The Moss Garden

What Makes a Moss Garden

The Moss Garden at Bloedel Reserve is a rare feature among public gardens in the United States. Though the use of moss is more common in the gardens of Japan, it is unusual to see a collection of mosses as extensive and as purposefully cultivated as those at the Reserve. In fact, National Geographic cited the Bloedel Reserve Moss Garden for its excellence in its recent article on the rarity, peacefulness, and “Zen” quality of moss gardens around the world.

Moss Garden Specialist Darren Strenge shares these facts and insights about Bloedel’s Moss Garden.

The Moss Garden History

Prentice Bloedel contracted landscape designer Richard Haag to design a series of four “rooms” for the Reserve.
The Moss Garden was the first room and originally called the “anteroom” because it was to be the beginning of the walk through the garden. It is now near the end of the suggested route.
The original idea for the Moss Garden came from two different experiences related to Prentice Bloedel.
- Richard Haag and former Executive Director Richard Brown visited the Nitobe Japanese Garden at UBC and observed the extensive use of moss.
- Virginia Wright (one of the Bloedels’ daughters) and her husband visited Japan and shared photos of mossy Japanese gardens with her father, commenting that the mossy effect would be nice to recreate at the Reserve.
Construction began in late 1982.
The Moss Garden site was chosen in part because of the high water table.
All Salmonberry and some of the resident Red Alders were removed.
275,000 one-inch square starts of Irish Moss were planted to initially cover the ground.
- Irish Moss is actually a flowering plant that appears moss-like.
Native mosses completely took over within 5 years.
Since its beginning, the Moss Garden has always had a gardener assigned to its care.

What Is Moss?

Mosses and liverworts (byrophytes) are true plants but differ in key features from other plants.

Mosses lack a true internal vascular system.
Mosses lack true roots. They have “rhizoids”, root like structures that help anchor the moss to their growing surface.
Mosses absorb water and nutrients with their entire plant body, not just the rhizoids.
Moss cannot regulate water loss. They evolved extreme drought tolerance: mosses can dry completely and after reabsorbing water they can begin growth again within minutes.
The moss life cycle differs significantly from other plants, as illustrated here: