Krannert Art Museum

In an interview on October 18, 2024, Kathryn Holliday, Randall J. Biallas Professor of Historic Preservation and American Architectural History in the School of Architecture, sat down with Jim Bier, a cartographer, and Lori Bier to discuss his garden design inspired by Japanese aesthetics, his house on South First Street designed by John Replinger, and his work on Japan House.

KH: I’ve started recording, so I’ll just say, just for my student transcribing it, that it is October 18, 2024, and I’m here with Jim and Lori Bier in their home on South First Street in Champaign, and we’re doing an interview that’s connected with the Making Place for the Arts at Home exhibition of the Krannert Art Museum. And we’ll start with some questions about the house here on South First Street, but I hope that we can just address any of the many amazing projects you’ve worked on.

JB: As my wife says, I talk too much sometimes.

KH: It’s great! That’s all good. And actually, my first question was what you were just talking about, which is, how did you choose this location for your house?

JB: Well for the house itself, when I decided to have a house built—it was not too many years after I graduated—and I had the opportunity to do that, [so] I looked at northeast Urbana, where there are more trees and all, and the bank said, “No, that’s not a particularly good area.” They suggested this lot here, this strip, and so we came out here and looked at it, and yes, [it was] nice! The university is across the way, behind me. I’m actually all surrounded by university, and it’s quiet—at that time it was—and so it was very appealing. I would have taken the last lot if I could, but that house was already built, and the one over here was, and I like this, the second-to-last slot. Here was just cornfield, nothing else in that. Six-tenths of an acre of land, I thought, that’s pretty good. And I could build my gardens and the house, and I held on to the land, I guess, for a couple years, collecting rocks everywhere, and didn’t do anything to the land in the meantime. [We] finally moved into the house in September of ’66 [1966] and immediately I had stuff to do inside as well as outside. I was working at the university in the Geography Department. I was a staff cartographer there, and that’s when I came to get a degree in cartography, I should say. And so that all started all of this thing, and I haven’t regretted it really , because we both like the location still, even though there’s more traffic out there.

But when we first moved in, it was pretty much a dirt gravel road, and we didn’t mind, but other people had the same feeling along here. They had some very nice houses, some of the olds, and then eventually Replinger came in with a couple more after he built this place. So, when it came time to have to actually choose somebody to build now, I wanted [the designs to be] half Japanese, half American, which is by most American standards, a weird thing to do.

Anyway, why Japanese American? Well, when I graduated undergraduate at Western Reserve University in Cleveland—now, Case Western it’s called—I looked for schools that would give me some money for scholarship. I did get a teaching assistant position here, which I thought was pretty good, and came here. So, I got my master’s degree in cartography and geography, and as soon as I graduated, I was hired by the department as staff cartographer, one of the very few in the country at that time for a geography department. And then we had a project right off the bat. When I first started. It was a pretty nice atlas project for the state of Illinois.

Between undergraduate and graduate to here (working as a cartographer), I escaped the army. I escaped it in World War II, when I graduated out of high school, just barely. Then along came the Korean War. I got deferments, and that was okay, an undergraduate, and then came along, going to grad school like a good guy, I wrote a letter to the draft board that I’m changing my address and all this. And I guess they thought it was time for me to leave, and they wrote back. They said 1A, right into the army. Well, there were some appeals and letters to them to see if we could extend that. That was in January [that] they were doing this. Well, fortunately, I was able to extend it to April 1st, April Fool’s Day, when I went into the army. I thought either Japan or Korea was where people were going at that time. Oh, I said, well I’ll go to Germany, that’s fine. I don’t know anything about Japan. And they would take people who were without children, not married. I was married, but no children. So eventually they caught me; we’re going west. And I had no idea. Well, I thought a whole bunch of us were going to go to Korea. The Korean War ended while I was in basic training at that time, that’s how close again I was, but I thought, they’re still sending a lot of people over even though the war had ended, and a lot of the men who were with me that I knew, and some of them were in my group of cartographers and geographers. They went off to Korea. I’m sitting in Tokyo wondering, where am I going for a whole week? Finally they say, “You’re staying here.”

Well, it turned out very nicely. I was assigned to the headquarters of all mapping for the Far East by the army. I was in a research analysis branch, and I was in charge of ten Japanese persons, drawing maps and diagrams when I was just supervising all of that. Because for me, they weren’t going to give me much of anything else because I was drafted. I was only to be there two years and I’ll be gone, so they didn’t want to invest a whole lot in me.

Turned out to be the best thing ever [that] happened to me. I had many weekends off, traveled quite a bit through the central part of Japan, and fell in love with everything from the food to the art, you name it. And so when I came home, I dreamt of having something that would remind me of what I had seen, and it’s the first time I had thought of anything other than being American, and even took the first course in Japanese language that they taught here at the time.

Anyway, I was ready to go after I was working full-time here. As I told you, I looked at this lot on this lot, and I said, it’s good, a big fir garden. Now I see it’s too big for a garden, way too much. So, I had to find somebody to build a house. I don’t know who recommended the Japan House architect, Jack Baker. Yeah, they recommend going to him. So, I went to him. [He said], “No, I’m too busy right now. I’ve been working on some other projects.” He recommended John [Replinger], and I said, okay, and went to John. Told John what I had. I even had a plan, a floor plan, of what I wanted. He says, “Well, that’s good that you had a floor plan, because I could see what you’re thinking of, what you’d like to have, and, being fresh out of school, you know, most people get to build a house much later in their time, but I’m pretty early on this and willing to, at that time, take on the cost of the house.” And so, he looked at my plan, and he came up with totally different ideas, but, at the same time, he saw how I was using these rooms, and went along with some ideas that I had, especially all of this glass. I had lots of glass in there, what the Japanese would have and everything, wood, natural wood, and other many features in here.

He came up with three plans. Two of them went lengthwise to the lot, which meant I was kind of looking out at neighbors. That didn’t appeal to me too much. And besides, [in a] Japanese house and garden, the back part of the house is part of the garden, anyway. And so he came up with a third plan, which was this: two buildings the same size, connected by a hall. One building is this way, the other building is at a right angle this way and gives it this in-and-out character that the houses would have. And I said, "Well, I think I’d like this one.” He said, “Well, that was my favorite too.” So that made me feel good. So that’s when we—I don’t know what the dates were or anything—but that wasn’t too long before he got the plans together and everything, and we started building. And as a result, everything pleased me to no end to what he had done, and he was certainly a good person to work with, very friendly, and we had a good time together just simply talking about Japanese things. He had quite a feeling for Japanese houses. I didn’t really ask him about it, but I’m sure, as an architect, he must have read quite a bit about it, and he was including things that I never said about that would make it more Japanese. So, he had a good feeling. I see many features around here which are really Japanese. Most Americans wouldn’t notice it. One of the main things in this house is that it’s built on a modular system, 5 feet, 4 inches, and used everywhere, inside and out, and that, in itself, is pretty darn good. The wide eave there, the deck being that, there’s a name for that deck, [mure-en] and it’s always about 2 1/2, 3 feet above the ground level. Everything, little things like that, were all put in, both outside and inside. Well, when it came to the inside, I just had so much money to spend. I had to pay architects, I pay carpenters. At that time, very definitely, [likely Ted Langhoff] was in charge. I forgot the two men who worked on it. I was going to put up people’s names who had worked on this house, and I was going to put it on the inside of the closet over here, just on the wall, as to who was involved in this house. I probably could reconstruct it from papers I have from way back. Anyway, it was Langhoff , and the two men who worked with him were really good, top-notch carpenters and had appreciation of wood, and so that in itself made it very good to me. And now the house is pretty darn old, but it’s done beautifully.

KH: It looks fantastic. It does not look old at all.

JB: And there are signs of wear in places, yes, but yeah. Well, with two people, it’s not gonna get [as worn as if] we had a couple of kids running around—that’s a lot different, but no.

So that is how I started wanting a Japanese character to this. I was so impressed by Japanese arts and what they were doing, everything in Japan. The quality and standards, they were way ahead of us at that time, and they still are. And I would love for America to be with that character of quality, everything to quality. And they go to the nth degree to get it. And I really admired them for that. So, when it came for me to do stuff, when I moved in the house, I had rented a house before that, and so really not much in the way of furniture, the dining room table and six chairs and a serving cart. I did that in the rented house with some pretty primitive equipment that I had. I needed, of course, a table saw, a circular saw for a lot of pruning, I mean cutting. But anyway, that started me off. I decided to sit down. I drew plans for the dining room set and produced most [of the] furniture.

The only experience I had in this was back in high school, because when I went to high school, I lived in Cleveland, where it was a very poor neighborhood, not real bad, but people, all, most of the guys who went to high school would wind up in a factory. The girls would wind up secretaries. That was pretty much automatic. Very few if any in my class went to college, and I discovered college between undergraduate and graduate school, and then I insisted on going, but not—well I should finish what I’m saying—in high school, I took a technical program which covered auto mechanics, electrical, just all kinds of things like that. And I said, what, that’s kind of dirty. If I want a job, I want a clean job, how about drawing, making drawings, and so mechanical drawing is what I specialized in for three years. And even got a special award because I was doing so good in it. And that turned out later, when I wanted to be a cartographer, I already knew how to draw very, very well, and so cartography became much easier for me. I didn’t have to pay attention to the drawing, it was other factors. So, I’m wandering in different directions here…

KH: Yeah, let me toss in a couple of follow-up questions. John had been in the army as well, and had also traveled overseas through being in the military. And was that ever a part of what your conversations were about? John Replinger’s service and your service?

JB: I don’t think he ever mentioned it to me.

KH: Okay, I was curious, because Jack Baker had also been in the military as well.

JB: Well, he may have, it may have just slipped my mind, losing a lot now anyway. But no, I don’t think he may have done it. I just thought, well, he was in. I went, okay, that’s fine, yeah, but never said more, because I wasn’t a gung-ho army guy or anything like that and I don’t think he was either.

KH: Yeah, I was just curious about that piece, because many of the architects who are part of this generation had all served as well. And so, I was curious about the way that that was or was not a part of what was all talked about.

JB: Well, as it turned out, even though I didn’t like the army, it was one of the best things for me. It did make me grow up a little bit faster. When I started here in grad school, I was okay in classes, but when I came back, everything was crystal clear. Big difference. It just was an attitude somehow that matured in those two years.

KH: I was also curious about [how] you talked some about collecting rocks before you began working on a garden. You talked about your weekends being free, sometimes while you were in Tokyo. Were there places that you visited in Tokyo that gave you the first inspiration for what you thought your garden might be?

JB: Well, fortunately, for traveling in Japan, most of the time I was in the Tokyo area, and that’s pretty big, and you’d wander all over that place, or even for the day, go out nearby with some really interesting stuff, not too far away. Every weekend I was out [for] one thing to get away from the army, even at night, when I was through in the evening. Army might come in and say, “We need somebody to do this.” I’m lying on my bunk, just resting. “No, you’re resting, but we need you.” [It would] spoil all evening, so the idea [was] to disappear as quickly as possible. And I had Japanese friends that I made, people who worked with me. And we [would] go out sometimes, and I’d get exposed to the foods and all this kind of stuff. So, I was out all the time, and tried to experience everything I could, staying at inns, learning how to live in an inn, and going to hot springs and things like that. I did climb Mount Fuji! I had to do that before I left, but it all left a lot for me. Of course, what I’m seeing here is pretty much the major things you see, not the little things. I’ve got a library of all kinds of stuff of Japanese culture that I don’t include here, but I still like to see it. Lori is one. She got interested in flower arranging and took lessons at the Japan House and has a pretty high degree in flower arranging [ikebana]. Although she’s not teaching right now, she’s been making flower arrangements for a long time. She absorbed what I was interested in too. So, does that cover some of that?

KH: Yeah, a little bit. Are there specific gardens in Japan that are ones that you find particularly inspirational?

JB: Oh yes! I’ve been [to] basically hundreds, and I’m trying to think of the number one garden in Japan today, there goes my blank. I’ve been into that garden twice, because once I came back and had the house and everything. First chance we had, I wanted to take Lori back to Japan to duplicate places I had been, first of all. So, we pretty much went all the routes where I was before, associated with all that. And then we went back, I think, four or five other times, and made it systematically, going from one trip at home, Hokkaido in the north to Kyushu in the south, and Shikoku nearby and on the other island. And we’ve seen Honshu, the main island of Honshu, everywhere. And I’ve seen a lot of gardens, and I have a wonderful collection of Japan. At every place I took, really, I think, good pictures. Some day somebody’s going to get them. I don’t know who should get them, but I wouldn’t mind giving them to the university, as long as they have use for them.

KH: I think a historical record of gardens of Japan is an amazing resource.

JB: Well, I have pictures of all these.

KH: Yeah, to show how they change or don’t change across time.

JB: Well, interestingly, they don’t change. At least, you don’t see much of a change, although, yes, I’ve learned from my own garden. There’s not any garden in Japan today that hasn’t had major changes in it. It’s just slow over time, going to something else. And I’ve read this too, the people saying the same thing. So right now, with this garden, with me unable to do just about anything here, the last two years, kind of went down because I just wasn’t getting any better, and unfortunately, now I have two men who two or three days a week, half days worked for the arboretum before they retired. I knew them back there, and I had trouble, I needed some help here, so I contacted them. They’re retired. They said, yes. They would like to work here. And one’s working out there today, right now.

KH: Oh, yeah. And they know the techniques?

KB: Yeah, they know gardening to begin with. And they’ve worked with Japan gardens a little bit, but most of the time they were working with the rest of the part of the arboretum. But they know how to take care of trees and stuff like that. So, it makes it easy. But I can’t do it anymore. Well, the garden is going downhill, I will admit, and we’re still trying to catch up from the way it was. At the same time, Lori says, “Don’t put any more money in this, because we’re not going to live here forever.” Well, I said, “We gotta keep it up, even if we sell the house. You don’t want to have it looking ratty, you should [have it] look halfway decent.” And so that’s the question we have right now. I do think I need to put a few things in, because I dismantled some stuff. It was left [over] space, and I needed to put something in that space.

KH: So, when you started to plan the garden in the 60s, when you began, did you draw the entire plan out?

JB: Oh, yes, okay, a cartographer.

KH: I was, what I was going to say, and did your knowledge as a cartographer influence that profession on how you design a garden?

JB: Just a small garden. It’s a small map. Yeah, that’s all it is. It’s a bush instead of a building, yeah, and I made drawings of everything I did in Japan House gardens. They have the complete set of everything built there, so they know what my thinking was there. And I do have the plan here. In fact, I’ll give you a plan. Well, I can do it right now.

KH: So, as a cartographer, like, what would you describe in the plan that we’re looking at here?

JB: Well, a Japanese backyard, it’s all different. What you really see are temple gardens, which are rather fixed, especially if they’re done by a particularly well-known designer. And a lot of the back gardens are not well-known in Japan. It’s good [that] people do it. I had a friend over there for years that we would visit, the family that I would stay with in Tokyo, and he was always working on gardens, that was his job. We’d sit there and talk about how they do things. And that was quite an array. I learned a lot, just by talking.

KH: What was his name?

JB: Oh, God, I can’t remember.

KH: Okay, that’s okay.

JB: Anyway. So, I gather information like that. Every time I went, I was really observing gardens and looking for ideas. This is just a combination of three ridges. Here’s the house upon this stream I created because it was flat land before. Everything on either side of the stream had to be built up. I had, I think it was ten or twelve loads, truckloads of topsoil brought in. The apartments just down the street were being built at that time, [and] they were trying to get rid of the topsoil. I said, “Come on over, $5 a load, cheap, just dump it.” And that’s what I did. And then I had two men come in with a little bulldozer and move stuff around for two years. So that was it. I said, “Okay, this is my stream down to this point.” This was a low point, anyway, at the end of the lot. And I just designed it so that [at] this pond, I wanted the water [to] flow slowly down to that point. And so, I had ridges in between to give it—just not flat. I wanted some height in there, to give it a little bit more interest. So that’s what I still have over there. But then I also wanted the woods. And so, I created my own woods, and then built up more trees, rather more trees now than anything. And then I wanted a sitting bench over there, a waiting bench for a tea garden. There’s one in Japan House that I built, and this would be just simply a gazebo, more than anything, and so little touches like that—a lot in the stream, [like], where’s the water coming from for the stream? Well, while it was being built, what are we going to do with the sump water? Because you can’t run it into somebody else’s yard. I said, “Oh, I know what I could do with it!” Put it in this pond so some water is pumped every 15 to 20 minutes into the pond and then overflows all [the] length, all the way down to the bottom and then sinks into the ground. And I’m probably the only one that has a man-made stream in his backyard like that.

KH: I think so, yes, that’s a very smart solution.

JB: Because I did want to have a pond of some kind, and so those are the most unique parts of it, actually the front.

You know, when you get to this age, your hands are, you don’t—I don’t have any fingerprints.

KH: Really? Oh, yeah, smoother.

JB: And it’s dry, yeah, so everything’s dry. I can’t stick to anything. So one thing I definitely wanted was this garden called the dry garden. Why dry? It is a garden with no water but suggesting water. And Japan House has the same thing. So just around here, it could be the water, the rocks can be hills or anything you want. And then respect. Now you’ve seen about where I get my rocks.

KH: Yes.

JB: Well, the lot was still bare for a couple years. I had a station wagon at that time. I’d go out on the country roads, up and down, looking for rocks that farmers dump along the road. Anything I could lift up I’d throw in the car. And I had a map, actually, I think I still have it, showing where all the rocks were located along the road in all the county.

KH: That map would be amazing, if you still have it. I would love to see that.

JB: It’s just pencil.

KH: That would be great.

JB: Well, I think I might be able to dig it out. I’m pretty sure I still have it.

KH: Yeah!

JB: But it showed where the rocks were that I could pick up. But I still made bigger rocks because, well, there’ll be some big rocks—there’s no way I can do it, and it’s difficult to have somebody come in specifically just to get that one rock. It can be quite expensive, so I have to leave it. But how do I get some big ones? I went to a contractor who was digging into the ground in various places, dismantling buildings. And I said, “Well, any place you go, you find any big rock, I’ll take a big rock if you can find a four-footer, even a five-footer, whatever.” And one day, he called up, and he said, “I got some rocks for you. Do you really want them?” I said, “Yeah come, bring them in here.” [It was a] truckload, heaped up high like this. He dumped them over what’s in the middle of the woods there now, and it was so heavy he tried to dump them, [and] the front end of the truck went up like that and got hooked. That was a bit of trouble to get them out. It was at this angle for quite a while. But anyway, we got a whole bunch of rocks very, very inexpensive at the time. I don’t remember what it was, but yeah. These are the basic ones. Now, there are four rocks at the base of each door here, and they are a good 4 feet. And maybe this is big. They were moved in place later on by the men who had the tractor, and [to get them] in place, [it was] pretty tricky to get it in. They are sinking, unfortunately, [and] whoever takes this garden over and wants to redo everything, they’re gonna have to lift those rocks up, put stuff underneath and get it back down again. And I don’t know if I want to mess with it—it’s dangerous. I have information on how the Japanese do it. I have lots of information on what they do. They make a tripod and hoist it there and, well, anyway, so that’s how I got most of my rock. Then on top of that, I am still looking for rocks. And everybody knew what I was looking for, at the university, and they said there’s some rocks over at Mahomet, on some land that the university owns, farmland. Yeah, let’s go over and take a look at what’s over there. And they dumped rocks there. Those rocks came from a glacial marine so we’re on a glacial marine, on the edge of it right here, but if that’s the same one or not, I forgot. Anyway, it’s a glacial marine. They’re always going to have lots of rocks. They took these rocks out when they were farming, throw them in the gully. And he says, “Which ones do you want?” I want them all. The university made arrangements: bulldozer, a couple of trucks, got them all hauled in. Those I used at Japan House.

KH: Okay, interesting, interesting. So there’s the rock piece, and then there’s the plant piece. How did you develop a plant palette that worked both for the Japanese aesthetic you were working for, but also for Illinois?

JB: The plants you’re talking about? Yeah, well, Tokyo is pretty much southern Illinois and Kyoto [is] northern North Carolina, maybe even the central part. No, not much snow in Kyoto, but even Tokyo does get snow. So, the climate isn’t much different than here, and it’s what plants you use. One plant they use, especially for the dry gardens, and even here, what those big green things which are used out there, they would use rooted endurance. They want the color of the rhododendron in the springtime, [and for the] rest of the year, you want it to just look like that. Well, rhododendron doesn’t have hardly any hair, southern Illinois, yeah. And so, you make modifications. They used yews. They used boxwoods a lot. And there are a lot of plants that they would normally [use], Japanese maple, which everybody loves, is history there, and so I got them in here too. And some are heartier than others for this area, just depends on what kind. It was hard to select anything, but it’s concentrated on evergreen. The color comes really from the deciduous. They don’t use deciduous or flowering perennials in big beds, like I saw in DC [or] in England. Oh, gorgeous thing. No way, totally the opposite. You put a couple of flowers here, and a little bit of flowers here, a little flower there, that way you concentrate looking at that rather than a mass. And it’s better to put the accent from a distance each time. So, you walk and discover something new every time you walk around, and that’s the Japanese way of doing it. So, I built for plants that would fit the climate, and not sure I would experiment with something borderline. And we’re now five and a half, almost six now in our zone, we were five and a half. It’s getting closer to being able to get some goodies.

KH: Some other stuff.

JB: Yeah, but I’m out of that now, unfortunately. But whoever builds this garden will rebuild it in the future. Why, they could have fun with it, if they know what they’re doing about Japanese gardens. I’m afraid, though, that nobody I’ve come across is as crazy about Japanese gardens as me in town.

KH: Yeah, it may take a little bit of looking, a little bit of looking for the right person to become the next [caretaker].

JB: Yeah, that’s it. It could be. It could be ruined in a hurry with somebody.

KH: Yeah, I wonder, yeah. It’s such an interesting question. I have another question that’s related to what you just brought up, which [is] with the experimenting, and are some of the experiments that you did here at your home. Did they inform how you approached designing for Japan House?

JB: Oh, almost everything I did here, I did for a number of years, learning to garden.

Yeah, so when Japan House came along and I built the start of the garden, I guess 1998—they’re celebrating the 25th anniversary now—I thought I was ready. Nobody asked me to design—that I can recall—nobody asked me to design a tea garden. I knew they needed a tea garden, and I just drew up the tea garden. I showed it to Kimiko [Gunji], who was in charge then, and she said, “Oh, yes, but we don’t have any money.” And also with that, I made a model so that people could really see what it looks like, rather than just on paper. And that did help everybody. I did it for both gardens. And so anyway, they didn’t have any money. Well, we already made this thing. I said, “Well, it’s not going to be much to make the tea garden because it’s going to be much smaller than this, and you bought small plants, it’s different. If you buy big plants—cost.” And so I said, I will build it and donate completely, which solved their problem very nicely. I’ve done that right up to, well to now. I still say I will donate or give or pay for anything that needs to be done on those gardens. But now they don’t come running to me, so they just seem to do it themselves. And I can’t really go over there all the time anyway. Yeah, so I’m really stepping out of it, but that is my learning area. And I had plenty of years to do that. What, 20 years something, yeah. And in the meantime, I did have these tours, people coming in. Word got out about the gardens.

The house was brand new. Everything was around. People still wanted to—our garden clubs wanted to—come in. And then I think three or four times, the health tour every year of the three, they’ve been here three or four times. The Champaign-Urbana Symphony once had about 500 people come through here. So, I learned about the tours, touring, and learned about how people work in gardens and mood gardens. But now, as I say, this is going downhill here. Unfortunately, I see it. I can’t help it. My gardeners are doing their best to keep it going, and they will work next year, but I don’t know how long they’re going to want to work past next year. I’m afraid that if I can’t get reliable and economic service, we can’t live here. I never thought about that when I was building the garden. It’s far bigger than I can handle. But we have, right at the moment, we’ve pruned the trees pretty good. The bushes are pruned pretty good. We’re working now at the low level, cleaning up weeds that have been accumulating. And I think it would be a lot easier next spring, the trees won’t have to be worked on so much as they were last year. And we’re trying to simplify it. Lori keeps saying, “Take that bush out. Take that one out.” I say, “No, that’s part of it.” She doesn’t see that.

KH: Well, since you spent so much time and have poured so much effort into this vision, seeing it change—actually, you see things that that no one else would.

JB: You know, one time I asked the university would they want the house after we had to leave. And they said, “Well, we can keep it maybe for eight years, but we can’t guarantee after that what they’re going to do for the college.” You got landscape architecture there?

KH: Yep, [landscape] architecture here.

JB: It would fit into the college. But whether it’s a headache or not, I’ve tried to keep it in good shape so there’s not much, at least for the house expense. Some things are dying here. The tree right outside here is dying. We debated about letting it go until next spring, see if it comes back. If not, I have to put a new tree in and wait five to ten years to get a decent tree in there and try to buy the biggest I can get in that space. But, still it would take a good five, six, seven, eight years, but it’s old like me. They’re dying just like me. They’re getting old. And so far, there’s one original tree here in the back, a Siberian maple. I’ve used them in a number of places, and the oldest one is right now in the, right back in the corner there.

KH: Back that way?

JB: Yeah, do you see a big trunk back there?

KH: Yeah. Is that it about here?

JB: It’s about here. Well, about here someplace. It is hidden by all the other stuff in here. But I’ve lost three or four other old ones. That’s the oldest now. If you walk back there, you can see a stump of one that I cut down a few years ago—stump was that big around. I didn’t know northern Siberian maple would get that big! Unbelievable. It’s a monster. But these are shorter because they’re stuck close together. And then this one was all by himself, so he can go take it over. Well, that’s what you learn about gardening.

So, it’s going downhill. I could see things that [are] embarrassing. But other people are like, “Oh! This looks so nice!” So, I won’t say anything.

KH: Yes, it looks fantastic. It really does look amazing. I know that there are things that you see that the rest of us do not.

JB: Well, as long as it’s clean, neat, organized, it should be appealing to people. I had a lot of stuff in there. I also have lists of what plants go in. I didn’t get detailed to locate the exact spot, like the woods. [I said], “It’s in the woods, go search for it.” And I know many of them don’t exist now, but they come and go. I just tore down another area. Just, we just tore that a week ago. I have an arbor over here with the Chinese bittersweet on it. For many years, bittersweet was on there. It’s a nice plant going over the whole thing, but it never did have flowers like I expected. In fact, I’m not even sure, I have to go to the books again and check on it, but I should probably have gotten the American bittersweet, but with more fragrance to it. But anyway, the whole system, we just had to tear [it] down. I used to have a fireplace with wood, and [I] took that out. That’s what was on that floor there. And I used to store all my wood for the fireplace at night for the winter over there. So now that’s a big open spot. I need to find something to put in there next year that may be a little bit more colorful, large bushes or something, I don’t know what yet. I have to think about it.

KH: Yeah, so, this spot with the pebbled concrete had a wood-burning stove. Is that correct?

JB: Yeah, it was a free-standing stove. Quite attractive globe, you might [say], white globe, white pipe. It was quite pretty, but we got to the point where Lori said, “I can’t go hauling wood anymore!” and I certainly can’t do it either. We’re right now arguing about right outside last year; I’ve always had birds fed in the wintertime in the woods. I used to do a lot of it, put it in there, that way the mess isn’t cleaned up. It just stays, but last year, I put it on here so I could look at it over breakfast or dinner. Watch the birds. I love to watch the birds in their garden. But now, Lori says, “Do you want to put that up?” I can’t walk there in the middle of winter and feed that up. I’m going to try. We’ll both try. We’ll see if it works. But if she’s having trouble now with her legs, arthritis, and I don’t know if I can put that up or not, but look forward to having the birds there, yeah, and the squirrels all gathered, and everybody over there. I get a lot of birds in the wintertime there, all different times. And then a hawk comes in and goes after all of them.

KH: I have one more question for you. I know I’ve taken a lot of your morning, but you mentioned having to make changes in the house, and I was curious if you, after the initial construction, did you keep working with John Replinger on maintenance or changes, or did you have other folks that you work with?

JB: No, I didn’t have—well after the carpenters finished everything inside, I went and did my own work, like the tokonoma here, and built that and carved the cold air returns, each one different.

KH: You carved those yourself?

JB: Yeah, all over the house. And you, well, you know, I made all the furniture so…

KH: Yes!

JB: So yeah, I was busy. I don’t know why. How I could be doing that and do that out there, that must be really crazy, but I had the energy, I guess. But I didn’t do anything. Once it was built, John came over a few times, but there was nothing. We did, mostly just social [gatherings], get together for a little bit. I always respected him and his wife. They are both very, very nice people, and I was always sorry to hear when he died. But, there came a time, ten years [ago]? I’m forgetting so much, and it’s in the records. Anyway, John put the siding on here. Originally it was all redwood all the way through. And at that time, it was cheap, and so the whole siding right up to the eave coming out was redwood, but in places where it was direct sun hitting it, especially at the front of the garage, it was going through the first layer, going down to the second layer. And I thought, we need to change this. So, I went to Dorothy [Dot Replinger], asked her if you would recommend anybody who would do this kind of work. “My son could do this work,” [she said]. I had no idea that he was an architect and living near Seattle. So, I contacted him. “Yeah, I’ll do it. I got the plans,” [he said]. He had all the plans of his father, and he just did it. Hardly met him. I only met him once, when he came here, and he didn’t have to look at the house. He looked at it and saw underneath the eave is well protected because of the slope of the roof and the plywood up there like, no, so we’ll leave that underneath there. Only underneath the edging that we have inside and outside, which is Japanese, we’ll put in. I wanted to have solid cedar, clear cedar—and that’s what he did. And when he finally did it, I had no idea. He didn’t even have, I guess he had, a plan. I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to it, but just said it’s going to go all around the house. He used, in some places, vertical arrangements, sometimes horizontal. And this made it far more interesting than it was originally with just the plain plywood. So, to me now, his son did a better job than the father did.

KH: Nice, yeah, part of the evolution of the garden and the evolution of the house.

JB: So, I’m really happy with it. Right now, the front stoop needs to be replaced, at least the outer boards further back against the wall. They do look pretty good. I could leave them, I guess, but they’re clear cedar, and I’m going to have it done this fall, but then I decided to have it done next spring, I hope. The steps up are starting to rot, not dangerous, but still rotting. I think just replacing that is all that needs to be done at the moment. This is still in pretty good shape around the other decks. That’s the only thing I can see outside that’s a problem.

KH: Yeah, it looks like it’s in incredible shape. I just moved here a year ago, and we bought a house designed by Jack Baker, and it is not in this good of a shape. So, I really appreciate the attention that you’ve taken to [your house] and the care [as well].

JB: Yes, I was, I think the woodworkers, the woodworking that the men did was good because I was already familiar with woodworking. I felt they’re doing good quality stuff, and I am very happy for that. I mean, when they get the joints and corners all over, especially that strip that goes all the way around the whole house, it fits beautifully everywhere. That’s the way I like to work, too. I try to make the tokonoma here just as good a quality as what the campus or the carpenters would do. And I’m kind of proud of that, especially putting in that one post. I look at it now and say, “How the hell did I do that?”

KH: It’s amazing.

JB: I did fit it pretty good.

KH: Yeah! I said, I know I was going to let you pause now, but I do have one more question, related to the very first things you were talking about, about other houses on the streets, and other houses being built and moving in. Could you talk a little bit about the street and like you were almost first [to move in]?

JB: I was the first, definitely. And I noticed that one of the houses that came after this sometime had a little gate up front. I wondered if he got the idea from my gate here, but it was more abstract to what he put over there, and I’ve been in, not that house, but the other one. I knew the people there. They invited the people all along here to have a little get-together at Christmastime, which was very nice of them to do. So, I got to see what it was like inside. [It was] a lot more of a fancy house than I certainly have—mine is so plain—but then at the same time, it’s Japanese! It’s plain. And I tell people, I say, “It’s amazing!” You look into the kitchen, it’s raw wood there. We have granite top or something like that. They just have wood, how do they keep it clean? Well, they do. So, I like the simplicity. That’s the point. I wanted this thing designed [with] a fireplace, and we took it out. I didn’t have really anything in mind. I was not thinking, and I said, let somebody else do it. I gave them a rough idea what to do. And I waited, waited, waited. They kept making measurements and stuff, but nothing was coming. So finally, I got disgusted. I got out a piece of paper and said, “Do it this way.” And I said, “Use white oak like it’s on the floor, and just do that.” Well, they did, and that to me, that’s fine. Nothing elaborate. I wanted it very plain, to match everything else.

KH: It looks good. It looks good. Your standing fireplace must have been quite remarkable.

JB: It was quite beautiful, standing by itself, white like a big mushroom cap. It came from an outfit in California that doesn’t exist now, and it was quite attractive, a cream color. It was not white—it was cream colored. And then the chimney ran up. Everything was quite blended in very nicely. But this has worked out very well too. I didn’t want to take that out, because I like the stone in there, for one thing, just to have it different.

KH: Well, the house and the garden are beautiful. Thank you for sharing them. Is there anything else? I know we’ve really focused on this house and the garden here more than anything else. Is there anything else you’d like to say as we’re wrapping up? Anything I haven’t thought of?

JB: I know, I guess, glad that people are focused on my house, which to me, this is a great honor, because there are other regular houses that are a lot more expensive than this house. It was a pretty inexpensive house in the first place. I keep saying it was around $35,000 but I am not sure right now. But anyway, it wasn’t expensive, and even the wiring out there, I did that myself.

Transcription by Mary Baker