>La Grande Observer | Union and Wallowa Counties' News Leader

Flowering achievement: Grande Ronde Hospital gardener Alan Johnston displays some of his handiwork during a recent tour of the hospital grounds. ().

Bill Rautenstrauch

The Observer

Nothing's so sad as a gardener stuck behind a desk, unable to go and dig in the earth.

Just ask Alan Johnston, the man in charge of the sprawling — and increasingly lovely — grounds at Grande Ronde Hospital.

"My worst day working outside around here is way better than my best day in the office job I used to have," Johnston, leader of a sweeping, four-year effort to beautify the hospital's surroundings, said.

Johnston, along with part-time hospital gardener Spring Goodwater and volunteers Christa Delaschmutt and Joanne Hellen, earned for the hospital the City of La Grande's September Commercial Landscape Beautification Award.

The award is given during the spring and summer months to businesses that have paid special attention to landscaping issues.

It's recognition that means a lot to Johnston, who said it would not have happened but for the the team effort.

"The volunteers make it all possible," he said. "I'm always looking for more. They take care of the detail work, so I can play and create."

Gardening has always been play for Johnston, who was born in Seattle and educated as a horticulturist and forester in California.

Early in his boyhood, back in Seattle, his grandmother inspired in him a love for things that grow.

"She always said that the gardener plants and waters, but the increase comes from God," he said.

His time in California included a long stretch as a landscaper for the famous winemakers Ernest and Julio Gallo. He also ran a landscaping business of his own in California.

In 1990, Johnston moved his family to La Grande. The main reason, he said, was so that the family's four children could attend Eastern Oregon University.

During his first years here, Johnston worked summers as a sivaculturalist for the U.S. Forest Service, and also as a contract arborist for the City of Grande.

Then he became separated from his beloved craft, taking a job as an assistant administrator in a local elder care facility.

He loved working with older people, but hated being caged.

"It was five years in an office without windows," he said.

Four years ago, the gardener's position opened at the hospital. Johnston jumped at the chance to again work close to the earth.

"The first year, I formed a vision of what the hospital garden could be. Then I worked at it, one wheelbarrow at a time," he said.

There are actually several gardens on the approximately 10-acre complex, displaying annuals, perennials, herbs and much more in beautiful clusters.

There is a rooftop garden, where in summer employees take their breaks; a garden outside the emergency room; and a garden around a flagpole featuring roses and burning bushes that get their name from their bright red autumn color.

Trees and shrubs planted by Johnston and his staff also play an important part in the landscaping.

But Johnston's favorite area, the one that has received the most attention, is the hillside garden north of the hospital proper. In season it is covered with daffodils.

"Over four years, we've planted 9,000 bulbs there," Johnston said.

He recalled a recent incident where an elderly woman was walking across the parking lot and stopped short, gazing at the hillside.

"She went from being 86 to being 16 in an instant," Johnston said. "She said, ‘Just look at all those daffodils!' "

Every gardener, and especially a gardener with so big a job to do, has at least one cross to bear.

In Johnston's case, it's deer. Deer ever-present, deer in huge numbers, deer that love to nibble on rose petals, on leaves of young trees, on everything and anything sweet and succulent.

For a long time, deer were the bane of Johnston's existence. But peaceful co-existence with the pesky browsers has turned out to be the answer.

"At first, I'd go out there and yell and wave my arms. I even threw rocks at them," Johnston said. "Then I decided to just let them be. They do damage, but we've planted enough so that we're always ahead of them."

The deer, actually, have become part of the ambience. They add to the scenery.

And the scenery, according to Johnston, is all important to the hospital's customers.

"When patients and family members look out and see the garden and the deer, it helps them get their minds off whatever trouble they might be having," he said.