From the Farmhouse Table: May 2026
Making Radical Hospitality Possible
Hedgebrook is known for its signature Radical Hospitality. It is what writers refer to as the "magic". Although we love that magic is the experience, our team knows best the amount of work that goes into making it so. The sweat, tears, labor, time, worry, heavy lifting, and attention to detail ensure there is space for our writers to show up fully and feel held.
We thought we'd feature different members of the team (aka the "magic makers") to catch a glimpse into who they are and what they bring. First up is Halle Salisbury, our beloved Retreat Manager, who has been at Hedgebrook for five years.
Hedgebrook: What has been your favorite project to work on at Hedgebrook? Why?
Halle: This season’s garden is a highlight so far! Our Farm Team is so rich with farming (and cooking) knowledge and enthusiasm, and it’s been a joy to plan, grow, and problem-solve with them. In the last 2 years, we’ve replaced the old garden fence with a new deer/rabbit-proof one and rebuilt our greenhouse to grow better starts, heat-loving crops, and shoulder-season greens. This year we’re taking advantage of those improvements in a few ways! We’ve planned a robust vegetable garden, and we’re getting creative with some neglected garden spaces to up our cut flower game so that we can provide flowers for writers and special events. We’re also experimenting with dried teas, both from cultivated and foraged plants, and we have long-term visions for replacing the grass in our orchard with more perennial beds to maximize what we can provide for pollinators and for the Chef Team. So far, we’ve been busy with spring seeding, planting, weeding, and prepping - the beds are almost full and we’re starting to bring the first harvests into the kitchen. I can’t wait to see what this team cooks up next - it feels like the sky’s the limit!
Hedgebrook: What is the most memorable interaction you’ve had with a writer on the land?
Halle: I can’t think of one that stands out above the rest, but my thoughts immediately go to my interactions with writers during the Land Walk. Once a week, I give a tour of the land to any interested writers and talk about the garden, native plants, forest succession, wildlife, Hedgebrook history, and anything they’re curious about. Sometimes we’ll spend 20 minutes talking about tomatoes, other times we’ll find an owl pellet in the woods and dissect it together. In summer, we’ll snack our way through the forest, sampling huckleberries, salmonberries, and salal. The writers always ask incredible questions and have pushed me to dive deeper into so many different topics (ask me about the reproductive habits of slugs!) and they help me see the forest through a new lens. They are able to find so many beautiful comparisons between an ecosystem’s cycle of death, rebirth, and stages of succession and the creative process of brainstorming, drafting, and refining writing projects. They also keep me looking at the forest with fresh eyes and a sense of awe - the deer, owls, and eagles that I can sometimes take for granted are so new and magical to them. This time with residents really helps keep me in touch with what is essential to our retreat experience and helps guide and affirm our team’s work.
Hedgebrook: What/who has impacted you the most?
Halle: At Hedgebrook specifically, it has to be Cathy Bruemmer. In the time we worked together, she offered me such great guidance and mentorship on how to manage the grounds, gardens, forest, and facilities here. She really grounded our vision of land stewardship with a spirit of service, resilience, and reciprocity. She kept alive so many stories of Hedgebrook through the years and helped me understand that as the forest around us has grown, we’ve evolved as a team in our approach to land management. I can hear her constant refrain that guided our work: “as we nourish the land, the land nourishes us.” She helped train me to think critically about our work as the current stewards of this land, and guided me to excellent resources to build a strong foundation of knowledge to be able to understand and care for our 48-acre retreat. I continue to remain curious and attentive to our ever-changing ecosystem, always asking how we can make sure this place and these grounds are sustained and can grow with Hedgebrook for the next 40 years and beyond.
Hedgebrook: What part of your work feels most meaningful right now?
Halle: Forest stewardship - especially invasive species management - has been a major focus for us lately. In 2025, we took a forest stewardship class with Washington State Extension and learned so much! How to gauge the health and climate resilience of our forest, the importance of dead wood, and different management strategies for some of our peskier invasive plants, among others. We’ve invested in a new method of eradicating English Holly (an understory plant that displaces natives and is difficult to remove manually at a large scale) with an herbicide lance and are seeing success! If you read T Kira Madden’s Whidbey closely, you’ll see a few references to a character in the background doing this work. It was such a surreal experience to see that this detail of our work stood out to her so much that she incorporated it into her novel!
Hedgebrook: Who is your favorite author/What is your favorite book?
Halle: Before I even moved to Whidbey and became aware of Hedgebrook, I loved the book A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. So I was a little starstruck to discover after working here for a while that she was one of our alumna! I especially appreciate it now that I live on an island that’s very similar to one of the settings in the book. It’s so inventive, touching, mind-bending, and fun to read. Other authors and books that I’m drawn to lately fall into the Japanese magical realism genre: I can’t stop thinking about Earthlings by Sayaka Murata, and recently enjoyed a collection of short stories by Banana Yoshimoto.
Hedgebrook: What’s a fun fact about you that may surprise people?
Halle: I don’t know, I'm not very surprising! My time outside of work is mostly spent snuggling with my dogs, knitting, running, or singing karaoke with friends. I have a degree in landscape architecture but have never practiced it professionally - I fell down a farming rabbit hole that I don't think I'll ever fully recover from. I'm from Oklahoma? Is that fun?
Gratitude to Halle and all that she brings to Hedgebrook.
Stay tuned next month for another staff feature.