Ron Steinberg’s method of gardening is not about neat pruning, straight edges or defined paths. He has a collector’s mentality, and his focus is bizarre and difficult-to-grow plants. “I like to grow different stuff for the challenge,” said Steinberg. As a result, his garden on Bend’s west side is a wild and lively show of spikes, spines and creeping vines. He has Turk’s caps lilies with blossoms that face down, sea holly with a blue stem and sharp-petaled flower, and fritillaria, a tropical plant that blooms red and yellow in early spring when snow still covers the ground.

Before and after

When Ron and his wife Michi Sato moved to Bend from Utah with their daughter Sydney, the backyard was full of juniper and Italian plum trees. There was a concrete patio out the back door and there “was no garden whatsoever,” said Steinberg. After removing eight juniper and seven plum trees, Steinberg built lava rock walls to form terraces, shaped stairs and paths in natural sandstone and added “I don’t know how many tons of horse manure” to amend the soil.

They chose to leave one juniper tree, which Steinberg now wishes had been removed. “As a gardener, (juniper) just ruins (the soil). That’s why I can’t grow a lawn. It takes all the water and it puts off inches and inches of debris.” Steinberg shook a branch and berries and leaves came showering down. “See?” he said.

Steinberg says if he were starting all over, he would remove the existing soil and add his own nutrient-rich soil. “Gardening is all about your soil. The better soil you have, the better the plants and the better it holds moisture so you don’t have to water as much.”

Meticulous beginnings

Steinberg’s introduction to gardening was helping his father with his rose garden in Montreal. Every fall would begin the production of preparing the roses for winter. “He’d prune them back, and if they were a vine type he’d lay them down and bury them. It was a big deal,” said Steinberg, who chooses not to grow roses because they attract aphids. The main plant types Steinberg grows are clematis, cactus, fritillaria and allium. He grows at least 12 varieties of allium, including a hair allium, which looks like a little strawberry with long, wiry hair.

Breeders in Japan, Canada, England and the U.S. create hybrid clematis varieties, according to Steinberg. “There’s maybe 1,000 different clematis. I don’t have room for 1,000, but I have 20 to bloom right now. ~ I’ve had as many as 40. … I like to grow the unusual or some of the ones that have super blooms.”

He has both pad and ball-type cacti, including a claret cup cactus that he’s had for 14 years.

The space

Framed by a trellis covered in different types of clematis blooming vibrant magenta and purple, Steinberg’s backyard is a multi-tiered space filled to the brim with foliage and blossoms. In the middle of the garden is a former pond that has been drained and is used as a cactus garden. A claret cup cactus blooms brilliant red and a Buddha head shrouded by milkweed and pink penstemon watches serenely from a perch.

Garden decorations include tall pieces of rebar with ornate finial tops made by Steinberg. Paths are shaded by elderberry, centaurea, cashmere sage, painted daisies and taller plants of foxtail lily, echinops globe thistle and sea holly.

Steinberg chooses to grow the more unusual varieties of common plants, like foxglove. “They’re normally pink and you see them all over the coast, but this foxglove is dark brown with a solid mass of tight, tight florets.”

Being that the Steinbergs are building a smaller home in Bend and creating a new garden space there, Steinberg says he hasn’t planted anything new in two years, unless a friend gave him a plant, nor has he had a lot of time for garden maintenance. “The fact that it’s sort of out of control at the moment doesn’t bother me. I’m not a meticulous gardener, you know. It’s not full of weeds, but if there’s a weed here or this is encroaching there, that’s OK,” Steinberg explains. The encroaching plants and wispy vines seem to be a perfect style for the eccentricity of the plants. “When these plants are blooming and nobody else in town has got it — I come out here in the morning and go ‘Wow! How is that growing in Central Oregon?’ That is the big thing for me: to grow something that’s unusual.”