MEMBER PROFILE
MARY ANN NEWCOMER
Daniel Mount – a gardener comes to term with green
PHOTO COURTESY DANIEL MOUNT
You might say that we have no idea where life will take us. No. Idea. Daniel Mount, of Mount Gardens, Carnation, Washington, has had a colorful gardening career path— one that has spanned a couple of continents.
“ I started out as an art major in college. I didn’ t want to get dirty or be a farmer type. I had high ideals.” Those are the words of Daniel Mount.
When he went to college, Daniel was very much in love with art.“ I loved art so much. At some point, I found botany and switched majors. Art is always in the background. I did collage for many years, before becoming a full-time garden designer. It really helped my design skills,” he said.“ I went to the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, graduated with a degree in botany, a fine arts minor, did a stint as an intern and employee at the Missouri Botanical Garden and later discovered the forgiving gardening climate of the Pacific Northwest.”
He now gardens— as in getting dirty and being a farmer— and personally cares for seven acres of land just a stone’ s throw from downtown Seattle. In the last year, the property— part of a designated marsh— has flooded seven times, and he has been forced to don chest waders to walk out and get to town.
VACATION JOB TO FULL-TIME GIG
Daniel comes from a big family where everyone gardens— some more famously than others. His great uncle was the head gardener at Casa Rosada, the Presidential Palace in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the 1930s.
At one time, Daniel was a gardener on the Isle of Elba, Napoleon’ s Mediterranean island of exile. He told the story of living, gardening and bartending in Cologne, Germany. It was there that he came across a copy of Gardens Illustrated, which had an article on the gardens of the Eremo di Santa Caterina, off the coast of Tuscany.
“ I wrote the garden manager a letter, offering to garden in exchange for a place to vacation. I went, I gardened, I was there for a week and then Hans Berger offered me a job. How could I refuse? I was wearing rose-colored gardening glasses,” he said.“ I thought,‘ Wow, I can live on an island— an island in Italy.’” The original idea was to create a garden representing the native and endemic plants as well as heirloom crops of the Tuscan Archipelago. Daniel explains,“ We wanted to create a preserve, as well as a public garden for education. I spent the better part of a year there. I have been back several times in the last decade to help with collecting plants and design ideas, and recently, two essays I wrote about that garden were published in Berlin in the book Giardini dell’ Eremo.”
WORLD OF COLOR On this side of the world, Daniel is known for his award-winning essays on color. Last year he picked up a GWA Gold Media Award for his magazine article“ Over and Under the Rainbow: A Gardener Comes to Terms with Red” and a Silver Award for the magazine article“ Over and Under the Rainbow: A Gardener Comes to Terms with Blue.”
“ The color series started with a garden design class I was teaching for the Northwest Horticultural Society,” Daniel said.“ At the same time, I was doing an article for the quarterly magazine of the Pacific Horticulture Society on species tulips for Northwest gardens. After spending a year doing the research, I realized they were not especially good plants for the Northwest garden. At the last minute I asked my editor, Lorene Edwards Forkner, if I could switch to an article about color in the garden. She let me run with it.”
GARDEN WRITING When asked how he found his way to GWA, he told of taking a writing class from Debra Prinzing, who was president of the GWA at the time.“ She saw something in my early scratchings, considered me a budding garden writer and thought the organization would help me meet my goals as a garden writer. I joined in 2008.”
Debra recalls teaching a half-day“ garden writing” workshop in her living room for the Northwest Horticulture Society
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