To say that tulips are a huge part of the “Skagit Valley brand” would be an understatement. How many other flowers have a month-long festival thrown in their honor? If asked what my favorite bloom is, I don’t have to think hard about it. Salmon Parrot Tulips would be my immediate answer. 

What draws me most to tulips is their individual perfection. It really only takes one to make a bouquet. But take that singular beauty and replicate it hundreds of times in a single plant, and what you have is the shock and awe of a rhododendron in full bloom. Even as we mourn the shedding of the last tulip petals from their stems, the rhodies are ready to take center stage and beguile us from spring to summer. I like to think of them as the floral harbingers of the coming solstice. 

Such is my love for rhododendrons that I devoted a story last year to the amazing specimens that populate Cleveland Street in Mount Vernon. There is undeniably something about the Pacific Northwest that rhodies can’t seem to get enough of. Years ago, while living in Northern California, I recall reading about “forests” of wild rhododendrons in Nepal and thinking it was an odd reference. After all, when is the last time you read about “rose forests”? Once I moved to this part of the world, however, I quickly realized that rhodies could be far more imposing than the restrained floral ornamentations that graced the landscapes of prim stucco homes in the tonier neighborhoods of San Francisco, my home town. Rhododendron forests, as it turns out, are actually a thing. We in the Magic Skagit should know.

If ever rhododendrons had a theme park, it can be found in the town of Greenbank on Whidbey Island. I’m referring, of course, to Meerkerk Gardens — 53 acres of, to quote its website, “inspirational woodland gardens and a forest preserve.” Meerkerk Gardens is the legacy of Ann and Max Meerkerk, whose passion for rhodies led them to hybridize rhododendron specimens as well as collect unique samples of the plants along with other flowering trees and conifers. 

But Ann and Max’s magnificent legacy to Whidbey Island is also the result of the passion they had for each other — and in celebration of St. Valentine’s Day, that relationship and the romance that sustained it is the subject of this tale. As you’ll soon discover, this is no ordinary love story (if ever there really is such a thing to begin with) — it is the story of two amazing individuals, each of whom brought into their relationship a set of gifts and experiences that would have easily encompassed half a dozen lifetimes. Over the nearly twenty years of their lives together, Max and Ann lived out adventures and accomplishments that are today memorialized in a garden of earthly delights. 

Ann Tileston Wright was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 3, 1916. Her father, Vernon Wright, was an architect, engineer, and founder of the Otter Tail Power Company of Fergus Falls, Minnesota. Her mother, Grace Tileston Clark, was from Boston. When Ann was six, her family moved to Florence, Italy for three years while her father studied architecture. It was here that Ann developed her lifelong love of the arts…and food. 

From an early age, Ann took an interest in sketching and painting (oils and watercolors) and studied art at the University of Minnesota. She completed a Master’s degree in ceramic arts at Ohio University. With the death of her father in 1938, Ann found herself with an inheritance sufficient to pursue the life of an artist and still eat on a regular basis. She bought a small cabin with some acreage in northeastern Minnesota and decorated it with her artwork.

Ann moved to that mecca of American art and culture that was New York city in 1942. Here she opened a ceramics studio in Greenwich Village, and in the late ‘40s she was invited to exhibit her pottery pieces in upstate New York. It was around this time when she met the owner of a New York gallery that specialized in imported Chinese artworks. His name was Max Meerkerk. 

Maximiliaan Ernst Ernst Robbert Ferdinand Dieffenbach v Meerkerk (you can see why he went by “Max”) was born on March 16, 1886 in Kampen, Netherlands. Although his father was Dutch (and as my son-in-law’s family would no doubt tell you, “If you ain’t Dutch, you ain’t much.”), he grew up on his mother’s estates (plural) in East Prussia. For centuries her family had operated a ferry service across the Vistula River — an endeavor that had made them wealthy. 

Max attended Heidelberg University and the University of Berlin, earning a law degree and a Ph.D. in philosophy. He was a field officer in the German army during World War I, and was stabbed in the leg by a Russian soldier. He survived, but had a limp for the rest of his life. His adversary was less fortunate, and Max forever kept the dead man’s sword as a reminder of his skirmish with mortality on the field of battle. 

Following the war, Max went to work for the League of Nations (the precursor to the UN). To appreciate his standing in society, he was a man who called Kaiser Wilhelm “Uncle Willy.” He served as an ambassador to Russia following the revolution, and Ann told the story of how he despised Vladimir Lenin from the moment he met him, having to “walk down a long corridor on a red carpet toward a man who remained seated behind a desk, cold, unresponsive, unwelcoming of the representative of a hostile government.”

Max’s League of Nation Duties sent him to China. In 1927, he was living in what was then known as Peking (Beijing), where there was a large German expatriate community, and spent most of his twenties in China studying art. Along the way, he also learned several dialects of Chinese. Years later, with the second world war looming, Max decided against returning to Germany. He didn’t like Hitler, and once told a Whidbey Island neighbor, “that part of the world wasn’t palatable to him.” Hitler would likely have felt the same way about Max.

Max came to New York in 1930 with his third wife, Mary L. Meerkerk, and listed his occupation as “merchant.” Along with his 4th wife, Alice Olson, he built a business importing Chinese artifacts, and traveled extensively to China and Japan. Max and Alice divorced after he met Ann. There would not be a sixth “Mrs. Meerkerk.” While one might be tempted to say that Max had a problem with commitment, a good argument could be made that perhaps the opposite was true. Most of us barely survive one marriage.

In reading even the broad outline of Max Meerkerk’s biography, he jumps off the pages like a figure out of central casting in ’30s Hollywood. Give the man a pencil thin mustache and a fedora and you have a big screen leading man. There were at least six women who no doubt shared that assessment as well. 

Quoting from an exhibit on the life of Max and Ann at the Island County Historical Society Museum, “By all reports, Max was a colorful character, a storyteller given to elaborate stories and philosophizing. He had a strong code of behavior, sense of duty and ethics representing an ancient code of honor. He is said to have had elegant epicurean tastes and favored himself and his guests with excellent wines and fine cigars as he entertained them with adventures and experiences with various Chinese warlords.” That, my friends, is a man I would have loved to hang out with.

Ann and Max married in 1950 and settled into a century-old farmhouse five miles south of New Paltz, New York. The house was small, but it had a big barn, room for a large vegetable garden — and 50 acres! Max kept bees and was known locally as the “Bee Man.” The couple began training and breeding Weimaraner dogs for show and hunting. Max imported four dogs from friends in Austria and he and Ann traveled the dog show circuit in the Northeast. Never one to do things by half, Max eventually became the president of the International Weimaraner Society, which set the standard for the breed in the United States. They left New York when their land was slated for a throughway across their fields. This was the dawning of the Golden Age of the Interstate. Thank you Dwight D. Eisenhower. 

In 1956, Max and Ann journeyed to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho with their dogs (now numbering 55) in a small trailer pulled behind their station wagon, stopping every two hours to water, feed, and exercise their canine minions. They ended up buying an old farm just six miles south of Coeur d’Alene, and with a clear sense of priorities they set up kennels and a vegetable garden. Three years later they moved again, this time to a site just above the Snake River near Hammett, Idaho (deep in the heart of spud country). Having myself lived in the Gem State for nearly two decades, I can vouch for the fact that this part of southwest Idaho is pretty much God’s Country.

Over the years, Max developed numerous allergies and sensitivity to light that made his outdoors lifestyle untenable. After visiting with friends in Everett, he and Ann surprised them with the announcement that they had purchased a 13-acre property in the little town of Greenbank on Whidbey Island, Washington. They hired a builder, and returned to Idaho to prepare for their move. Ann worked with a local architect on the design of her new home, and later worked with a Coupeville architect through the home’s construction. They settled into Greenbank in 1962, where they would spend the rest of their lives.

Footnote: the original Meerkerk house on their Greenbank property is known today as the “Volunteer Cottage,” and once stood at the site of the current home. It was relocated and served as a kennel. Although Ann and Max no longer bred dogs, they still kept several Weimaraners as pets, along with Irish Water Spaniels. 

The Meerkerk’s passion for rhododendrons went back to Max’s time in Asia, and the first ones he and Ann ordered for their Greenbank home were from China. In the words of the Island County Historical Museum, “Ann selected colors, developed groupings and added companion plants to complement the new rhododendrons including various species of dogwood, maple, magnolia, redwoods and pines to add color and texture. They also began growing rhododendrons from seeds of their own crosses in their greenhouse. By June 1968 they had purchased another 20 acres, had finished two ponds, and were planning to start yet another rhody garden.”

Sadly, it was at this point that Max, whose health had been in decline, was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. He died quietly at home on April 10, 1969. During his life, Max had spent considerable time translating ancient Chinese poetry and other similar writings and he left behind an extensive library including some Chinese Imperial volumes, some of which were single copy editions.

What followed when Ann met Max in New York so many years before was truly an “autumn/spring” romance. At the time of their marriage, Ann believed her husband to be 20 years her senior. After his death, however, it was revealed that he had conveniently subtracted 10 years from his life when he became an American citizen in 1936 — making him actually 30 years older than his fifth and final wife. 

After Max’s death, Ann purchased the last 20 acres of their Greenbank property, and designed a new area of her house as her “loom room,” with supporting poles made from logs cut on the property. She joined the Seattle Weavers’ Guild in the mid-1960s and helped start a similar organization on Whidbey Island. Ann kept sheep and saw them sheared, and worked the wool — spinning, knitting and weaving it. At the end of her life she had 25 spinning wheels of various designs and a similar number of looms, some of which she had built herself. Her handiness with tools is especially evident in a harpsichord that she built by hand.

During this period of Ann’s life, she took several trips to South America and Asia, which further influenced her painting and weaving. In contrast to her raconteur husband, Ann was described as very shy, but in the last decade of her life she found many friends among her community of weavers. 

Ann followed Max in death on July 19, 1979, just 10 years her husband’s passing. She was 63. Their ashes are buried near one another in a quiet corner of their Secret Garden, overlooking the upper pond, where a memorial stone and bronze plaque mark the site of their earthly remains. The gardens they have left for the rest of us to enjoy are a fitting tribute to two people who lived very unconventional lives, and lived them fully. They were, in the parlance of my grandmother, “inclined towards the bohemian” (as was my grandmother, by the way). Had they been born a generation later and tied flowers in their hair, they might very well have been called hippies.

However bohemian their lives might have seemed to the more conventional among us, Max and Ann’s relationship was a rhapsody that harmonized their individual gifts and dreams and elevated them to a sweeter song. That’s a love story that Hollywood would be hard pressed to match. 

Note: the history recounted in this story was curated from an Island County Historical Society Museum exhibit on the lives of Ann and Max Meerkerk and the history of Meerkerk Gardens. The exhibit was made possible thanks to the collection of artifacts and narrative provided by Meerkerk Gardens. The exhibit will find a permanent home with the renovation of Ann and Max’s home at the gardens, which I for one look forward to visiting in the future.