomas and Ray Lancaster. The like-minded gardeners of the NPA obviously cut straight to the cream of the crop when it came to speakers. Our premier garden open book was authored by Ann Bucher. At this time, Open Garden visitors relied upon the Alliance Cartographer for directions—a position now filled by Mapquest. And rumor has it that Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ was first introduced from England to the U.S. by our early members!

The group begins to grow

The NPA had an exhibit at the first Northwest Flower and Garden Show, on the cutting edge of garden art design with a copper tubing construction in the background. The exposure of this participation swelled membership by 200 people, and the group began to meet in the Graham Visitors Center in the Arboretum.

As the group became larger, members became aware of their desire to go public with their plant passion, and so they searched for a location to express themselves. Our first demonstration garden was a drought tolerant border, designed by Dan Borroff and planted at The Good Shepherd Center in the late 1980’s. Momentum carried us onward though, and we looked for a larger venue for self-expression.

Attempts to site the border at the Center for Urban Horticulture and the Arboretum met with frustration, but the Bellevue Parks Department offered us a home at the newly created Bellevue Botanical Garden. Rick Kyper presented the plan for the big border designed by Charles Price, Glenn Withey, Carrie Becker and Bob Lilly, to the Bellevue Parks Department Board. He had to educate this group, because they did not understand what such a thing was. Thus was born what has become the largest perennial border in the U.S.

From a dozen members to more than 1,400 today, thanks to thousands of hours of volunteer effort, the NPA is recognized far and wide for its accomplishments. We can look backward with pride and forward with anticipation, amazed and delighted by the variety of plants we know are out there, just waiting to be discovered and incorporated into our gardens.