Ballard (Hiram M. Chittenden) Locks

This guide to the botanical garden at the Ballard Locks in Seattle follows Carl S. English Junior, who arrived in 1931 as an assistant gardener hired simply to grass over a gravel field for marching drills, and instead spent decades filling the grounds with plants gathered from around the world. It traces how ship captains passing through the locks handed him cuttings and seeds on their way between Puget Sound and Lake Washington, and how a 1948 Harvard expedition to China brought back seed of the dawn redwood, a tree once thought extinct. You'll hear how English insisted the garden be worthy of serious study, with something blooming in every season. Look for the dawn redwoods still growing from that original seed as you walk the grounds.