By KATHLEEN O’CONNOR/YachatsNews
Vacationers and locals alike cannot help but take a closer look at Roger Harris’s flower garden at 205 Alsea Bay Drive in the Bayshore community on the north edge of Alsea Bay.
Often a driver will stop and back up to admire the beauty that Harris has created, a surprise in the middle of what is mostly a sand dune landscape.
Harris and his wife, Yita, built their home on the north bank of Alsea Bay in early 2022. By the next summer Harris had built dozens of raised flower beds, filled them with potting soil, and had plants sprouting.
For the last three years he has spent every free moment during the growing season tending to his garden.
Harris is a native Oregonian, growing up mostly in Canby. His college years took him to several different states and Japan, where he became fluent in Japanese. His master’s degree from the University of Hawaii was in the politics of China. He was hired immediately by the National Security Agency and he still cannot comment about the work he did there.
After three years he went to work for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and (surprise!) he can’t comment much about the 12 years he spent there either.
From there Harris became a private investigator in Oregon, working for defense attorneys. He quickly became a mitigation specialist, doing exhaustive background research about defendants to help to determine their psycho-social backgrounds. He worked on the defense teams for some of the most notorious criminals in Oregon.
Question: How did you cope with your job as a mitigation specialist?
Answer: I have spent long hours interviewing heinous criminals and all the people who interacted with them, spending many, many long hours in courtrooms, jails and prisons. For major crimes the defense must compile an extensive background about the client, hoping to find evidence that his/her sentence merits some mercy. Specifically, in the case of murder and capital murder, the defense wants to avoid the death sentence. My work was fascinating, but it could also take a toll mentally and emotionally. I think I learned to detach and to compartmentalize early in my career. Also, during the time I was working I participated in aggressive sports like downhill skiing and basketball. You can’t think about a murderer when you’re flying down a mountain or driving for a layup.
Q: How long have you been creating flower gardens?
A: My wife, Yita, has had flower gardens wherever we have lived, and although I always helped her with the physical labor, she took care of the flowers. When we purchased our first vacation home here in Bayshore in 2005 I needed to build a retaining wall to keep the sand dune out of the back yard. That created a protected spot, and I decided to build raised beds. Yita was busy taking care of the gardens at our home in Salem, so I became the Waldport flower gardener.
About three years ago we bought this lot, which we truly love. It’s a privilege to have a front row seat to watch what happens on Alsea Bay … the activity is never-ending. Because I’d been successful with flowers at the first house I figured I could make things grow here, too.
Q: There aren’t many flourishing flower gardens in Bayshore. How have you been so successful with your flowers?
A: Most people think that the sand and the salt make gardening nearly impossible here, but you can grow almost anything if you provide better soil and protect plants from the wind and the salt. I have hauled hundreds of bags of potting soil into my yard; only a few things in my garden are planted directly in the sand. There are dozens of planting boxes in my yard, and I’m still looking for places to put more. And I’ve built several trellis wind barriers to protect tall or climbing plants.
I use Miracle-Gro fertilizer every now and then, I water by hand, I check for slugs every morning and I add compost to the beds in the winter.
Q: What flowers grow best for you? Have there been any failures?
A: I have dozens of kinds of flowers … I don’t know exactly how many. Some of the stellar performers are catmint, hebe, dahlias, geraniums, hydrangeas and daisies. Honeysuckle, Rose of Sharon and clematis do well when they’re protected from the wind. I had high hopes for rhododendrons the first year, but I had to dig them up and re-home them with a friend. Arborvitae was definitely a failure.
Most of my plants are perennials. While I’m waiting for a plant to grow I fill in the blank spots around it with annuals. I don’t have a favorite flower … they are all dear to me.
Q: What is it about gardening that you like so much?
A: I retired four years ago, and I’ve found gardening to be very restorative. In retirement I could have dwelled on the ugliness and injustice that I saw while I was a private investigator, but I absolutely cannot do that if I am looking at a flower. I literally look at every flower in my garden as I wander through it each day, never having anticipated how peaceful and meditative I would be as I create and tend to it.
Tell us a secret.
Nature photography and sports photography are my other hobbies. Yita and I have had some of our favorite nature photos made into large prints and we have them displayed throughout our home. And I have thousands of pictures of our 14 grandchildren playing sports.
- Kathleen O’Connor is a Waldport freelance writer who can be reached via email at kmoc8916@gmail.com
God has given him a place of peace, a talent to cherish. May he have a great retirement. He now gets to see the beauty in his flower work.