Thank you for visiting the official Charlie’s Garden website
Charlie’s Garden is a private garden on Payette Lake near McCall, Idaho, owned and maintained by a private family. As such we are an amenity of Sylvan Beach and receive visits from others who hear about us one way or another. Because of our small size and nature, we offer no public facilities of any kind. There is no entry fee.
We ask that, if you visit our garden:
- Please respect the garden and its plantings
- Please respect our workers
- Please park carefully in the limited parking area and not on Warren Wagon Road or on our neighbor’s property. If the parking area is full, please visit at another time.
- The cabin to the west is a private residence and is not part of Charlie’s Garden. Please respect their privacy.
A Little History
by Chris Davidson, Sharon Christoph
Sylvan Beach, as it is now called, was early on a homestead and later a resort owned by Charlie Nelson, a colorful character and pioneer in Valley County. His vision created an “eco-tourist” resort visited by people from all over the country, but mainly from Idaho. In those days, i.e., 1907-1920, the trip from Boise or Emmett took overnight, and living conditions were rustic.
Guests lived in duck-canvas tents over permanent wooden floors, heated by wood-burning stoves. The idea gradually evolved into the Sylvan Beach Resort and Charlie Nelson, or his wife Lois more likely, kept registration logs of the annual guests along with the record of costs, starting about 1907.
Evidently meat for the guests’ table came from local hunters, but the vegetables mostly came from the area where Charlie’s garden now sits. The Charlie of this later garden is Charlie Davidson. It can get confusing.
Prior to 1918 Charlie Davidson’s father, R. M. Davidson negotiated with Charlie Nelson for the purchase of a small plot in the original homestead, which by then Nelson owned outright. Charlie D., 18 years old, built a large house for the family of seven siblings. Then they were no longer guests of the Sylvan Resort but residents. Owing to bad luck and decisions, Nelson lost ownership of the resort through bankruptcy in the depression and over the years several families bought large parts, including R. M. Davidson, adding to his existing home site. The garden that had served the resort now became a vegetable garden for the large Davidson family, though there is no record I know of to give any details of this era.
Charlie Davidson worked on the East Coast for much of his career as a journalist (New York) then a landscape architect (Connecticut), and moved back to Idaho in 1948, where he continued to do select landscaping jobs until retirement. During this time, 1950 and beyond, he transformed the old vegetable garden into a flower garden. Through his years doing the planting in the garden Charlie D. had a deep interest in iris, lilies and peonies. But he also ordered things from a variety of catalogs, especially plants that seemed mysterious to him. One of his favorites was the blue poppy of Tibet, Meconopsis integrifolia, which thrived for years and disappeared after he died.
The original plan was of flower beds laid out rectilinearly separated by lawn. All the beds had to be excavated to a depth of 2-3 feet and the existing clay and glacial cobbles put somewhere else. The excavated beds were refilled with topsoil, sand and compost, and occasionally a plump squawfish. Within a few years the original deer fencing that was supposed to protect vegetables had been exceeded and beds continued to appear in an expanding landscape. Starts of many of these historical plants have been carried forward into the populations of the garden as it exists today.
My wife and I who care for Charlie’s Garden, along with our three skilled helpers, have a somewhat different vision of the garden, as one can see from the hills that have replaced the beds. These provide increased area, better drainage and a varied perspective from which to see the diversity of the collections. The irrigation system with its zones and timers is something Charlie could only have dreamed about; he spent a great deal of time dragging around hoses.
Speaking of water, all the water used in this garden is gravity-fed off the lower east slope of Brundage Mountain. This source, Sylvan Creek, feeds the Sylvan Beach Mutual water lines that serve the cabins along the beach. It is no longer considered useful as drinking water but instead is for the landscaping.
The stones and stone work in Charlie’s Garden are from several sources. The cut and shaped planters, pots, pavers and wall blocks are from a quarry in China. They are Chinese granite because I don’t know of a source anywhere else that can do this careful shaping and grinding. The designs are my own, drawn and sent to the quarry via our contact in Union City, CA. The “found” irregular stones making fountain walls are mostly from Brundage Mountain. The large granite stones in the hillside descending to Sylvan Creek are from Lick Creek Road. The green rocks are greenstone from the Seven Devils Mountains.
The plant collections are locally purchased in McCall or Boise. We do not bring in plants or seeds from exotic localities. Over the years we have been able to diversify the plants way beyond what was available to Charlie D. because nurseries are becoming more adventurous and many plant genera are being introduced into the trade by people who have the permits to do so. Plant breeding has continued apace and now many thousands of cultivars are offered locally.
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need—Cicero.
This credo guides our lives, but we also believe that gardens need to be shared with those who appreciate them. This one is a family legacy that we want to continue into the future. The effort and care it receives are directed to this hope.