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

WALKING THE PATH: Grounds coordinator and Scotsman, Alan Johnston, strolls the hand-cut trail winding through the hillside garden above Grande Ronde Hospital where more than 10,000 daffodils are planted. - The Observer/MARDI FORD

“The Canadian thistle up here was taller than me,” says Alan Johnston, the hospital’s grounds coordinator. “They told me to create a greenway and plant lots of flowers. And then they basically turned me loose.”

One of the first things he did was to remove the “Please don’t pick the flowers” signs — a telling gesture.

“Sometimes people who are visiting someone — and especially if they are very sick — will come out here for a break,” he says. “I think being in the garden helps them in finding a little comfort. If they want to pick a rose, who am I to tell them they can’t do that?”

Johnston knows full well the restorative and redemptive power of gardens. Current trends in “horticultural therapy,” he says, are as ancient as creation itself.

“We were created to tend the garden, were we not?” he asks.

Studies on biofeedback, he says, have only confirmed the positive effect a well-tended landscape has on mankind’s heart, soul and mind.

“When you drive up to a place of business or someone’s home and it’s trashy and dirty, it makes you stressed and anxious before you even get out of the car,” Johnston says. “But when you pull up to a place where the trash is picked and everything is cared for, instantly your blood pressure, heart rate — everything goes down. Suddenly you feel relaxed and agreeable,” he says.

In fact, creating first impressions is exactly what Johnston did as a landscape designer at Gallo Vineyards in California and with his own landscaping business in Washington, before moving to La Grande with his wife and children seven years ago.

“A well-tended property says that if we care for our own, we will also care well for you. I think that’s an important message for a hospital, don’t you? This — what we are doing here — makes this sacred ground and the garden should reflect that.”

Over the years, Johnston has worked the nearly 12 acres in his care mostly by hand — pulling the weeds, planting trees, cutting trails, installing drip systems to water and benches to rest upon. The effect is natural and very low-key. No boundaries except the rocks moved to till the soil that now partially line a walking trail. No fences except around those trees he chooses to protect from the deer. No manicured lawns or flashy planters — the look is natural, rustic and relaxed.

“My grandfather taught me that a garden should be built one wheelbarrow at a time and that the first watering should be sweat. The more I worked, the more the beauty of this landscape showed itself to me,” he says. “Its a canvas on a scale so big I vision flashes of color erupting across it that will please the eye 200 years from now,” he says. “Gardeners always plant for the future — that’s the fun part.”

Evening and morning, he says, are especially precious with the sunrise and sunset scraping across the hill to reveal their own perspectives on the colors and shapes of the hillside.

“I haven’t done this by myself. I have a half-time employee and a very small budget every month. I could not have done all this without volunteers and donations,” he says.

For example, a few years ago a man who had been coming to the hospital for outpatient services had watched Johnston working up on the hillside.

ON THE MARCH: Scottish sounds of the Weston McEwen Pipes and Drum Band. - Submitted photo

Volunteers, hospital employees and other community members have helped Johnston gather daffodil bulbs and lilacs from old, abandoned farms along Foothill Road, transplanting them and giving them a new life at the hospital. One Eagle scout, Landon Wright, built and installed five viewing benches in sheltered pockets throughout the garden with breathtaking views of the valley.

Several years ago, while Johnston was working away on his knees, the inspiration came upon him to plant 10,000 daffodils on that hillside. And when he had, he knew he would hear the bagpipes play.

There are now more than 10,000 daffodils on the hillside and the first garden concert to be held at the Grande Ronde Hospital will be the Scottish sounds of the Weston McEwen Pipes and Drum Band.

Johnston, who has discovered over the years that the hillside is also a natural amphitheater, hopes to see a good turnout for the concert. He sees the event as a celebration of what has really been an entire community’s labor of love.

“The community has contributed a lot to this garden. I hope they will come to the concert with me and hear the pipes play,” he says. “Pipes in the  garden — it is going to be wonderful.”