Garden History

In 1993, Dan, Diane, Shanna and Will Robinson put aside their careers as firefighter, newscaster, interior designer and full time student to pour their efforts into creating Elandan Gardens.

The six-acre site, located on the shores of Puget Sound, was an abandoned, bramble-covered landfill from the 1930s that was never developed past its refuse origins. After three years of dreaming, planning and applying for permits, the Robinsons were finally granted permission to create Elandan Gardens.

In the fall of 1993, the Robinsons brought in 30,000 cubic yards of sandy fill dirt and over 800 tons of boulders – some close to 8 tons each – and began to give shape to this unique environment. Diane coined the name “Elandan”, which is a combination of “Elan” – French for spirit or courage – and Dan, who is the true spirit of the Robinson’s bonsai collection and garden.

The garden has grown into a spectacular display of flora encompassing a range of alpine micro-environments that includes ancient gnarled trees, silvery dead wood, waterfalls, a pond and monuments of stone encrusted with moss and lichen.

Everything here is sculptural. The main walkway is 10-15 feet below the earthen ridges. This causes visitors to look up, which silhouettes the trees, snags and stones against the sky. Rock outcroppings with twisted trees and potted bonsai surround a freshwater pond. Towering, charred snags, which are often graced with an eagle or osprey, cast shadows over the plantings of native grasses, ground covers and ferns.

This dramatic setting is now home to much of Dan Robinson’s world-renowned bonsai collection. The majority of the trees in the collection were collected from wild places and each exhibits a design induced by hundreds of years of nature’s ceaseless whimsy. One of the oldest trees in the collection is a Rocky Mountain Juniper approaching 1500 years. As dazzling as the ancient trees are, sprinkled into the mix of the landscape specimens and bonsais are highly stylized Japanese Black Pines that Dan grew from seed.

When Dan returned from his service in the Korean theater in the early Sixties, he brought with him a collection of Black Pine seeds. He planted and trained them in the ground, creating dozens of crooked bonsai and landscape pine trees.

Dan’s bonsai collection continues to expand and Elandan Gardens continues to evolve with each passing season.