One Man’s Garden

BY KIMBERLY MAYER

Out on the slim peninsula between Westcott Bay and Mosquito Pass, Barb Fagan and I came calling. An Australian Sheepdog named Joey came running, and a man with a full white beard looking like David Letterman strolled down the drive to open the gate for us. Silver birch line the driveway, trees that he planted years ago. Barb was introducing me to Chet Genther. They are both members of the San Juan Island Garden Club, and it crossed my mind that I may be the only islander not familiar with him.

“I joined the Garden Club to learn to grow flowers,” he said with a smile. For Chet is a food gardener through and through. From the sanctuary for wild roses which it was, to now, every bit of his arable land is tended. “I wanted a farm,” explained Chet, “but one acre is plenty.” Plenty enough for an orchard of apples, plums, Bartlett pear, Asian pear, and crops of cantaloupe, watermelon, sweet potato, red beets, table grapes, 13 varieties of tomatoes, Marionberries, blue berries, raspberries, and strawberries as ground cover.

A Valencia orange tree which began in a solar room in Redmond, Washington has reached maturity on island under a heat lamp in the greenhouse. Orange trees self-pollinate in a breeze, so a fan simulates trade winds. Braeburn apples grow in bunches like grapes, their weight on branches considerable. “I can’t store what I can grow,” notes Chet. Thus crops of whole trees regularly go to The Friday Harbor Food Bank. There’s a generosity to Chet’ s every step. Even his bushy white beard growth is slated for playing a Santa at Nordstrom in Bellevue over the holidays.

Barb and I had the privilege of stepping into one man’s garden. We bade goodbye, our arms laden with produce. Remembering that Chet had joined the San Juan Island Garden Club to learn to grow flowers, I had to ask Barb, did we see any flowers? She laughed. Not the right time of year of course for blooms, but it may also be that it’s fruit trees that keep flowering in this bit of paradise.

Originally published October 8, 2025 in The Journal of the San Juan Islands