Opulent neighborhood garden (that is no more)

Opulent Garden

This outrageously opulent garden is in Tacoma, Washington.  Even though there is no walking involve (it is private property, after all), I had to share this garden. It made me feel uncomfortable as I drove by this house for years.  It seemed like such an embarrassing overindulgence. There are so many plants in pots and so much flowering that I guess I felt overwhelmed just looking at it, too.  The gardener has been doing this for at least a decade and I'm starting to really enjoy driving slowly by this house now and then on a beautiful Pacific Northwest summer day.  There is a joy and a wild exuberance about this garden that is starting to rub off on me.  Although I don't believe that I'm inspired to do this myself, I am content to be an enthralled observer and I believe this gardener truly enjoys sharing with us all.
 

The majority of these plants are in pots.  The owner probably overwinters many of them.  I'm sure that keeping them in pots makes that process a lot easier. 

[Update 4/4/2020: Unfortunately, this home no longer puts on a show each spring and summer in Tacoma.  Either the wonderful gentleman who planted this every year died, or he had to move.  The house was sold and the new owners were not inclined to continue this over-the-top tradition.  I, for one, will miss it.]

Lakewood Gardens (goodbye)

Lakewold Gardens is set on beautiful Gravelly Lake in Lakewood, a suburb of Tacoma, Washington.  It's only a few acres, but this estate, run by a non-profit foundation, is packed with gorgeous scenery.  I love that it is so close to where I live and I visit quite often.  In fact, on a Mother's Day visit with my daughter this year, I sprang for the family membership (only $10 more for a year than the cost for two individuals for one visit - Mother's Day special).  

This garden is a mini-Butchart Gardens, in my opinion.  There are multiple garden rooms to explore here, too, including manicured and finely designed gardens around the house.  But, there are also pleasingly chaotic, British-style gardens and wild forest tumbling off to the edges of the property and down to the lake shore behind.

This is the back of the building that used to be a family home.  It is used for conferences, weddings, and other meetings now.  There is a covered patio at the back.  You can see the wisteria growing over the patio arbor, with room for many chairs and tables.

The swimming pool is a beautiful trefoil design; small, but it does not dominate the landscape and it serves as a lovely pond now.  (Although, I imagine some of the staff use it for swimming.  The water looks sparkling clean.)

There are some very impressive topiary sculptures at Lakewold Gardens, including this duck or swan and a lovely nesting hen behind it.

At the end of this wide walkway is a serene arbor with vines growing down the front of the structure.  It is built of beautiful wood and inside sits a statue and a small shade garden with comfortable benches all around the inside walls.  (The pool is to the left after the hedge.)

Plants for sale at gift shop

If you go to Lakewold Gardens, make sure you leave time to look through the gift shop.  There are some wonderfully eclectic gardening items, including used (many out-of-print, I imagine) gardening books that have been donated for sale.  And, as you can see in the photo, there are many (MANY) plants for sale; some appear to be very hard to find legacy-type plants from the Gardens. 

 Interested in going to Lakewold Gardens?  Here is their website: http://www.lakewoldgardens.org/    And, if you want to see all of my Lakewold Gardens photos, you can visit my Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/donnielouise/

Statue inside the pergola

Butchart Gardens, British Columbia

Butchart Gardens, near Victoria, B. C., was my inspiration for these garden walks.  I visited the Gardens for the first time in July 2011,  It was an overcast and often rainy day, but this seemed to make the colors that much more lush and the scent that much more heavenly.  The overcast seemed to make the photos really pop, too.

Until this visit, I had not realized how spectacular it could be to walk through a large garden in full bloom.  Butchart is massive and has many garden "rooms". The quarry garden is particularly impressive, with its meandering walkways and so many different flowering plants.  It is almost completely unrecognizable as a quarry.  In 1906, Robert Butchart's limestone quarry was exhausted and his wife, Jennie, created this beautiful sunken garden out of it by trucking in huge amounts of topsoil.  Using a harness contraption, she even hung hundreds of feet in the air to set plants into the quarry walls.
 

 The fountain, close to the quarry, is truly beautiful with its changing patterns of spray and the sunken setting surrounded by greenery.  There is a wonderful viewing area here and there are benches to sit and enjoy the view, as there seem to be all over the Gardens.

The Italian Garden is brilliantly beautiful and much more minutely designed.  There are ivy and window boxes of trailing flowers covering the front of snack shops along one side of this garden.  Gellato is available in one of them.  Of course, you can get some lunch and shop for gifts in the main building area behind this garden, at the front gate.  Check out the Butchart webside: http://www.butchartgardens.com/

 This is an orchard of lovely trees (not sure what kind) surrounded by colorful impatiens.  The orchard edges a lovely amphitheater area (to the right of these trees) where concerts are often held and concert goers can sit on the grass to enjoy the music.

This is my favorite fountain, of which there are many.  It's a sculpture of entwined, jumping fish, as you can see, with water shooting up from inside.  The surrounding shrubbery, the fountain edging of beautiful plantings, and the surrounding benches make this a really relaxing place to rest after walking for hours.

The Butchart Gardens Rose Garden is huge, so incredibly colorful, and the scent is wonderful. One could spend hours just walking or sitting and enjoying the evening in this setting.

There is, also, a wonderful Japanese Garden that slopes down to the water and a boat dock.  That garden has mostly overarching greenery and many quiet rooms with a variety of water features.  

Introduction - why I blog

My work is fascinating.  I catalog library books for the second (or perhaps, third) largest school district in my State.  55 librarians send me the items they purchase for their libraries.  I love looking at all those books ( DVDs, audiobooks, pieces of equipment, etc.) and entering the information in our library system.  I love the symmetry of organizing the information and putting it in the right places in a MARC record.  I love troubleshooting the library system, finding errors and correcting them, all with the overarching goal of making it easy for students and staff to find the library resources they need in order to succeed. 

However, all this fascinating work is done sitting down, in front of a computer (with two monitors).  I sit, researching and typing, for almost 8 hours per day. My exercise is literally turning my head from screen to screen and walking a cart full of books to my coworker a couple times per day.

I realized that fitness is going to be necessary, if I wish to enjoy my grandchildren, assuming there will be some  So, I wracked my brain for exercise ideas.  I needed something that would require walking, but I needed a purpose, an interesting purpose.  Walking for the sake of walking is just plain boring, especially walking-in-place on a gym machine. 

My new exercise purpose: collecting gardens.  I research and locate interesting public gardens.  There is a great deal of fun, as it happens, in finding gardens; driving to them, walking all over them, taking photographs, smelling the perfume of the blooms and growing things, and enjoying the spectrum of colors. 

Currently, I am collecting gardens of the Pacific Northwest (U.S. and Canada, since it is so close). When the time is right, I plan to expand my collection to gardens much farther afield.

Here you will see photographs of the many gardens I visit and my observations of each.