Anne Jaeger
“Tools are like people, sometimes they need new jobs,” says artist Ray Huston, who makes new jobs for old gardening tools by employing them in his garden gates. Each of his gates tells a story, because the gardener provides the accoutrements. There’s the lady who inherited her grandfather’s tools but had no way to use them, until Ray Huston got his hands on them. For her birthday, the woman’s husband asked Huston to use them in a gate. “So I stood there with her grandfather’s tools in this gate and all of a sudden you can see tears welling up in her eyes.” That’s the real pay-off for this self-made artist. Huston’s work brings the past alive when he takes “cardboard boxes filled with stuff that nobody sees and makes possessions worth having.”
Huston’s work may render people speechless, but he works entirely by word-of-mouth. Gardeners find him. Huston gates aren’t sold at garden centers but his trellises are. The only place you’ll get into his gates is if you’re lucky enough to run into him at one of the local garden fairs. Huston and 139 other unique nurseries and garden artists will sell stuff at this weekend’s fund-raiser for the Clackamas County Master Gardener program.
This is the 19th year for the Spring Fair and if you haven’t gone. You gotta see it to believe it. What makes it unique is the little mom and pop greenhouse people who show their wares at the fair and nowhere else. There’s an excellent selection of plants, hanging baskets, shrubs, trees, garden ornaments, furniture, books, tools, gates, trellises, arbors or anything else gardeners need. You can even bring a ziplock bag with a bit of soil in it and have the pH level tested for free. (Important if you’re trying to grow roses in a spot that is too alkaline for their tastes or rhodies in soil that isn’t acidic enough.)
Garden fairs are a good fit for Huston. About 8 years ago, Ray Huston got started because he says he “was a gardener anyway and built myself a gate and people liked it so much I decided this was a good way to make money.” Oh, yeah. The gates run about $500. And there’s quite a demand for them.
Today about 50 of Ray Huston’s gates grace Portland gardens. This gate in Joanne Fuller’s garden in Northeast Portland has a big hoop that used to hold the wooden wine barrels together at her father’s winery. Joanne had such fun finding old binoculars, a wind-up alarm clock (which, by the way, quit working until Huston put it into the gate), an old shovel, pruners, sheers and a little bell on the opening mechanism. There’s one hidden on every one of Ray Huston’s garden gates. It’s kind of like playing, “Where’s Waldo” when you come upon one of these gates. Every one is different, but each of them ring a bell when you see it.
Master Gardener Spring Garden Fair
Clackamas County Fairground
Highway 99E in Canby, Oregon
