IN BONNEY LAKE, five G-scale trains chug through stands of false cypress (Chamaecyparis), pine (Pinus) and fir (Abies). Tracks wend among exposed rock formations planted with native Lewisia, sea thrift (Armeria maritima) and other alpine plants. Stepping into the scene is like being transported into an alternative reality that’s part “Gulliver’s Travels” and part “Honey I Shrunk The Kids.”
Four years ago, the Pierce County backyard was nothing more than turf, a trio of rocks and a few trees. But when Jimmie Nord and his wife, Celia, bought the property, Nord saw a blank canvas awaiting invention.
Nord is the creator and steward of Fern Garden Railroad, a miniature landscape familiar to anyone who’s traveled down Highway 101. The garden’s name is a tribute to time he spent on his grandparents’ property in Eureka, Calif., surrounded by redwood trees and hundreds of ferns.
You might say trains run in the family. Nord remembers watching his grandfather work on HO-scale trains, a popular size, in the garage. “I got to help here and there, which probably meant handing him tools and trying not to break anything,” he recalls. The happy memory left an impression.
Nord evokes a mountain landscape by placing compact buns of needled evergreens among upright dwarf conifers pruned to look like mature trees. The understory is carpeted with ground hugging perennials, such as succulent stonecrop (Sedum), hens and chicks (Sempervivum tectorum) and dwarf mondo grass (Ophiopogon japonicus ‘Nanus’). A fern collection and an occasional flowering seasonal bulb break the botanical fourth wall but satisfy the gardener in Nord.
Before moving to the Pacific Northwest, Nord taught Art and Design at Cal Poly Humboldt in Northern California. Today he’s a high school ceramic and sculpture teacher. His experience in dimensional art informs the tiny backyard landscape. When he’s not making other forms of art, Nord estimates that he spends around 20 hours a week in the train garden carefully placing every rock, plant and mound of soil.
Fern Garden Railroad is a collection of small gardens — a rocky scree here, a forested passage there — that create the illusion of a sprawling landscape containing several biomes. Whether he’s composing an exposed sunny mountainside or shady wooded dell, Nord says “I love working in those little spaces, seeing how plants interact, and how textures, forms and colors play off each other. That’s where all the interesting stuff happens.”
Watching the trains chug along tracks throughout the garden is mesmerizing. “It’s almost like you’ve shrunk down and stepped inside it,” Nord observes. “It changes your perspective in a really fun way.” He characterizes the railroad as a “moving viewpoint” that provides an alternative way of exploring the space.
Weighing the importance of the landscape and the railroad, Nord says his priority is the garden. (Like his grandparents, he has a thing for ferns.) Trains may not run the garden, but they do determine its design to an extent.
“In some ways the trains tell me what’s possible,” he says. No tight turns or overly steep slopes. People-sized paths allow visitors to get a good look at features like a sunny crevice garden where plants fill nooks and crannies between angled flat stones.
Nord’s latest project involves extending tracks into an area beneath a shade tree where he plans to feature regional native plants, including Western sword fern (Polystichum munitum) and deer fern (Blechnum spicant) along with several young maples, alder and Western red cedar (Thuja plicata) — “probably more,” he adds. At the heart of Fern Garden Railroad, Nord made a private train-free garden for his wife, “a quiet, hidden spot” where she can sit, read and enjoy.
Ever resourceful, Nord uses discarded and found materials to expand his little railroad empire. With plans to open it to visitors, he’s collecting bricks to lay wheelchair-accessible pathways.
Nord also shares his garden on Instagram, where he has connected with like-minded gardeners and railroad enthusiasts like the Hardy Fern Foundation and Puget Sound Garden Railroad Society. These communities have “made the whole experience more meaningful,” Nord says. “I’ve been able to see what others are doing, ask questions and get ideas.”
After following @Ferngardenrailroad on Instagram, Roby Babcock, marketing director at Oregon-based Iseli Nursery, offered to donate a variety of dwarf conifers to the project; grown in 4-inch pots, they’re ideal for bonsai, rock gardens and, apparently, railroad gardens. “I definitely didn’t see that coming,” Nord says, amazed. “The next thing I know, I’m visiting their nursery, walking through their incredible garden, and coming home with trees.”
The railroad garden is more than a hobby. “It’s like creating a living piece of art. It’s a landscape, a sculpture, and something is always changing and evolving.”
Lorene Edwards Forkner: is the author of the newly published “Grow Great Vegetables Washington.” Find her at ahandmadegarden.com and at Cultivating Color on Substack.
Comments are closed.