Ruth M. (Martin) Hansen
More than a green thumb, a green heart
Oregonian, Friday, July 11, 2003
Born: March 12, 1910, in Portland Died: July 4, 2003, in Portland Survivors: Son, Richard; daughter, Jeanette Slepian; and two grandchildren Service: Has been held Remembrances: Berry Botanic Garden
Ruth Hansen loved the outdoors and devoted her life to plant societies and designing public gardens.
Ruth Hansen grew up outdoors and became absorbed in plants early. That childhood passion led her to become the only woman in her college's landscape-architecture program
in the 1920s.
For years, she was consumed by rhododendrons. Later, other native plants captured her attention, too.
Ruth weighed only 100 pounds, but this tiny tornado poured her energy into plant societies and proudly pointed to her work for public gardens.
Ruth Hansen died on July 4, 2003, at 93.
She was among a handful of people who helped carve out the Crystal Springs garden in Southeast Portland in the 1940s and '50s, dragging her children out there, all four
seasons, to join her and her husband on the Saturday work crews. She was also a driving force behind the Berry Botanic Garden.
Ruth's father died when she was 5, and her widowed mother rented out her North Portland home while she and her two children camped in the backyard.
Ruth's fiercely independent mother sewed pants for her daughter (not then sold in stores for women) so they could hide and fish.
After Ruth got a master's degree at the University of Michigan, she returned to Oregon and went to work for the U.S. Forest Service. She loved to tell this story:
She was on the landscape-design team for Timberline Lodge, and before FDR's visit to dedicate the lodge, she slept in the bed Eleanor Roosevelt slept in a night later.
Ruth met her husband-to-be, Clarence, when they worked for the Forest Service. She had two children and took on unpaid fulltime jobs with her plant societies, including
the American Rhododendron Society, the Native Plant Society of Oregon and the Portland Garden Club. She ran them like businesses.
Ruth sometimes found herself out of place with non-plant lovers, and she was strict about using Latin botanical names. If you referred to a plant by its common name,
she'd correct you (even if you didn't care): "Oh, that's a R. macrophyllum."
She took rhody-related trips with Clarence. But he didn't like traveling much, and after he died in 1973, Ruth took long treks to study native plants in various
climates: The Himalayas, China, Costa Rica, New Zealand and South Africa. In Nepal, she had a frame pack on her back at 13,000 feet.
With the Native Plant Society of Oregon, she led hiking trips twice a week. She covered just about every square inch of the state.
When Ruth wasn't hiking the hills, she worked in her own showcase garden. If neighbors admired her handiwork, she would recruit them into one of the plant societies.
She researched plants used by Native Americans for medicinal, nutr4itional or spiritual purposes and kept copious notes.
In her spare time, she played the piano, subscribed to the opera, watched OPB and enjoyed her Boston terrier and Persian cat. But after dinner, most evenings, she was in
her office doing her garden-society work.
Late in life, she lost one, then other other leg to vascular disease, a cruel irony for someone who loved being active.
"I worship my God in the outdoors," she once said. She felt most spiritual hearing the wind in the trees, listening to the birds, feeling the fresh air and looking at
anything green.
