Gardener Of The Soul -- In This `Collector's Garden,' Mr. James Jackson Is A Rare Specimen

GOOD LORD WILLING AND THE creek don't rise, Mr. James Jackson expects to harvest 105 pounds of collard greens this year from a single 6-foot tree on the east slope of his magnificent garden in Mount Baker overlooking Lake Washington.

One hundred and five pounds? In one year from one plant? A tree? In Seattle?

Yes, yes, yes and yes, all true. It is also true that the woody trunked tree collard, Brassica oleracea, is a rare specimen in the Pacific Northwest, and if you are excited at the thought of propagating this sun-loving southern staple in our slug-infested maritime soil, then you are probably a gardener, because nothing stirs said human species more than something rare and special growing in an unusual place.

You could say that Mr. Jackson, even among the green giants of Northwest urban agriculture, is a rare and special someone, unusual for a lot of reasons, not the least of which includes a two-decade military career distinguished by exemplary service in battle as well as gardening under adverse conditions. "Mr. Jackson is as tenacious and durable as a weed," says James Patterson, who runs Seattle's 4-H horticultural program and considers Mr. Jackson his mentor. "He's like a living reference book with a passion for insects, animals, kids . . . but he doesn't spend a lot of time talking about who he is and what he's accomplished. He is from a different time. Everybody calls him Mister. He's earned it."

Consider: During World War II, after watching his buddy get killed while storming the beach at Normandy, Sgt. Jackson planted hydrangeas, petunias and English fuchsia in an abandoned prisoner-of-war camp where his company was stationed. In the lulls between battle, a man can get bored and go crazy, or he can stay busy. "Your mind drifts back to the comforts of home," Mr. Jackson says. "I make my home wherever I am." Mr. Jackson is not from a generation of self-analytical men, but he does say this: "Some people play golf for therapy. I garden."

Mr. Jackson is at home wherever plants grow. He is at home as one of three African-American men among King County's corps of 645 master gardeners, volunteers trained by Washington State University Cooperative Extension in the ways of plants so that they may teach the rest of us. Indeed, Mr. Jackson is the president of the Master Gardener Foundation, president of the 4-H Leaders Association, vice-president of the University Kiwanis and a volunteer master composter. Last year he volunteered 400 hours of horticultural expertise in the Eagle Hardware on Rainier Avenue, in the Bellevue demonstration garden, at South Seattle street fairs, in Enumclaw, Ballard, Beacon Hill and the Central Area.

One of his goals is to get more people of color interested in gardening, especially city kids from low-income families. It's not that he wants to turn them into a bunch of farmers. The point, he says, is to share the garden's lessons: math, chemistry, botany, responsibility, discipline, nurturing something other than yourself.

Gardening is the top outdoor leisure activity in the country these days, practiced by more than 48 million people. Of those, according to a recent Gallup poll, 43 million cultivate flowers, 30 million raise vegetables, and many grow both, spending $4.6 billion last year on garden-related products.

"Gardening is a nice way to have something the neighbors don't," explains Bruce Butterfield, research director at the National Gardening Association in Vermont. "An enjoyable way to balance a pretty crazy life."

A LOT HAS CHANGED FROM the days when Mr. Jackson was a boy growing up in the South. Back then, back there, everybody farmed, especially if you were poor, because if you didn't, well, then you didn't eat. These days, in the hard-paved city, you need to find some dirt, you need know-how, you need leisure time - but most of all, you need, as Mr. Jackson says, to stop making excuses. Don't stand around talking about why you can't do it, or how you're going to do it. Get to work. You can grow chives in a milk carton on the windowsill.

Which brings us to another reason Mr. Jackson is so unusual. The tree collards. And the voluptuous purple eggplants. And then, of course, there's the rhubarb with leaves large enough to bathe in, and the myrtle, ice plant, roses, begonias, mother-in-law's tongue, Easter lilies blooming in July, Swiss cheese ivy, Bougainvillea, lace leaf maple, strawberries, Hubbard squash, Japanese soyu cucumber that doesn't get bitter, carrots, turnips, mustard, pink and red and white poinsettias, curly leaf parsley, sugar peas climbing up biddy wire, cabbage to make cha cha, corn, salad peppers, pink calla lilies, geraniums in a dozen pastel shades, heliotrope, yellow pear tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, Early Girl tomatoes, lupine, yew, hardy fuchsia dripping pink and purple bells, dozens of rhododendron, purple and yellow jumping-jack pansies, bright red pompon dahlias, crimson dinner plate dahlias, gnarled Portuguese laurel, mother of thyme that spreads around stepping stones like a carpet.

All told, that's 60-some varieties of trees, shrubs, vegetables and flowers and Mr. Jackson can tell you intriguing stories about each of them. Take the collard greens. Not only are they are a rich source of iron, but also, by the way, a person suffering from constipation can eat some greens and they won't have any more trouble. And see those eggplants? Even retired King County extension agent George Pinyuh, Northwest guru of gardening, didn't believe this type of eggplant would produce west of the Cascades until he visited Mr. Jackson's garden and picked a bagful to take home. Now, there's someone who knows something about plants. "George," Mr. Jackson jokes, "has forgotten more about gardening and whatnot than most people ever learn."

Those in the know about horticulture say Mr. Jackson is able to grow things here that others can't because he has such favorable microclimates in his lush yard. Nearby Lake Washington tempers the harsh winter cold, they say, and the sloping yard gets good sun.

Microclimates, nothing. Mr. Jackson stoops to pull a chickweed tendril out of his lacy Italian parsley. "You gotta have the right touch." he says. "I've got it." The touch actually has little to do with magic and a lot to do with constant vigilance: composting, weeding, watering, cutting spent flower heads, picking dried leaves, hosing off insects, in short, hours upon hours of strain-your-back labor fertilized with experience gleaned over 75 years. Those close to Mr. Jackson say that's actually more like 82 years, and to that, Mr. Jackson laughs, a pair of silver Cross pens bobbing up and down in the front pocket of his denim overalls. "Well, they just think I'm 82," he says, "because I have so much knowledge." MR. JACKSON STARTED LIFE the son of a mortar maker. His father was a man who could take apart and put together just about anything, a farmer who raised sugar cane, collard greens, mustard cabbage and children who didn't question what their parents told them.

They farmed even though they didn't like it, weeded, harvested, composted even before there were fancy compost thermometers and nitrogen formulas for life's most basic process - letting living things rot so the nutrients will feed the earth.

"Even though I disliked (gardening)," Mr. Jackson says, "I wanted to be the best." This philosophy stems in part from Mr. Jackson's personality and part from his complexion. After an afternoon tending his plants, lovingly washing each leaf on a coral geranium , staking dahlia blooms big enough to picnic under, transplanting Thanksgiving cacti to donate to the 4-H fair, Mr. Jackson will tell you this: Life as a black man is difficult. You have to work twice as hard to get half the credit.

Not that Mr. Jackson hasn't had a good life, a successful life, just look at his military career and his 20 years as a program manager for the city and his gracious white brick home in a lawyer-doctor neighborhood, an estate purchased for a good price back in the early 1970s when a billboard asked the last person leaving Seattle to turn out the lights.

Still, the microclimate has not always been favorable. There was that time in the army, 1943, when black soldiers about to go off to war rode the bus into Charleston, S.C., for a last evening of R&R and a white couple told them to move to the back, nearly causing a race riot. And the time in Georgia, before Cuba, when Capt. Jackson was the only black officer and the lieutenant colonel kept testing him, and only him; made him fire a 155-millimeter howitzer at an abandoned car target, when, after all, Capt. Jackson had already proven himself firing for his life in Korea. There was that time in the 1960s, after retiring from the military, when Mr. Jackson was looking for work and the department stores wouldn't hire him, and then the stint as a shoe clerk and the humiliation when a customer refused to be fitted by a black man. White people wouldn't pick up money from your hand back then; you had to lay their change on the counter.

"When you challenge me, when you make things difficult for me, I work harder," Mr. Jackson says. "The difficult I'll do right now. The impossible will take a little longer."

That's the thing about gardening. You do the right thing, you get a quality product. Treat plants well, they will grow. They don't care about the color of your skin, where you came from, how much money you have.

This, however, is not something Mr. Jackson often talks about with the school children who visit his garden. Some things you have to learn by living. Instead, when youngsters scoff at the idea of gardening, Mr. Jackson asks them, Who picks the peaches? Who grows the tomatoes and lettuce for your hamburgers, the wheat for McDonald's buns? Who raises the beef for the meat patties? Without the farmer, we couldn't run to the Safeway before dinner, he says. The lawyers couldn't go out for a quick bite at lunch and then ride the elevator back to work on the 42nd floor of an office tower. "Without the farmer," Mr. Jackson says, "none of us is all that important."

What is important, he tells them, is keeping the water clean of pesticides and motor oil because, really, there is nothing new on the earth. The water has been here for millions of years, evaporating, raining down, percolating through the soil, a wild stream. "Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise," he tells them, you can use this water to grow food and things of beauty, take plants that are small and sickly and make them healthy and strong. Come the cold, the plants will wither and die, but seeds will fall to the ground and flowers will bloom in the spring.

All of life is a cycle. Every living thing will become compost, Mr. Jackson is fond of saying. Even us.

Paula Bock is a writer for Pacific Magazine. Harley Soltes is Pacific's photographer. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. Jackson's Top Ten Gardening Tips

1. Match planting site to plant needs. Does a particular plant need sun? Warmth? Shade? Is there anything growing on the plot now? "If weeds grow there," Mr. Jackson says, "I can make a garden." Of course, not everyone has Mr. Jackson's touch. So read on.

2. Prepare your land with compost for good soil texture. Ideally, when you squeeze a handful of soil, it should stay together in a ball. If you hit the ball with one finger, it should break apart.

3. Keep the soil loose. This helps water get to the plants' roots and allows the roots to grow deep.

4. Feed your plants. Fertilize with pasteurized manure, organic fertilizer or a commercial chemical mix. People have a tendency to think that if 1 tablespoon of chemical fertilizer is good, 2 tablespoons is better. Not so, Mr. Jackson warns. Do exactly what it says on the label.

5. Start with new seeds and healthy seedlings. For most successful germination, look for this year's date on the seed package. Choose green, not yellowed, seedlings that have slim stems. Thick stems indicate that the seedling has gone through cold stress. Carefully slip the plant out of the container to look at the roots. If the roots circle around the pot, it's an old plant. Choose a younger one or, when you get home, untangle and clip off much of the root mass.

6. Water. Get the soil good and damp at least 2 to 3 inches deep.

7. Control pests. Pick off cutworms and slugs by hand. Spray aphids off stems with water or an organic solution of 1 tablespoon baking soda and 1 tablespoon dishwashing liquid (such as Dawn or Ivory) in 1 gallon water.

8. Hand pull or hoe weeds so they will not compete with your plants for water, nutrients and space.

# 9. Pesticide control. When you use chemicals to control pests, identify the pests before you start spraying. If you don't know what the bug is, you are likely to use the wrong chemical, which could damage the plant, contaminate the soil and kill beneficial insects without solving your problem.

# 10. Herbicide control. If you must use chemicals to kill weeds and grasses, choose one that has a short residual life and follow the directions on the label. You can use an herbicide such as Round Up and plant in the same spot in seven days. Other herbicides hang around in the ground for a year or longer.

# Use these methods as a last resort. They contaminate the ground water.