Heronswood
Aug. 30th, 2009 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmegaeraPerhaps only another garden geek would understand why I feel this way, but I went to an amazing place today. I get email notifications from the Northwest chapter of the Garden Conservancy when open house days are held at private gardens in western Washington. About a week ago, I got one saying that Heronswood, a darned close to legendary garden in these parts, was going to be open today.
Heronswood used to be a famous (in garden circles, anyway) rare plant nursery, and it has a long and, towards the end, rather sad history -- suffice to say, it was eventually sold to the Burpee Seed Company several years ago for the value of its nursery stock, and Burpee is gradually dismantling the garden and hopes to sell the land. I never thought I would get the chance to see Heronswood before it was gone.
Then I got the email from the Garden Conservancy last week. The pictures (many and large) are behind the cut .
This is the driveway leading up to the house (the former owners lived on-site). The sheer textures in this picture are bloody amazing. I was a horticulture minor in college, and I have been an avid gardener for almost four decades. I recognized maybe a third of the plants in this picture as I strolled along. Maybe.
This is a topiary fence made out of hornbeam, surrounding a small water garden to the side of the house. I don't want to think about how long it must take to prune the darned thing. There was a small frog in the water garden, but in the only picture I got of him, he was very small and very blurry.
This is the potager on the far side of the topiary fence from the house. Full of all sorts of vegetables, up to and including artichokes that no one had harvested. They looked just like the thistles on steroids that they are.
I have no idea what this thing was. You could have hid Illyan's elephant under there, though.
One of the perennial borders. The purple mass in the center is monarda. Most of the others? Good question [g].
Joe-pye weed. I find this vastly amusing because it's a roadside weed back East, and the Brits have taken it, selectively bred it within an inch of its life, and turned it into a garden plant. Yes, that's how most garden flowers started life, but I still find it funny in this particular instance.
Meadow rue. It's not all that exotic (except that the flowers of this specimen are double), but I'd just never met it in person before. It's lovely. I want to find space for it in my garden [ha].
And now we take a short side trip to ancient Greece or Rome or somewhere. I saw at least four fountains at Heronswood; this one was the most exotic.
I'm pretty sure these are tree ferns, but I wouldn't swear to it. If they are, I didn't know they were hardy here. Of course, Heronswood is a "warm" garden (there is a fairly distinct zone shift between gardens near the water here and those, like my "cool" garden, that are not), so that may explain things. But they were still something of a shock [g].
A particularly attractive sedum. I love sedum, just on general principles.
This is a very small sampling of what I saw at Heronswood today. For instance, I have never seen so many hardy cyclamen in my life before, just growing through the woods like they were native or something. I tried, but couldn't get a decent picture of them. And I have never seen so many different kinds of foliage in my entire life. It wasn't easy to back off enough to get good views of the garden as a whole, but I hope that you can get something of an idea of how incredible this place was.
After surfeiting myself on gardens, I took the picnic lunch I'd brought with me and drove a few miles north to Port Gamble, a very old (for this part of the world -- 1850s) lumber company town turned tourist attraction. Here's a couple of pictures of it, too.
Looking out over the water at the end of the street. The fog had burned off everywhere except streaks over the water. It was nice and cool, and lovely.
Some of the restored company houses along the main street. Each one had a plaque telling about its origins and who'd lived there way back when. Most of them are businesses now.
There was also a craft market going on on a side street.
After that I came home. What a wonderful day.
Heronswood used to be a famous (in garden circles, anyway) rare plant nursery, and it has a long and, towards the end, rather sad history -- suffice to say, it was eventually sold to the Burpee Seed Company several years ago for the value of its nursery stock, and Burpee is gradually dismantling the garden and hopes to sell the land. I never thought I would get the chance to see Heronswood before it was gone.
Then I got the email from the Garden Conservancy last week. The pictures (many and large) are behind the cut .
This is the driveway leading up to the house (the former owners lived on-site). The sheer textures in this picture are bloody amazing. I was a horticulture minor in college, and I have been an avid gardener for almost four decades. I recognized maybe a third of the plants in this picture as I strolled along. Maybe.
This is a topiary fence made out of hornbeam, surrounding a small water garden to the side of the house. I don't want to think about how long it must take to prune the darned thing. There was a small frog in the water garden, but in the only picture I got of him, he was very small and very blurry.
This is the potager on the far side of the topiary fence from the house. Full of all sorts of vegetables, up to and including artichokes that no one had harvested. They looked just like the thistles on steroids that they are.
I have no idea what this thing was. You could have hid Illyan's elephant under there, though.
One of the perennial borders. The purple mass in the center is monarda. Most of the others? Good question [g].
Joe-pye weed. I find this vastly amusing because it's a roadside weed back East, and the Brits have taken it, selectively bred it within an inch of its life, and turned it into a garden plant. Yes, that's how most garden flowers started life, but I still find it funny in this particular instance.
Meadow rue. It's not all that exotic (except that the flowers of this specimen are double), but I'd just never met it in person before. It's lovely. I want to find space for it in my garden [ha].
And now we take a short side trip to ancient Greece or Rome or somewhere. I saw at least four fountains at Heronswood; this one was the most exotic.
I'm pretty sure these are tree ferns, but I wouldn't swear to it. If they are, I didn't know they were hardy here. Of course, Heronswood is a "warm" garden (there is a fairly distinct zone shift between gardens near the water here and those, like my "cool" garden, that are not), so that may explain things. But they were still something of a shock [g].
A particularly attractive sedum. I love sedum, just on general principles.
This is a very small sampling of what I saw at Heronswood today. For instance, I have never seen so many hardy cyclamen in my life before, just growing through the woods like they were native or something. I tried, but couldn't get a decent picture of them. And I have never seen so many different kinds of foliage in my entire life. It wasn't easy to back off enough to get good views of the garden as a whole, but I hope that you can get something of an idea of how incredible this place was.
After surfeiting myself on gardens, I took the picnic lunch I'd brought with me and drove a few miles north to Port Gamble, a very old (for this part of the world -- 1850s) lumber company town turned tourist attraction. Here's a couple of pictures of it, too.
Looking out over the water at the end of the street. The fog had burned off everywhere except streaks over the water. It was nice and cool, and lovely.
Some of the restored company houses along the main street. Each one had a plaque telling about its origins and who'd lived there way back when. Most of them are businesses now.
There was also a craft market going on on a side street.
After that I came home. What a wonderful day.