About Christopher
Christopher has always loved natural beauty, and mostly sees gardening as a way to reduce the travel time to experience a picturesque landscape. You can’t re-create Hawaii or Mt Rainier in your back garden or on your deck, but a lot of what speaks to us in these travel destinations is the plants, and plants you very much can have at home.
Untrained in any horticultural sense, Christopher’s gift is having a scientific brain and an artistic eye. He was a lifelong art and design student, using those talents in many jobs over the years, ultimately as a web designer and developer in his 30s and 40s.
Once he and Erin got married and bought the property that became Willows End, he started spending literally every weekend (and many weekday mornings, too) toiling in the garden. With many books and blog posts and YouTube videos as guides, he was inspired to improve the soil, to build paths and rock walls, and mostly, to learn about plants.
What started as a hobby turned into a calling. Christopher loves visiting gardens anywhere, but there is something so elemental about gardening, defined here as not just growing tomatoes or zinnias, but as creating environments and landscapes. Gardening is a pursuit that puts you in tune with the seasons, but it’s more than that — it centers the gardener in the very lifecycle of all that’s around. The gardener becomes aware of how water changes the character of soil, how the characteristics of sun and soil influences what lives where, and how bugs and fungi are so foundational to our success in the garden, yes, but also to life. And then add the ability to explore the world’s textures and colors and foods through plants — what a hobby!
Christopher has always felt like an artist and a hippie trapped inside an engineer’s brain. He has found gardening is a great way to exercise his whole self, learning and experimenting to create a landscape that he and Erin relish every day.
Posing with Duncan, one of many trusty canine companions over the years.