The bright sun shines in his eyes, making him squint uncomfortably. His fair freckled skin darkens a shade.

This is not how Winter, president of Moonstone Hotel Properties and the guy on deck to save The Oregon Garden in Silverton, normally spends a Tuesday morning. Described as an intensely private businessman with a competitive streak, Winter doesn’t like to lie around. And running a company that owns 10 hotels doesn’t leave a lot of time for leisure.

As plans are finalized for breaking ground on his latest – and biggest – project, life is about to get even busier. Winter negotiated for a year to win the rights to build a resort at the troubled garden, which went into receivership in August after defaulting on $8 million in debts. The often frustrating negotiations resulted in Winter buying 11.3 acres overlooking the 80-acre public garden, a sweet piece of land once meant for a conservatory.

As part of the deal, Winter’s company has a contract to manage The Oregon Garden but does not own it. The land is owned by the city of Silverton, which continues to lease the garden to the non-profit Oregon Garden Foundation.

Moonstone Properties bought the real estate for its resort from Silverton for $850,000, less than the $1 million asking price.

In return, the company will hand over to the foundation a $10 garden surcharge assessed for rooms plus $4 a guest and 5 percent of meal and merchandise sales at the resort to pay down the garden’s debt. It’s expected to take 20 years to pay the debt.

And although it’s not part of the agreement, Winter most likely will end up spending some of his own money maintaining the garden. As it stands, $1.3 million is budgeted for maintenance, but projected revenue (from memberships, attendance and concessions) is only $1.2 million. Of course, the projection is based on historical data, and Winter is convinced he can immediately increase memberships, if not attendance.

Besides, he says, “this is about gardens to me, not about money.”

Yes, he says, he wants to make money. And, yes, he has to be willing to walk away if he fails. But he doesn’t think he will. And his business record tends to support his confidence.

At 56, Winter owns 10 hotels, co-owns another and manages still another, all in resort areas such as Cambria, Carmel, Monterey and Yosemite. He bought his first Oregon destination, the Village Green in Cottage Grove, in 2001 and has turned the nine-hole golf course into a collection of outstanding gardens.

In 1983, he and his father, Lowell Winter, built the first Moonstone hotel, the Sea Otter Inn, along the beach at Cambria. It was successful from the beginning, with an 84 percent occupancy rate the first year. Feedback told Winter, a passionate gardener who sets aside Sundays for his hobby, that the curb appeal of his lushly landscaped hotel had much to do with its success. But it took 17 years before the connection sank in.

“In 2000, we changed our mission statement to “The Garden Trail of Hotels,’” he says. “We’re committed to this vision.”

A YOUNGSTER’S GREEN THUMB

As a kid in Southern California, Winter recalls pulling out clippers to cut a fort into the pyracantha shrubs. At about 7 years old, he pedaled his bike to a nursery about a mile away on Whittier Boulevard and brought home some sweet peas. After school, he’d rush home to water them. “Sometimes, I’d tell the other kids I couldn’t come out and play.”

“Can you imagine?” says his mother, Maxine Winter. “A 7-year-old?”

A few years later when he began working part time at the nursery, he was paid once a week – most often with a one-gallon plant. At a time of life when cash is usually welcome, this did not make him unhappy.

“I was considered somewhat odd,” says Winter, seated at an outdoor table at Cambria Pines Lodge, one of six hotels he owns in the quiet, tourist-dominated seaside town.

You’d think a little boy that taken with plants would end up with a career in horticulture. But Winter was equally interested in sports – and he was good. As a senior in high school, a number of schools offered him scholarships. He chose the Air Force Academy but was derailed to the local college, California State University at Fullerton, after a bout with melanoma forced doctors to remove the lymph nodes in his left arm. He majored in math, not botany, and later switched to geography.

Once again, destiny interfered and instead of graduating, Winter ended up helping his father build an apartment building in the ski-resort town of Mammoth Lake in the Sierra Nevada.

“When Realtors bought the apartment building,” says Winter, “we thought we were so rich.”

On such events are futures carved. Winter never stopped building.

CHANGES IN STORE

On a Monday evening five days before Dirk Winter and Moonstone Hotel Properties are to be introduced at a dinner party at The Oregon Garden, the grounds are quiet. Bullfrogs moan in the wetlands, fat koi jump for insects, and birds call back and forth. A few visitors linger till closing time at 6 p.m., one regretting her forgotten camera. “It’s so beautiful here,” she says.

And it is. There are plenty of things to find fault with if you look. Some weeds. One or two plants that need to be removed. Some things that have always been wrong: the rose garden; the large and useless green; the out-of-proportion pavilion in the Silverton Market Garden; the lack of plant diversity.

But it’s also obvious that care has been taken and no rash changes have been made.

Not that Winter doesn’t have lots of plans. A conservatory. A bookshop to rival Powell’s Books for Cooks and Gardeners on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. A liquor license. A nursery like the one he owns across from Cambria Pines Lodge. And, especially, a garden with more intrigue and interest.

“A garden needs mystery,” he says, “and a lot of diversity from one garden to the next.”

Although he says it’s a bit unfair to judge such a young garden, Winter is open about what he doesn’t like.

“It lacks soul. It lacks character. It’s too open.”

Before any changes are made, Winter says he and his staff will listen to people, get Oregon plant people involved and gather information. He’s aware of the hurdles ahead, including no money for improvements, a tapped-out donation pool and the public’s perception of failure.

“We don’t have it all figured out, but I think we deserve time to learn and live with the garden before making any critical decisions,” says Winter, who’s already bought land outside Silverton for a second home.

For him, though, the most critical decision has been made. Winter and Moonstone plan to break ground on the resort soon, this summer possibly, and open it within a year. The Craftsman-style lodge will sit on top of the hill overlooking the garden with the wetlands to one side and the second-growth Discovery Forest to the other.

If it’s true, as his mother says, that Winter builds hotels so he can have gardens, The Oregon Garden Resort should more than satisfy his cravings.

“I feel pretty good at this point,” says Winter. “I very much see this as an opportunity, something I’ve been pointing toward all my life.”

By KYM POKORNY
503-221-8205
kympokorny@news.oregonian.com
The Oregonian
Monday, June 12, 2006