Honey Heather Hill

By Eddie Janisch

This garden first started taking shape a lifetime ago when I watched my father planting what he called "Heather Hills", for my Scottish mother. My childish eyes saw her delight as well as the attention the bees, butterflies and hummingbirds paid to those blooms. I guess it was just a matter of time before I had to plant my own.

A chance meeting of Kristina Lefever, fifty plus years later, led to a visit at The Pollinator Project Rogue Valley and her kind offer of a piece of real estate and her full support of any project I had in mind. An alleyway neighbor's donated rocks, a pick and a shovel, a day off work and dirt under my fingernails at day's end -- I was well on my way to Heaven and enjoying the journey.

Then came the Almeda Drive Fire and all that changed in one destructive day. Burned out of house and home in a heartbeat, it would be nearly a year before I found my feet and returned to that garden and knew what I had to do.

A pickup truck of soil, a few volunteer grasses, and of course a quiver full of blooming heather from our friends at Shooting Star Nursery. Kristina and friends at the Pollinator Project paved the road for the completion of this project and gave me the courage to see things through to the very end and finish what I started.

Eddie Janisch and Kristina Lefever. Photo by Deanna Mulaskey.

This garden is humbly dedicated to the memory of my father and my mother, Phoenix Rising, Pollinator Project Rogue Valley, the family and friends I have found there ,and finally to everyone anywhere who believes that one garden at a time we will someday win the war.

A little ripple in the pond can sometimes change the world.

Eddie, thank you for being part of our journey, and for helping to make the ripples.