Berry, the daughter of Ben Selling and Mathilda Hess, grew up in Portland and married Alfred Berry, a contractor who became the superintendent of Portland International Airport. For more than 30 years, the couple and their three children lived in northeast Portland's Irvington neighborhood, where Berry developed an interest in plants. Reading about plant expeditions to Europe and Asia, she began to provide financial support for the expeditions and through them to obtain seeds. By the mid-1930s, Berry had run out of room for her plants in Irvington, and the couple moved to "a bowl-shaped site nestled near the top of a hill". The property, just north of Lake Oswego, included springs and creeks, a ravine, a meadow, and a cattail marsh, and was partly covered with second-growth Douglas-fir.