Puget Sound Native Tree
Botanical Garden

After World War II, the original Charles Olson Homestead was broken up and sold.  In 1952, the land known as Olympic Point was logged of the few remaining old growth trees and developed into 30 homesites, which were then sold to owners wanting to build and investors, as Olympic Terrace. 

 

By 1970, about  20 of the lots were developed, mostly facing west on Big Manzanita Bay.  The 8 lots facing Little Manzanita Bay and the "mudflats", had been bought, but not built upon.

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Then the crash came.  In 1970 Boeing Airplane Company lost all future orders on their new 747 jet and the company went into a financial tailspin.  147,000 employees were cut down to less than 50,000 in a town of less than 600,000, 95% who depended on Boeing success for their own related work.

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Unemployment shot up over 50%, the sale and building of homes stopped, and the

Last Person Leaving Seattle was told to Turn Off the Lights was displayed on multiple billboards.  The land owners on 'muddy' Little Manzanita Bay became desperate enough to start logging the lots.

 

Since 1968, Allen Philips, who grew up in Seattle and hoped to settle in the area, had searched the region for a natural habitat that aligned with his personal views and emotional connection to trees and water.  His vision and his reality did not align well.  Although he worked the intervening years and during the recession had joined the Navy as a Seaman Recruit, he seemed to only have enough saved for an acre or two of inland property covered with scotch broom.

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Fortuitously in 1973, the intersection of the recession, his desire for nature, and his savings caused him to find a little less than an acre of 'dirty mud', covered with brush and intervening 'trash' trees as the agent called them, broom and alder, alive with quail.  Within that overgrown lot he also found several hidden mature 2nd growth trees.  Although he didn't realize until later the wealth of depth and breadth of the of the total environment that existed within this pocket garden, it felt right.  He was saving trees from being logged, and he understood that what was 'ugly mud' to a real estate agent or developer, to him, it was an estuary full of the varieties and mysteries and surprises the sea could offer.

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His girlfriend of the time fell in love with the location also, they got married in front of the intertwined 7 foot diameter Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar as inspiration for strength and interdependence.

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When building their home, they left the trees intact along the waterfront and selected a building site that preserved all the trees in the uphill portion.  To this day, it is the only waterfront home the bay that you cannot see from the water  due to the trees providing perches for the eagles osprey, and the other animals that survive from the bounty of the estuary.

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