Bloedel Reserve, Seattle WA

The last stop on the Garden Blogger's Seattle Fling tour was to the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island, just east of Seattle, across the Puget Sound. The private and public gardens we visited in Seattle were beautiful but the Bloedel was truly spectacular.

 

The Reserve's 150 acres were filled with quiet trails through woodlands and landscaped gardens, including a Japanese Garden, a Moss Garden and Reflection Pool. 

The Bloedel Reserve was once the home of Prentice Bloedel and his wife, Virginia, who resided on the property from 1951 until 1986. He was deeply interested in the relationship between people and the natural world, and the power of landscape to evoke emotions ranging from tranquility to exhilaration. You can read more about the Bloedel Reserve here. 

True to Seattle's reputation, it rained the entire day we were at Bloedel, but somehow the wet and the mist added to the beauty of the landscape.

My favorite was the Moss Garden area. Everywhere I looked, moss covered the ground, tree trunks, fallen branches and stones. Ferns and low growing plants filled in the other areas:

The Japanese Garden was serene and beautifully manicured:

The Glen was filled with Birch trees, Rhododendrons and a lovely pond:

Every twist and turn within the Bloedel Reserve was truly breathtaking and magical. If you are ever in the neighborhood, I highly recommend it!

Seattle's Public Gardens

In my last post, I showcased some of the private gardens I visited while attending the 2011 Garden Bloggers Fling in Seattle, WA.  A nice contrast to these was some of the great public gardens, arboretums and parks in the Seattle area. Here are some of the highlights I enjoyed:



Dunn Gardens

Dunn Gardens is a beautiful spot and currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Located in Seattle's Broadview neighborhood, it was once the summer home of Arthur Dunn and was originally landscaped by the Olmsted Brothers in 1915.

The Olmsted firm, established in 1858 by Frederick Law Olmsted
(1822-1903), designed some of the most notable urban parks in the United
States, including Central Park in New York City, the capitol grounds in
Washington D.C., and Boston Commons.



The Olmsted Brothers liked to work with the natural topography of the site in their designs, and tried to incorporate as much of the
native vegetation and surrounding landscape as possible. A characteristic Olmsted plan included wide,
curving paths that connected a series of individual park-like settings, each
reflecting the characteristics of its individual site. The parks often
featured broad lawns, punctuated by stands of native trees and shrubs.

Dunn Gardens is the only Olmsted residential garden regularly open to the public
in Washington state.

The weeping beech tree looks like a natural waterfall into the pond below. 

Ferns growing above a moss-covered bed.

Beautiful mix of plants all within the same color scheme.

I love the texture combinations of these plants in the above and below photos. 

Some beautiful plants in the curator's garden.

Miller Library and Gardens

Housed at the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horticulture, the Miller Library

is the first and only library in the Seattle area dedicated to gardening and
horticulture. Gardeners, horticulturists and naturalists could all find something of interest here, and better yet, they would be able to borrow from the collection like a regular library.



The library has over 15,000 books and more than 700 garden periodicals. There's even a rare-book
collection with garden texts dating back to the
17th century.



Outside the libary, are UW Botanic Gardens. Officially referred to as the Soest Herbaceous Display Gardens, it was
created to help local gardeners select plants appropriate to a variety
of site conditions commonly found in Pacific Northwest urban gardens.
This garden features over 280 kinds of herbaceous plants
that include perennials, annuals, and bulbs.



The gardens demonstrate how soil and light affect plant
growth and health; each of the eight beds have a different mixture of soil type and light exposure.

Bellvue Botanical Gardens

The sun shone brightly on this 36 acre botanical garden which is filled with perennial borders, alpine gardens, dahlia and fuschia gardens, woodlands and meadows - just to name a few.

Perennial gardens

I call this a "fuzzy daisy"

After spending a long day in the sun, the woodland gardens were a welcome retreat for me. The winding path was filled with trees, ferns and silent greenery.

Is this the door to a Hobbit's home??

Olympic Sculpture Park

This 9 acre park is a great way to experience different types of sculpture in an outdoor setting, all while enjoying the incredible views of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains.

Colorful wildflowers grew along the path in the park.

Naturally, our group of garden enthusiasts were most excited and intrigued by the Nekoum Vivarium (vivarium means "a place of life" in Latin). In 2006, artist Mark Dion had a vision for a vivarium and, with permission from the State, had a Western Hemlock tree moved from Green River Watershed to a special greenhouse at the Olympic Sculpture Park.

Dion has been quoted as describing the vivarium as:

"In some ways, this
project is an abomination. We’re taking a tree that is an ecosystem—a
dead tree, but a living system—and we are re-contextualizing it and
taking it to another site. We’re putting it in a sort of Sleeping Beauty
coffin, a greenhouse we’re building around it. And we’re pumping it up
with a life support system — an incredibly complex system of air,
humidity, water, and soil enhancement — to keep it going. All those
things are substituting what nature does—emphasizing how, once that’s
gone, it’s incredibly difficult, expensive, and technological to
approximate that system—to take this tree and to build the next
generation of forests on it. So this piece is in some way perverse. It
shows that, despite all of our technology and money, when we destroy a
natural system it’s virtually impossible to get it back. In a sense
we’re building a failure."
(http://atlasobscura.com/place/neukom-vivarium-olympic-sculpture-park)

Seattle Arboretum at South Seattle Community College

The South Seattle Community College Arboretum was established by the
College and the SSCC Foundation in 1978 in part
as the result of a petition by the Landscape Horticulture Program
students for an arboretum to serve as their living laboratory.
The 6-acre site is used as a laboratory for plant
identification, arboriculture, irrigation, landscape maintenance and landscape
construction courses. The Arboretum is also used as an outdoor classroom
by professional horticulturists and hobby gardeners.

The final public garden we visited was the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island. It was such an incredible place and I have so many photos to share. It truly deserves its own post, so stay tuned!

Private Gardens of Seattle

Last week, I was lucky enough to attend the Garden Bloggers Fling in Seattle, WA. Although many garden bloggers have been meeting in various cities for the past four years, this was my first time attending. It was wonderful to put faces to the blogs I read and to meet garden bloggers from all over the country - some blog for fun, some for professional reasons, some are garden book writers, some are photographers and some have jobs completely unrelated to gardening. But the common thread was the love of gardening, horticulture and landscape design.

Each of the four days was carefully planned by the Fling organizers so that we were able to see both private and public gardens in the Seattle area. I am excited to share with you my photos of the trip, but for the sake of space, I will divide the blog posts into sections. So be sure to come back to read it all!

Here are some of my personal favorites from the private gardens we visited:

Garden #1: Tucker Garden
Shelagh Tucker spent years working to turn her front yard into a xeriscape (a style of landscape design requiring little or no irrigation or other maintenance designed specifically to cope with dry conditions and for water conservation). The sun was shining down on her front yard, decorated with steps, stones and drought tolerant plants. 

In contrast, her backyard was lush with plants, grass and trees. My two favorites were a Dahlia and Clematis combination in a small courtyard:

And the pond:

Garden #2: Birrell Garden
Shelagh's next door neighbors, Suzette & Jim Birrell, had an equally impressive garden. A contrast to the xeriscape, Suzette's front yard was lush and overflowing with flowers, shrubs and trees. Every nook and cranny was planted with something beautiful. 

The backyard was curved, which gave the small space a comfortable feel. She had an impressive vegetable garden with peas, chard, cabbage, beets and artichokes - just to name a few! 

Although we were treated to blue skies on the day of our visit, the owners say the shed was painted bright blue after "the bluest skies you've ever seen" in Seattle. It must be lovely to look at that color on the gray and rainy days, I'm sure!
 

Garden #3: Epping Garden
The garden of Michelle and Christopher Epping is a past winner of the Pacific Northwest Gardens Competition (3rd place in 2007). Their home is located in Newcastle, just outside of Seattle, and sits on top of a hill. We were again treated with clear, sunny skies and from the house, we could see the Seattle skyline, Olympic Mountains and Lake Washington.

Their garden had many layers and paths winding all around the garden. Here are some of my favorite things from this garden:

Garden #4: Lane Garden
Nearly every inch of Denise Lane's one acre garden in Medina, WA was landscaped with plants, paths and unique garden accents. 
We enjoyed lunch on the the stone patio that was recently transformed from a pickle-ball court. The patio now features an outdoor kitchen, gas fire tables and multiple seating areas.

Her gardens had both sunny perennial beds and shady woodlands. I especially loved the beautiful displays of Calla Lilies and Astillbe:

The beautiful glass fiddleheads were created by glassblower Barbara Sanderson.

But my favorite was the "Ruins." Flowers dripped from the pillars above, and below, the water cascaded into the pond over a large stone leaf:

Have a look at this photo below. Can you spot me?

She had 3 long mirrors placed at the back of one flower bed. They provided an interesting perspective!

Garden #5: Edwards Forkner Garden
Lorene Edwards Forkner's garden was filled with eclectic garden accents, many of which she is highlighting in her upcoming book "Handmade Garden Projects: Step-by-Step Instructions for Creative Garden Features, Containers, Lighting and More".

Some of my favorite creations in her garden were these:

Rusted mailbox nestled among the Sisyrinchium striatum

Topiaries living in an old wagon

A terrarium inside an industrial sized light feature

Vintage travel trailer as a place to relax or entertain

Inside the travel trailer

Garden #6: Farley Garden
The last private garden we toured was the home of Kate Farley, a landscape designer, who specializes in garden structure. 
I was impressed with the tunnel she created in the front yard from her shrubs.

The potting shed in the backyard was furnished with vintage tools and found objects:

Walking around to the back of the house I was amazed at the show of color from the sunny bed filled with purple Delphinium, pale Phlox, magenta Poppies and orange Astromeria, set off by two purple trellis:

Nestled in the shade, an old tree house surrounds a tree trunk and is now covered in climbing rose branches:

Stay tuned for more from my Garden Blogger's Fling to Seattle - next I'll highlight some of the public gardens we visited!