Laurel Hedge Gardens

 
Last Saturday, we took a long trip to Estacada, Oregon, to visit another open garden - Laurel Hedge. It was well worth the drive. This is the garden of landscape designers Darin Simmons and Matthew Greydanus. There is also a nursery and gift shop on the premises. There was a wonderful birdhouse that I am still kicking myself for not buying.




The extensive gardens cover two acres and have just about everything you can think of - the catalog description reads "a Bamboo garden with tea house, koi pond with rustic pavillon, white-flowering spiral garden, rose garden, hornbeam-lined allee, flower garden with greenhouse and many others". I would add to that - a pond, several water features, statuary, containers, bridges, bird houses, and a beautiful selection of plants.

As we were ooo-ing and ah-ing around every corner, I kept saying to myself - "We are downsizing, remember?" It was all gorgeous and a tremendous amount of work has gone into it. We chatted with Darin Simmons, one of the owners, and he said they do almost all the work themselves!

Darin says that he is a plant collector and Matthew does most of the design work. I am making it a point to carry a notebook with me from here out because I cannot remember the names of plants afterward. He told us the name of the tree on the left and of course, I have forgotten it. There were numerous stunning hydrangeas.

Mutabalis, one of my favorite roses

I will close with another stunning dahlia. Dahlias are another plant that seem to do very well here in the Pacific Northwest.

Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy