Open gardens

It seems that there is so much going on in the gardening world here that it is hard to keep up. Case in point - the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon Open Gardens. These are private gardens open to the public. Every weekend (and some on Monday evenings), there is a list of gardens to pick from. Just deciding which ones to go see can be a difficult decision. It seems that a lot of the gardens on the tour in previous months were in far-away locations (or they seemed far to us) but now there are more appearing on the list in Portland and Vancouver. 

We had a great day on Saturday. We visited three gardens on the list and made a stop at Fabric Depot, a humongous fabric store that Michael had heard about. Fabric stores are to Michael what gardens are for me. He does enjoy the gardens as well, or at least he says he does. :)

On this trip, we saw a lot of clematis! In fact, the first stop was the Rogerson Clematis Gardens, a test garden for all types of clematis.

The huge yellow clematis is 'Bill McKenzie'. This was about 8 feet tall.

 

A close-up of the blooms

 

'Polish Spirit' seems to be the clematis that does spectacularly well here in the Pacific NW.

 

Next up was the Tuttle garden. For sheer flower power, this one was amazing. It was a huge property, complete with orchards, woodland areas and wall-to-wall flowers!

The last garden we visited was Kathy Whitman's, who had a long border of shrubs and perennials. She uses lots of chartreuse as accents and the effect is lovely.

The massive fuchsias continue to amaze!

Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy