New Garden Manager Bio: Catherine Dufresne

New Garden Caretakers!

Hello! My name is Catherine Dufresne. Kennedy Birley and I are the new garden managers for this school year. Here is a little about myself and how I came to be here:

I have always felt a special connection to the Earth, particularly the Pacific Northwest. For the first five years of my life, I lived in a home next to one tree. The seemingly ancient red alder stood behind my house among all the other cookie-cutter houses in my neighborhood. I used to play at the base of the trunk that was so wide, even Daddy couldn't put his arms around it. From spending hours underneath it catching crane flies with my little brother, the outline of the tree's dentate-edged leaves imprinted themselves onto my brain. 

After I turned five, my family moved to a rural area in unincorporated Snohomish County. It is surrounded by boggy woods and swamp, a bird sanctuary, Lake Cassidy and Catherine Creek. Needless to say, there were many more trees for me to explore. Running through Douglas fir and western hemlock and climbing the red cedars helped me learn the flora and fauna of the area at an early age. Diagrams I drew of different species of crane flies and dried devil's club leaves hung in my room. Living next to a lake also gave me opportunities to see diverse bird-life. Their feathers became comfortingly familiar to me; duck and goose feathers were rounded and waterproof, Steller's jays' feathers were the deepest blue, owl feathers had a silent softness to them. Around third grade I filled a notebook with behaviors and feather types of my neighbor's peacocks, and in sixth grade, my parents decided to raise chickens for their eggs. But while I have loved the creatures that run, fly and crawl, if I had to describe my childhood in a single word, it would be "green". 

My little sister with me in the Bog Woods, mid-April.

View of Lake Cassidy from a cedar.

Bob likes to look at himself in the reflection of the glass. That and the cheerios we feed him.

My mother and grandmother managed to turn the mud and clay in our yard into a garden that I inherited by degrees as all three of us got older. I continued to grow their edible nonnatives and added native transplants, creating a system that fed me and the creatures living in the woods surrounding it. Because most places around my house are moist and shaded, there were limits to what I could grow in my garden. Most areas I filled with shade-loving natives. Foamflower, youth on age and fringecup tellima were clustered together around the rainspout, and nootka roses and both sexes of trailing blackberry sprawled under a Douglas fir. Salal and red huckleberry grew from a cedar stump and were further shaded by vine maple. Lady and sword ferns were scattered wherever they would fit and be happiest. I also cared for the boggy forests beyond the yard. I set up trails through my property and kept them passable throughout the year for use by my family. Cutting back vinka and English ivy encroaching from other properties was done every other year. I was not entirely sure whether my garden was an extension of the woods or the woods was an extension of my garden.

I couldn't find my garden pictures, but here is a fall scene of a portion of it.

I left all that behind (with a generous layer of compost) when I came to Saint Martin's University. I was drawn here by the campus' small size and residence halls nestled in the trees. This was where I wanted to get my degree in biology with a botany emphasis. That first year, I was part of OIKOS, a group that focuses on sustainability. Our UNI101 class together first brought me to the learning garden. Food and green was spilling out of all the planter boxes! Harvesting all of it honestly felt like Christmas. Once harvesting was complete, we formed groups and divided tasks among them. My group was in charge of greenhouse gardening, something I hadn’t ever tried before. I was given the opportunity to apply my botanical knowledge and my desire to be mindful of the environment to a new sort of garden. As the days shortened, the humidity in the greenhouse increased. Long story short, all its residents but some mint and maybe one chard seedling rotted away. 

That spring and summer, I didn't get very many chances to work in the garden and redeem myself. When I saw this job opening, I was exceedingly excited. I can finally get some soil on my hands again! This fall, most of the outdoors work will be taken care of by the current OIKOS students. My pet project will be to get the greenhouse up and running throughout the winter. This will require lots of research, clever resource allocation, and more trial and error, but now that I have some experience on what NOT to do, it shouldn't be too hard. Right?