Ida Severson has an eye for in-between spaces—those narrow borderlands where the visible touch of the human hand gives way to a more unbridled landscape. She calls it the “edge zone,” a realm that’s neither domesticated nor wholly feral, the frayed boundary between cultivation and wilderness.
“I’m always trying to figure out how to make those transitions feel graceful,” she said.
A gardener and landscape designer who has lived in Inverness for a decade, Ms. Severson grew up between land, calm harbor and squally seas on her father’s wooden fishing boat, often moored at the Norby Dock in Sitka, Alaska.
She was 6 when the two left Northern California for the 49th state so he could chase a career through the turbulent waters of the North Pacific. A deep-sea diving fisherman, he hauled up abalone, geoduck, sea cucumber and urchin to sell live to the Asian market.
“It was a very unconventional childhood, and I spent most of it trying to stay warm and dry,” she said. “It made me scrappy. It made me resourceful. It made me strong. Yeah, it made me who I am.”
The sea was her father’s love and livelihood and their family’s larder, but Ms. Severson soon discovered her penchant for the gifts of the land. As a child, she harvested rosehips from the wild rosebushes near the harbor and gleaned seeds from lacy seas of yarrow.
At 18, Ms. Severson borrowed a sailboat and left home, cruising down the West Coast and spending a winter in the turquoise waters of the Sea of Cortez. She eventually landed in New Mexico, where she found work at an organic seed-saving company, called Seeds of Change, with a 128-acre farm in the semi-arid lands of Gila.
Seeds, she explained, are more than horticultural currency—they’re inheritance.
“We were preserving open-pollinated heirloom seeds so we can always grow food in the future, in case something catastrophic happens, like a volcano taking out North America,” she said.
Saving seeds was quiet, slow and humble work, and at the end of each day, the large farm crew would share meals at a banquet table. “Everyone had little dishes next to them to spit seeds into,” she said with a laugh.
By her early 20s, Ms. Severson had moved north to Port Townsend, Wash., where she joined another seed saving outfit, the Abundant Life Seed Foundation. She worked in the office germinating seeds. At 22, she gave birth to a son, Abel Pacific, and she began to supplement her income by gardening, waitressing and housecleaning—whatever work she could find to get by as a single mother.
“There is just not a lot of money in saving seeds,” she said. “So that naturally brought me to ornamental gardening.”
About 13 years ago, Ms. Severson arrived in West Marin. She settled first in Bolinas, offering her landscaping services to neighbors on the Little Mesa.
Her business, Mesa Chica Landscaping, grew steadily, and today she and her crew of five manage 16 clients. They handle everything from routine upkeep to reimagining entire properties with fresh plantings, new pathways and other moments of human intervention.
She balances a life on land by keeping connected to the sea. In her spare time, she takes to the bay in a 1965 Glasspar, a motorboat with classic lines, to reacquaint herself with the tingle of spray on her face, the pull of tides and rhythm of swells.
She paces her life to the seasonal demands of the gardening year—pruning, planting, mulching and weeding—and in mid-winter, as seed companies mail out their catalogues, she receives them with delight. One favorite, from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, is a more-than-500-page Whole Earth Catalog-inspired Whole Seed Catalog. “It’s like gardeners’ porn!” Ms. Severson said.
Approach matters. Before planting a single seed, Ms. Severson studies the path of sunlight, the slope of the ground, the key points for irrigation. Contrast, balance, and strategically deployed color are what make her gardens both pleasurable and striking. Favoring certain hues—maroon, scarlet, chartreuse—she creates environments that are carefully structured yet naturalistic, rigorous yet unmannered.
At a property she tends in Point Reyes Station, she has planted a bed of Cousin Itt acacia, cordylines, button ferns, echinacea, hellebores, fuchsia, and blood grass near a strip of flagstone, transforming a drab section of unused earth into a world of its own.
“She dreams up the most amazing things,” said Anne Hudes, who has employed Ms. Severson for several years. Every Friday, Ms. Severson arrives at her home, a hardboiled egg in hand for the resident dog, Finn.
“She often begins with the edge rather than the center,” Ms. Hudes said. “I’ve noticed that she loves edges. She loves to work at those transitions so that they are not just abrupt.”
On her 50th birthday, Ms. Severson set two intentions: to obtain her contractor’s license and to sow the seeds of her own nursery. By last month, when she turned 51, she had succeeded in both endeavors.
Now licensed, Ms. Severson can take on more extensive projects, and in a 36-foot-by-12-foot Quonset hut, she’s nurturing shoots of hollyhock, baby’s breath, balloon flowers, three varieties of sunflower, four varieties of stocks and a menagerie of future broccolis, eggplants, tomatoes and peppers.
She is a meticulous record keeper, tracking each sprout’s progress in a fat binder.
“It’s like heaven for a Virgo moon,” enthused Bolinas botanist John Glavis, who, besides sharing an astrological sign with Ms. Severson, has been working with her for the past four years, mostly pruning. “Details! We want more details!”
“She’s a plant sister and that’s rare to find,” Mr. Glavis added.
One recent evening, at her kitchen table, Ms. Severson carefully prepared seeds for 15 varieties of delphiniums. She mixed them with moistened soil, then tucked them into the darkness of a brown paper bag to germinate, using techniques she learned while seed saving.
After a week, she’ll fill her seed trays with planting medium, pressing her thumb into the soil to create quarter-inch dimples. Then, clutching a pair of tweezers, she’ll gently place one seed into each tiny impression.
It’s springtime, a perfect world of potential. “The manifestation of my dreams coming true in a physical way is really nothing short of practical magic,” she said. “I’m literally planting seeds to grow my dreams—and that just feels powerful.”
You can learn more about Mesa Chica Landscaping at www.mesachicalandscaping.com or by calling Ida at (415) 629.2979.