Archibald Menzies, master gardener
Archibald Menzies: The Northwest's First Master Gardener
At the top of our garden in Cape George stands a young Douglas fir which carries some rare and well-traveled genes. It’s only about 18 inches tall, but this tree is world class, a direct descendant of one of the tallest trees in Britain. Its grandparents, which I believe grew here on the shores of Discovery Bay, must have been giants.
The story of our tree goes back some 215 years, when a mild-mannered Scottish botanist and naval surgeon named Archibald Menzies climbed out of a longboat and onto the shore of Discovery Bay.
Menzies, who pronounced his name “MIN-gez,” was the official naturalist to the expedition of Capt. George Vancouver, the stuffy Englishman who first explored and mapped these Northwest waters. By the spring of 1792, when they dropped anchor in what Vancouver decided to call Port Discovery, they had already sailed halfway around the world, and they’d hardly begun.
For some two weeks, while most of the crew worked on ship repairs and provisions, Menzies set out on his own mission, becoming the first scientist to study the shores of Port Townsend and Puget Sound.
Judging by his journal, Menzies was overwhelmed by what he found. “The shores here are sandy and pebbly,” he wrote. “The point we came to (Port Townsend) was low and flat with some marshy ground behind it, and a pond of water surrounded with willows and tall bulrushes. Behind this a green bank stretched to the southward a little distance from the shore, which was marked with the beaten paths of deer and other animals... I ascended this bank and strolled over an extensive lawn, where solitude, rich pasture and rural prospects prevailed.”
Obviously, while he sailed for the British Navy, Menzies had the soul of a master gardener. Born and raised in the shadow of the Menzies family castle in Perthshire, at the edge of the Scottish Highlands, he grew up tending to the gardens of the estate. Later he studied botany and medicine at Edinburgh University. In 1786, at the age of 32, he sailed with Capt. James Colnett to the Northwest Coast, collecting a few specimens around Nootka, on Vancouver Island.
In 1791, he made his return trip, this time with Vancouver. When they returned to England four years later, he brought home his vast collection of seeds and specimens.
Nobody knows precisely what became of those specimens. We do know that, by the late 1700s, Great Britain was using wood for everything – fuel, construction and spars for the Navy, and that the native forests had been logged out. The British were replanting their forests, but were looking for trees that grew faster than the native evergreens.
Three decades later, in 1825, another Scottish naturalist, David Douglas, sailed to the Pacific Northwest and brought back more specimens. Somehow, the common name of our regional fir became Douglas, but the scientific name remained Menzies – pseudotsuga menziesii. And over time, most of Scotland and much of England was planted in Pacific Northwest trees – generally Sitka spruce on the damper west side of the island, douglas fir on the east side.
Mary and I learned about this a few years ago, when we were staying in the Scottish village of Dunkeld, with its medieval cathedral, and took a day hike up the River Tay. Passing through a grove of big evergreens, we followed a sign up a side trail to what was billed as the “Tallest Tree in Great Britain.”
It was a douglas fir, more than 200 feet tall, standing in a grove of douglas firs. Olde Dunkeld, whose human history dates back well over 1,000 years, sits in a Pacific Northwest forest. Mary scooped up a few cones at the foot of the giant and stuffed them in her purse. Later, she planted them in our Seattle garden. And last year, the young sapling moved with us – back to shores of Discovery Bay.
We call it the Menzies Tree. The Menzies castle is only five miles from Dunkeld, near the town of Aberfeldy, Scotland. We know that the naturalist had ties to the local of Duke of Atholl, and that the duke directed the replanting of his forests two centuries ago. Those trees must have come from Menzies’ seeds.
And since he spent more time around the Quimper Peninsula than just about anywhere else, it seems likely that Menzies collected many of his specimens right here.
Besides, the pioneer naturalist deserves credit for something. The fellow braved ocean voyages lasting up to four years, identified scores of previously-unknown species, carefully recorded his observations, brought back specimens and almost certainly contributed to the reforestation of Scotland and much of England.
Yet most folks hereabouts, and back thereabouts, have never heard of him. There is no published biography, and his journals have been out of print since the 1920s. Even his skipper managed to dis him; Vancouver grumbled about the potted plants on the decks of his ships and, while he named our landmarks after his crew and other obscure British naval officers, he never found so much as a rock to name for his trusty botanist.
But gradually, a few latterday Menzies fans are trying to rekindle some respect for the old Scot. A few years ago, the historical society published his journal entries from local waters. Jim Norris, Port Townsend’s fisherman-biologist, attached Menzies’ name to his boat and to his research organization – the Menzies Project. And my little Monk cruiser, which lives a mile or two up the bay from Vancouver’s 1792 anchorage, has been rechristened the good ship Archie Menzies.
And some day, long after I and my boat have puttered off to our proper punishment, I hope that little doug fir on Quinault Loop grows into a suitable memorial to Port Townsend’s original Master Gardener.
