At home with history in an unusual garden

Most people couldn't charge admission for a tour of their home. But most people don't have a prehistoric bison skeleton. Or a 140-year-old log cabin so fully furnished with period antiques that a pioneer family could move in tomorrow. Or an arboretum with exotic plants from all over the world.

Ron Wienhold has all that -- and lots more: fossils, bones and butterflies, vintage toys, quilts and kerosene lamps. It's all part of River Glen Gardens, a homestead-turned-destination in central Minnesota that Wienhold has spent a lifetime creating -- and sharing with others. The exhibits reflect his wide-ranging interests, which include history, geology, entomology and archaeology.

"One science leads to another," he said.

The science that hooked him first was botany. As a preschooler, he was so fascinated with plants that he'd transplant them for fun -- sometimes several times in one day. By the time he was a second-grader, he was doing crayon drawings of the landscape he dreamed of creating one day. "I wanted a place where I could grow anything and everything, from cacti to water lilies," he said.

In 1953, the year he graduated from high school, he bought that place: 72 acres on the Sauk River, for $2,000. "Half of it was paper-route money," he said. "It seemed like $2 million to me at the time."

The land was considered too swampy and hilly for farming or pasture. "But it had everything I wanted: an underground spring, an open river, different soil textures and high hills," Weinhold said.

Armed with a collector's permit, he began traveling and bringing back specimens. Today he has 100 different types of grasses, 125 varieties of lilacs, ferns and larches and trilliums, Himalayan onions, Peruvian daffodils and Chinese jack-in-the-pulpits.

Labor of love

Wienhold has a special affinity for Japanese-style gardens. His landscape includes a pebble garden, inspired by one he saw in Kyoto, and he makes his own Japanese lanterns out of black sand and concrete, then "ages" them with lichens and moss. He also practices niwaki (Japanese pruning techniques) on many of his evergreens.

"I just like their way of gardening," he said. "I have one big Scotch pine I've worked on for 50 years."

His house, which he designed himself and built with help from his father, has a Japanese flavor as well, with bamboo door frames and drawer pulls, and Wienhold's own Japanese-style painting on his doors and kitchen cupboards.

The "museum" part of his home fills several rooms and a few outbuildings, some that he built himself, others that he acquired and moved on-site. In addition to his log cabin, he has re-creations of a turn-of-the-century general store and a pharmacy, stocked with ancient pills, potions and powders.

The log cabin, in particular, reflects his tireless work ethic and painstaking attention to detail. When he acquired the cabin, the logs had been plastered over. Wienhold wanted to restore their original look, so he cleaned them with a steel brush and dental picks. One log alone consumed him from 5 p.m. until 2 a.m., he said. The logs were held together with clay, horsehair and straw, which he stained using iron rust from his spring. "It was a labor of love," he said. "People offer me other old log buildings. I say, 'I have one. One of these is enough.'"

Some of his finds were made on his own property, including animal skeletons, thousands of years old, that he found piece by piece in the river. How? "Wade in up to your neck, and feel with your feet," he said.

Wienhold, who worked as a printer for 43 years before retiring in the 1990s, originally wanted to go to college and become a forest ranger or a teacher. "I was going to come back and retire here," he said. "But I kept enjoying my land." (He doesn't like the term "working" the land, he noted.) "I ended up staying and doing teaching as a sideline."

Home and abroad

Although Wienhold has made his home only a few miles from where he grew up, he's seen the world, exploring volcanoes, rivers and mountains all over the globe and leading many tour groups. One of his most memorable trips was to Kamchatka, a peninsula in eastern Russia. "That was quite an adventure," he recalled. "It was very primitive. We flew in a war-torn helicopter repaired with duct tape." His favorite places include New Zealand, Patagonia and Guatemala, he said. "I've never done Egypt. And I'm saving Europe for my wheelchair days."

Those wheelchair days appear to be a long way off. Still vigorous and adventurous in his 70s, Wienhold continues to travel and explore, hunting for fossils and artifacts, and just immersing himself in nature. "I make a couple trips a year. I've hiked Yellowstone every year since 1961," he said.

Does he ever just sit and relax? Sure, he said. "I'll sit on a foggy moonlit night and watch the fireflies. You've got to stop and smell the roses."

Wienhold lives alone, but said he never feels lonesome. "There are always animals." His animal friends include tame chipmunks and raccoons and a series of Bassett hounds, a breed he favors because they're friendly and too short to trample his flowers. (He's now on his fourth hound, Hoijoi IV, which translates roughly to "good luck and happiness" in Japanese.)

And between friends, family members and visitors, he has lots of human company, as well. "I've got people here all the time," he said.

It's an unusual life, but he's never regretted not leading a more conventional one. When he was young, "I said I'd get married at 25, then at 30, then 35. But at 35, I said, 'The heck with it. I can do whatever I want.' If I had my life to live over, I'd live it the same way. I did everything I ever wanted to do in my lifetime."

Nor does he have any interest in ever moving to a lower-maintenance home. "I plan to live out my days here," he said. But he is starting to think about his home's long-term future. "It would be nice to keep the collection together," he said. "I've watched several gardens like this go under ... if you don't find that one special person to take it over."

Kim Palmer • 612-673-4784