PART 5: DOUG & ANTHONY GORDON<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/em>From publishing educational materials to heading the Garden Ecology League, the Garden Ecology Lab\u2019s work is firmly rooted in community outreach and engagement. What we do is possible because of the support of the community we serve: their donations and volunteer hours, their interest in our results, their willingness to let us conduct research in the gardens they work so hard to grow. This blog series highlights the amazing work these community members do in and around their gardens.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Corvallis looks like a very standard suburb if one\u2019s vantage point is the area around the OSU campus. Orderly street grids and a healthy array of businesses give the impression that there might be a larger city just down the highway, or perhaps just across the river. But in reality, Corvallis\u2014along with its neighbor city, the much smaller Philomath\u2014is surrounded by a miles-wide belt of unambiguously rural land. It is in this sparsely populated, largely natural area that Doug and Anthony Gordon have made their garden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Living outside of the city allows for more space than a typical urban garden, and the Gordons have made the most of it. Their property includes a pollinator meadow, riparian areas, a vegetable garden, and plenty of trees, spread across 2.2 acres. It\u2019s a thriving, healthy space and is the site of regular visitation by a wide variety of mammals, birds, insects, and amphibians. But it wasn\u2019t like that when the Gordons first moved in thirty years ago, and getting the space to the way it is today has been a long process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Gordons\u2019 pollinator meadow under construction. Photo credit: Doug Gordon.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was not set up really in any way for what we have now,\u201d Doug Gordon says. \u201cWe basically started from scratch with the entire property\u2026it\u2019s been a radical change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On a multi-acre piece of land, starting from scratch is no small undertaking. It\u2019s been a long-term and multifaceted effort, and throughout all of it, their philosophy and goals have remained relatively constant: the focus is always on benefitting the local ecology, particularly for native species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They\u2019ve based these projects on knowledge they\u2019ve drawn from a variety of resources. Anthony Gordon participated in the Master Gardener program, and they received valuable advice from nurseries around Corvallis and Portland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Native <\/em>Clarkia and <\/em>Gilia flowers in the garden. The cut-out sections of the clarkias\u2019 petals indicate that native leafcutter bees (family Megachilidae) are present. Photo credit: Doug Gordon.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/osu-wams-blogs-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs.dir\/2786\/files\/2026\/05\/image-1024x768.png\")
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