Glacier Gardens Rainforest Adventure

By Mary Lou Gerbi

"One can't believe impossible things," Alice tells the Queen in "Through the Looking Glass," but she had no problem believing Humpty Dumpty when he told her about his "unbirthday present"-a cravat (neckband) which Alice mistook for a belt due to Humpty's egg-shaped figure. Well, Steve Bowhay (pronounced Bowee-like wowee) turned some tree roots into flower pots, something like planter un-trees-hard to explain since they're not quite themselves, you see. They're upside-down.

Glacier Gardens Rainforest Adventure isn't your typical botanical gardens, but then it's in Alaska where nothing is typical. You can expect upsy-downsy trees-maybe even a Jabberwock-in this fairy-tale world. Even taking the garbage out can be exciting as ravens and bears feast on last week's leftovers.

Overlooking the Mendenhall wetlands at 7600 Glacier Highway are 49 acres which combine some of the mystery and majesty of the redwood forests of California and Oregon with the kaleidoscope of color at Bouchart Gardens near Victoria, British Columbia.

At Glacier Gardens over a thousand bulbs are interspersed with bark-lined beds of azaleas, perennials, and 70 rhododendrons. Brilliant splashes of burgundy and fuchsia-colored maple leaves contrast with the verdure of the natural rain forest. A 40-foot waterfall swirls past massive glacial-scarred boulders into five ponds (one of them 11-feet deep). Steep 8-foot wide paths meander half a mile to a commanding view of that bit of earth, sea, and sky we call Juneau.

But the show-stoppers are the whimsical upside-down trees-over 20 hemlock and spruce tree stumps transformed to flower pots, each one planted with 50 hanging baskets, each costing about $1500.

Guests tour the garden ($14.95 adults, $8 for children, $59.95 for a season pass) starting at the 72-by-96-foot commercial greenhouse/visitor center at the base of the trail system, about the only thing visible from Glacier Highway. A greenhouse in winter, from May through September, it's transformed into a tropical paradise with hanging baskets, a gift shop, and Wildberry Café, open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. seven days a week exclusively for hungry garden visitors. Kellie Walling sells soup, chili, hot dogs, pastries and meat-and-cheese-filled croissants along with mocha, latte and fresh lemonade.

Firm up your fat and rev up the old heart rate as you walk the half mile up 520 feet-it's a steep hike-or ride in covered shuttle carts like most people do and get the tour. Shuttle driver Brad Hartman points out fan moss, twisted stalk, trailing currant and huckleberry plants-the diversity of the rain forest. He examines the contrasting bark of spruce and hemlock trees and discusses how ice has sculpted the garden's rocks. Over 900 species of indigenous vascular plants and another 300 species of mosses and lichens live on this portion of Thunder Mountain.

Animals also live here. A black bear occasionally lumbers down the garden's pathway, gingerly avoiding a pansy patch. Porcupines peek around huckleberry bushes. Hawks, peregrine falcons, and ravens rustle in the tree tops; eagles soar overhead, their haunting trilling cry unforgettable. A varied thrush sings its telephone-like song from its blueberry bush perch.

"When Steve told me his dream of golf carts going up the mountain, I thought he was crazy," said Hartman, 26, who started working with Bowhay six years ago. "He's like a kid. His imagination runs wild. He can grab a stick and turn it into anything."

It wasn't exactly a stick, and it was an accident, of course. On the last day of a 30-day rental of a $150,000 excavator, Bowhay found a beautiful 6-foot-wide flat rock which weighed some 4000 pounds. "I was oogling that rock which would be perfect for the waterfall," he said. In the process of getting to it, Bowhay smacked the excavator into an uprooted tree, spinning the machine sideways. Thirty days without a scratch on the machine, and now there was a log sticking through the engine cowling, $2500 worth of damage.

"I was madder than bejeebees," Bowhay said. He calmly, carefully placed the rock where he wanted it then picked up the tree stump, raised it as high as the excavator arm would go, and rammed the stump into the ground. Looking at the upside-down stump, his anger appropriately vented, he realized its possibilities. "There," he said, "you're a flower pot."

"This is his passion; this is his art," said Hartman. While others use canvas and paints, Steve uses mountains." He sculpts landslide-scarred hillsides into a garden paradise. He harnesses runaway mountain runoff into a picturesque brook punctuated with ponds and waterfalls.

When Bowhay talked about creating a garden paradise at the base of a catastrophic natural landslide at the 1400-foot level of Thunder Mountain (so named because of its rumbling avalanches), people wondered if he'd been digging in the dirt too long. Talk about an optimist.

The landslide posed a constant erosion problem for Alaska Department of Transportation road crews. Bowhay had to control the erosion before he did anything else. He rehabilitated the stream bed by moving it 15 feet and relocating it in bedrock, then he spent over $50,000 to line the stream bed with geotextile fabric.

"I try to help people envision the mess that used to be here and the cleanup that's gone on," Hartman said. "Every single rock in the stream has been placed by hand and machine. Moss from the road has been transplanted. We've used everything."

"When people visit the gardens, women see the beauty, men see the engineering," said co-owner Cindy Bowhay. The engineering test came last fall during an autumn Noah-get-your-ark-type Juneau deluge. Landslides pulverized a Fritz Cove home and sent it rumbling down toward Auke Bay, but water gushing down Thunder mountain never used Glacier Gardens' road system as an alternate route. Bowhay lost 10-12 trees out of a million; that was the extent of the damage. "For about 45 minutes, I was wondering," Bowhay said. "We were tested by a 50-year rainstorm. It washed the crushed rock off the road, but it didn't erode below the fabric."

The 10,000 visitors last summer-mostly locals and independent travelers-gave Steve and Cindy the courage to continue. This year they'll have 20 weddings, a national publishers' gathering, Salavation Army Convention, Princess and Royal Caribbean cruise ship visitors, and lots of locals sipping lattes on season passes.

Garden visitors are almost in awe as the shuttles climb the steep road, lined with interlocking notched logs fastened together for safety. The best part, Bowhay said, is sharing the scene with those who aren't physically capable of making the climb themselves.

One woman who hadn't spoken in two years laughed all the way to the top. A fragile-looking elderly woman who grew up in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee was ecstatic. "I thought the next mountain I'd climb would be in heaven," she said.

The boardwalk and overlook at 520 feet offer an unparalleled panorama stretching from Stephens Passage north to Lynn Canal. The Chilkat Mountains gleam in greeting. You can see the Mansfield Peninsula on Admiralty Island and False Outer Point on Douglas Island. Gastineau Channel is framed by the communities of Juneau and Douglas, Eaglecrest valley, Mount Jumbo-and an eagle landing in the trees just below, so close you can hear the whooshing of its wings. Maybe this is Lewis Carroll's "Jubjub bird."

The climb up the mountain took the Bowhays four years. "Steve's done 60 to 70 percent of the work here, 12 hours a day seven days a week. It's his brainchild, his project," Hartman said. There's a little bit of Steve everywhere-all around town.

His curly hair adorned with twigs and the collar of his coveralls turned under like some absent-minded Einstein, Bowhay, 40, is passionate about planting. Steve and his wife have spent $2 million on the garden, not including Steve's time-nobody's tried to keep track of that.

Nobody's even tried to come up with a job description for Cindy, 35. She organizes and oversees the wholesale and retail businesses at Glacier Gardens Yard Doctor nursery in the Mendenhall Valley. She makes appointments for landscaping, does the seeding, orders materials, provides estimates, prepares payroll, landscapes, and shares her knowledge with customers. She's also a mom with four children aged 2, 10, 15, and 18-and one on the way. "I guess we're growing our crew," she said.

The first year of their marriage in 1988, they mixed dirt for 80,000 seedlings in the kitchen sink and stored the flats in the shower. Their two-room house was a jungle of people and plants. Working together, they built the Mendenhall valley greenhouse in 1990, acquired the Glacier Highway property in 1994, and opened the Glacier Gardens Rainforest Adventure last year. As they tromped around the newly purchased property, inspired by the diversity of the natural vegetation, the wildlife, and the view, it just seemed logical to share. To keep both the gardens and the plant nursery operating, they employ 25-30 people, 10 of them full time.

"We didn't have any money; there were no grants involved." Steve said. "We've got a lot of loans. Ted Smith sold us the property on terms. He could have foreclosed on us. Without him, the project never would have gotten off the ground."

The Bowhays aren't done; they want to double the garden's size and go to the 1100 foot level. "We're not cutting down the forest to build a botanical garden," Steve said. "We're rehabilitating a natural disaster and trying to make it pretty along the way."

Visitors would skirt an alpine meadow, explore an old rock pit transformed into a boulder garden and-finally-be dazzled by the mighty Mendenhall Glacier. "This isn't the end; this is the beginning," said Hartman. "I have faith this is going to be really big."

The fresh smell of the woods, the arched trees, the quiet-on sunny days, the scene is breathtaking, but it's mystical in the mist. "It's a landscape on loan from God," said Bowhay, chortling in his joy.

Gardening is an adventure in Alaska. Oh, sure, Juneau's got glaciers and icebergs, eagles and bears. Tree-carpeted, snow-tipped mountains rise out of island-studded waterways-inspiring scenery. People expect that, but Juneau isn't exactly a gardener's paradise. Nobody expects floriculture in Alaska.

"People are curious," said Glacier Gardens co-owner Cindy Bowhay. "What can you grow in Alaska?"

There's a reason for the curiosity. Downtown Juneau is blessed with an average 219 days of rain each year-almost 90 inches of the wet stuff. People who live here are so used to mist they have to look at puddles to see if it's raining. If you live here, eventually you'll buy rubber boots.

Besides rain, there's the wind-100 m.p.h. Taku winds occasionally lift rooftops and topple trees. Despite Juneau's 18 hours of summer daylight, when it's not raining, it's cloudy, 278 days of overcast-not enough sun to suit some plants. Only the hardiest varieties endure Juneau's freeze-thaw cycle. And then there's the soil which varies from glacial residue to hard-packed, soggy clay leached clean of any nutrients by the incessant rain showers. And then there are slugs.

Reprinted with permission
Copyright 1999 Alaskan Southeaster Magazine