Carpet of green: Moss-covered garden creates a vivid landscape

Joanne Kempinger Demski
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

When you walk into any beautiful garden you get a sense of peace and tranquility.

No matter what style of garden it is, the flowers, shrubs and trees, and the wildlife they attract, make you want to relax and slow down.

Dale Sievert’s garden – which is filled with moss – is no exception. In fact, his green spaces give such a tranquil feel that you may find yourself wanting to curl up on a moss-covered surface and relax while listening to the sound of water that comes from one of his many water features.

Dale Sievert steps across a foot bridge on his property.

But a space this tranquil doesn’t just spring up overnight. Sievert said it took him years.

“I began building my gardens after buying a bare, one-acre lot near Waukesha in 1969,” he said. “Every year witnessed new gardens and features, and thankfully, the end does not appear in sight.”

When Sievert, who is now retired, started planting his gardens, he used a variety of different flowers and began carving out garden areas.

But in 2005 he became so enamored with moss, that his gardens began to take on a new look.

“I visited Foxfire Gardens, a Japanese-style garden that was then near Marshfield,” he said. “I was stunned by the beauty of the garden. It was the most important garden I ever visited because it changed my life.”

He began transplanting moss from nearby woods into various spaces in his gardens. After a number of years, his gardens changed dramatically.

Now, beautiful moss grows over large areas of ground, covers large to small stones, stumps, pieces of wood and seating areas, and is planted in large to tiny pots. He estimated that he has moss in more than 300 containers and that he has 11,000 rocks on his property, 700 of which are covered with moss.

Sievert said that over the years he has accumulated more than 40 species of moss. Most of them grow in shade, although he does have some that prefer sun. He estimated that there are 12,000 to 14,000 species of moss in the world.

Sievert said that because moss can be expensive (in the $20- to $30-a-square-foot range for some species), he’s never purchased it, although it is available through some online businesses.

When it comes to the mosses in his yard, he’s likely to be the only one who can tell them apart.

“Some of them look very similar, and it’s hard for most people to tell them apart,” he said, adding that even he has to look at them closely — often with a magnifying glass — as their differences can be so minute.

In addition to planting and tending his moss, he also began studying it so he could properly care for it. In his spare time he gives lectures on moss gardening, he has written articles for garden publications, and in 2012 he added moss gardens at Rotary Gardens in Janesville. His own gardens also have been featured in garden magazines and newspapers.

Because of his passion for moss, he’s also traveled to moss gardens throughout the world.

“The Japanese started gardening with moss over a thousand years ago, and I witnessed this on two trips there, where I visited 56 moss gardens. Sri Lanka has the best moss I’ve seen, and Italy has some good moss, too,” he said.

Sievert said some of the most important things he’s learned about moss over the years are that you can’t just transplant it anywhere, and that water is essential to making it look great.

When transplanting it, “you have to know the conditions it was growing in,” he said. “Then your moss will thrive and duplicate. It can be very site-specific.”

When it comes to water, he said moss generally looks best in spring and fall when it’s not hot outside and there is rain.

“But following a rain or on a foggy day it looks great any time of the year,” he said.

He said it also can go dormant for long periods of time, but that if you give it a little water it bounces back fast. It’s even hardy enough to survive Wisconsin winters — in and out of pots.

Because water is so important to keeping his moss — as well as the rest of his plants — looking great throughout the growing season, he added 16 watering stations throughout his property.

Another thing he learned is that when transplanting moss onto rocks, silicone caulk is essential.

“I learned that if I put the silicone caulk on the rock, and then add a piece of moss that has ground under it over the silicone, it adheres to the rock well,” he said.

With all the knowledge he’s accumulated over the years, it’s no surprise that his gardens now look unique.

In the front yard there are three garden areas. One has terraces filled with groundcover. There’s a hedgerow garden that includes moss gardens and flower pots, and there’s a cactus and succulent garden.

On the south side of his home, there is a recessed area you can walk down into that is sun-dappled and filled with moss-covered stones and stumps, large to tiny pots of moss, and some of the 100-plus varieties of hostas that he grows. He estimated he has 700 hostas in his yard that range from very tiny to very large.

On the north side of the house there’s a Japanese-style garden with lots of moss, four water features and a patch of gravel raked to mimic waves.

Behind his home, there are a variety of interesting spaces, too.

There’s a small circular seating area that is recessed in the earth and surrounded by moss-covered boulders where he put a small table and chair set that’s perfect for relaxing.

Near that space there’s a seating area with a bench that has a base made of volcanic rock and a seat made of burr oak that’s partly moss covered, and a reflecting pool with moss-covered rocks in it and trees above it.

The yard also has a pergola that sits near a cobblestone planter filled with hostas and moss pots, and a water garden made up of three water features where hanging baskets extend from the rocks yet look as if they are floating on the water.

At the very back of his lot his garden pitches upward — as the property was a glacial drumlin. There he created terraces with rocks and filled them with hostas and other shade-loving shrubs.

All the spaces in his gardens are connected to each other by walkways he made using approximately 5,000 red brick pavers from the 1900s that are flanked by old railroad ties.

To add yet more interest to his spaces, he copied a piece of artwork he said was created by Leonardo da Vinci.

“I saw the original piece in Venice and I took pictures of it and then made four of them out of wood,” he said. “Two are on the ground and two are hanging.”

Moss opportunities

Upcoming event:

Sievert Garden tour: Tour the one-acre gardens of moss expert Dale Sievert from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. July 1. Free. At W231-S5977 Molla Drive, Waukesha. See sievertgardens.blogspot.com.

Resources:

Rotary Botanical Gardens in Janesville: Sievert built two moss gardens there in 2012. One is in the Japanese gardens. See rotarybotanicalgardens.org.

Moss Acres: To buy moss and for information. See mossacres.com.

Mountain Moss Enterprises: To buy moss and for information. See mountainmoss.com.

Good reading:

“The Magical World of Moss Gardening” by Annie Martin (Timber Press, 2015).

“Moss Gardening: Including Lichens, Liverworts, and Other Miniatures” by George Schenk (Timber Press, 1997).

“Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses” by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Oregon State University Press, 2003).

“The Signature of All Things,” a novel in which moss plays a central role by Elizabeth Gilbert (Penguin Group, 2014), author of “Eat Pray Love.”