Category Archives: Travel

The Wonders of Windcliff

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Two of the major reasons I wanted to participate in this year’s Garden Fling in Washington State’s Puget Sound region – to leave behind the July meadows at my cottage on Ontario’s Lake Muskoka when the wild beebalm is coming into bloom – were, quite simply, Heronswood and Windcliff.  All of the gardens we visited held their share of magic and heaps of horticultural expertise, but the chance to visit these two related Kitsap Peninsula garden meccas made the decision for me.

In 2000, when Dan and Robert were still at Heronswood, they found this property on a small lane in the village of Indianola, as Dan said in a speech at the New York Botanical Garden some years ago.  It was 6-1/2 acres on a 200-foot bluff above Puget Sound and “the complete opposite of what I was gardening with at Heronswood.” Windcliff had been given its name by its then-owners, Peg and Mary, who had been raising German shepherds here while regularly mowing acres of summer-browned lawn. As Dan says, this part of the Pacific Northwest averages just 28 inches of rain per year with little measurable rain between spring and fall. So for him, a lawn was out of the question. “I’m not a friend of this whole concept of throwing water and fertilizer on something to make it grow, so we can then cut it on a weekly basis. What an amazing waste of energy.” 

I wrote about Heronswood in my last blog – now let’s head down the long driveway toward the house at Windcliff.

There are 4 acres of treasures on this side of the house under the big forest trees, including an arboretum of rare trees and shrubs with a rich ground layer of unusual plants, many also sold in the on-site nursery.  Be sure to check out the colourful bamboos, including Fargesia robusta ‘Campbell’, an eye-catching clumping species with its white sheaths.

There are bamboo tunnels, too.

At Heronswood, I saw a single plant of Alstroemeria isabellana; here it grows in a generous drift.

Nearby is Alstroemeria ‘Indian Summer’, a hardy, clumping form of Peruvian lily with purplish foliage that tops out at 3-feet (1 m) in height.

Flame nasturtium (Tropaeolum speciosum) clambers through shrubs and trees, already forming its beautiful, dangling fruit.

I snap photos as I walk and recognize this small, elegant tree as a podocarp. But its identity is confirmed when I find John Grimshaw’s erudite page on Podocarpus salignus, including his photo of this very tree at Windcliff.

Japanese clethra (C. barbinervis) is showing off its scented, spiky, white flowers above a trunk with handsome, exfoliating bark.

At the bottom of the driveway we arrive at the house: a low-slung, Asian-inspired building in three connected pavilions designed and built by Robert and clad in aubergine-purple shakes. (Even the chimney stones are colour-coordinated!) Stretching across the front is an architectural assemblage of fibre-clay pots. Wreathed around the front door is a perfumed, narrow-leafed sausage vine (Holboellia angustifolia) grown from seed Dan collected on one of his twenty exploring trips to the north part of Vietnam.  That particular collection took the form of Dan’s guide eating the sweet fruit, then spitting the dark seeds into a zip-lock bag. Like all seeds he collects, permits must be issued by the host country, then the seeds are sent for inspection directly to the USDA office in Seattle which is now very familiar with his work.

“We wanted to plant woodland treasures outside the front door at ground level,” said Dan, “but it was impossible with our dogs, all those things I wanted to baby along. So we decided to do a pot wall to lift all those treasures off the ground. Robert took this project on. We found some inexpensive fibre pots, knocked the bottoms out, stained them, then erected about a 25-foot-wide wall.”   A cluster of brown toothed lancewood trees (Pseudopanax ferox) from New Zealand grow here in their Dr. Seuss juvenile form.

I love the way this cubist container garden fits together, unifying the habitat for the plant treasures.

Dan meets us in the front, giving us an overall description of Windcliff and relating how the January 2024 freeze devastated parts of the garden, causing the loss of countless plants and necessitating the current replanting of certain areas.

Moving west around the house I pass a bamboo-fenced, shady alcove garden with windows into the dining room and beyond that, windows facing south to Puget Sound.  As Dan has acknowledged, it was a rare opportunity to design both a garden and house at the same time. The light fixture visible through the window was inspired by the long tentacles of the giant Pacific octopus, the largest octopus species on the planet with a 20-foot arm-span, a creature that lives in the waters just off the bluff. To see a photo of the fixture from the inside, have a peek at Andrew Ritchie’s review of Dan’s book ‘Windcliff’.

This area features a stand of hardy shade ginger (Cautleya spicata), a Himalayan native. Several cultivars have been introduced, including a selection called ‘Arun Flame’, which Dan and Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones of Crug Farms in Wales discovered in eastern Nepal on a collecting trip with the American novelist Jamaica Kincaid. She wrote a 2005 memoir called “Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya” of that taxing expedition.

A small gravel garden partly enclosed by bedrock sits outside the passage to the master bedroom at right.

I turn the corner of the house and walk along flagstones towards the bluff gardens on the south side. It’s a challenge to identify plants at Windcliff but I might venture a guess that the variegated shrub above my head is Stachyurus praecox ‘Oriental Sun’.

I’m moving so quickly that I capture the delicate shadow play near my feet but neglect to look up to see what is making these patterns – likely Schefflera taiwaniana.  Schefflera is one of Dan’s favourite genera – growing up in northern Michigan, he had a schefflera as a houseplant – and this species is one of the hardiest for a shady spot. (You can hear him talk about it in this Fine Gardening video.)

Coming into the sunshine, I glimpse the bluff and the water beyond through the upswept, coppery limbs of an iconic plant for gardeners in the west, a handsome manzanita (Arctostaphylos). That pretty table was created some 25 years ago for Dan by Bainbridge Island artists George Little and David Lewis.

Nearby is a bog garden with different pitcher plant species (Sarracenia spp.)

Note that lovely Yucca rostrata behind the kniphofia in the background.

A drift of Ammi visnaga near the house reminds me of the Conservatory Garden at New York’s Central Park, where I last photographed this species. It was originally designed by Lynden Miller, one of Dan’s horticultural heroes. (This is my 2016 blog on that amazing garden.)

Standing now on the ‘bluff side’, I look back at the house through a planting of red-flowered Mexican bush lobelia (Lobelia laxiflora).  I think the big, lush leaves are from Eucomis pallidiflora subsp. pole-evansii, a very tall pineapple lily species which seeds around this garden.

Dan is nearby so I tell him the story of asking to photograph him at Heronswood back in September 2005, when all he really wanted to do was get to his waiting birthday cake.  He graces me with a big smile, but I’m also distracted by….

…. the giant hog fennel (Peucedanum verticillare) behind him! 

As a lover of colour in the garden, I’m drawn towards the lower bluff where brilliant red and scarlet crocosmias are partnered with agapanthus and rich blue Salvia patens. If you squint, you can see the skyscrapers of Seattle in the distance. And on a clear day, the view of Mount Rainier is spectacular.

The vignette is enhanced by the eucomis foliage, which will mature to yield a pineapple lily that reaches 5-6 feet in height. When the previous owners were here, they had an expansive view of Puget Sound over their summer-brown lawn. In planning his own garden, Dan wanted the view not to be an open book dominated by sky and water, but to be glimpsed through an interesting array of plants of various sizes, habits, colours and textures. 

As I stand quietly in this area, a female rufous hummingbird becomes brave enough to forage in the crocosmia flowers.

See how her head feathers are brushed with the golden pollen on the anthers, which she’ll carry with her as she flits from plant to plant, ensuring that seed forms in the beautiful fruits of crocosmia? 

I see splashes of orange behind the agapanthus in this section, the spikes of red-hot poker (Kniphofia) and drifts of California poppy (Eschscholzia californica).

The sweet perfume of Spanish broom (Spartium junceum) is in the air here. It’s a little dèja vu moment for me because when we were in Tuscany visiting our youngest son and daughter-in-law in late May, this Mediterranean shrub, which they call “ginestre”, was in bloom throughout the hills. In fact there was a festival of flowers in Lucignano, the village where we stayed, called “Maggiolata” which uses the yellow blossoms of the shrub as its floral motif. At the edge of the bluff on the right, you can see the native madrona tree (Arbutus menziesii) whose shimmering, copper-bronze trunk and branches inspired the colour scheme of the house and its furnishings.

Close to the bluff edge is a circular stone fire pit called the council ring. Created by Portland mosaic artist Jeffrey Bale, it features an inset stone face by sculptor Marcia Donohue.

Walking back towards the house, I see purple Jerusalem sage (Phlomis purpurea), one of many Phlomis species here.  (If I am wrong, I hope to be corrected in comments.)

Then a few plants I like to call “scrim plants”. Dan has said: “I was a dinosaur when it came to the use of grasses. I was the last person in North America to appreciate grasses, but Heronswood was not a grass sort of garden. That diaphanous quality and the movement they provide to the garden is so incredibly important.” Here he uses giant feather grass (Stipa gigantea/Celtica), one of the very best grasses to use as a screen through which to glimpse other plants, like the agapanthus.

Angel’s fishing rod (Dierama pulcherrimum) creates the same screen effect in front of white-flowered Olearia cheesmanii, a New Zealand bush daisy.

A lovely, single, orange dahlia pops up throughout the bluff garden.

There are a few gravel-mulched terraces leading up to the house level here. (And can I just say I LOVE airy bamboo fences…)

This one features Salvia ‘Amistad’ with a small kniphofia.

Steps up to the house are flanked by Yucca gloriosa with soft silver sage (Salvia argentea) and a white-flowered salvia (likely S. greggii) at the base.

The terraces include a large pond and waterfall. The pond once held a collection of koi, but the local river otter put an end to the fish.

Large stepping-stones cross the pond beside a waterlily.

On the other side of the steps, the pond continues below a deck with a little viewing overlook to gaze out on the garden.

One of the family dogs (Babu?) meets me near the deck but refuses to pose.  He says he’s tired of paparazzi.  Fine.

A line of clay-fibre planters sits facing south, all the better for the succulents, cacti and other sun-lovers planted in them.

When I reach the deck, Dan is there, gazing out at his garden.  Beyond is a grove of Dustin Gimbel’s ‘Phlomis’ ceramic sculptures.

2024 started as a difficult year for gardeners in the Pacific Northwest, who lived through several consecutive January nights of deep-freeze temperatures – as low as 15F (-10C) on Jan. 12-13 in the Seattle area.   That’s when many of those tender Mediterranean and South African plants curl up their toes and die. At Windcliff, much of the shrub framework was lost, including many plants that had never been affected by cold before.  When he returned home from warmer climes in February, Dan called the garden a “mass murder crime scene investigation” and laid the blame on the Fraser Valley in British Columbia. (As a Canadian, I accept the blame on behalf of the Polar Vortex, even though I think Alaska might have had a hand in the dirty work too.)  In late winter, he sowed a buckwheat cover crop to smother weeds and improve the soil’s tilth, then in late April he covered the entire space, 10,000 square feet, with a 10-mil sheet of white plastic to ‘solarize’ the seeds of weedy mulleins and exotic grasses. In late September when the autumn rains begin, he’ll plant bulbs along with native plants and grasses in a “low-mow meadow”.   As he said on his Facebook page with an indefatigable air of optimism: “I could not bring myself to paint between the lines of those few things that survived, so nearly 25 years later, we begin again. What an adventure!!”

Parts of the bluff-side garden have been newly planted and mulched in gravel.

I love this Chilean annual, Nolana reichei, aka “flower of seven colors”. (I counted, it’s true.)

Our stay is coming to an end but I haven’t yet seen the vegetable garden or nursery, so I head off up the east side of the house towards the greenhouse. Fragrant lilies grow here, along with phlomis.

Robert Jones is manning the sales booth and my fellow travellers are in seventh heaven selecting rare plants….

…. of all kinds. Fortunately, our bus has capacious storage space below. (Windcliff does not do mail order, but plants are available for purchase on open days, and Monrovia has a Dan Hinkley Plant Collection too.)

As a Canadian, I’m not permitted to bring plants across the border without a phytosanitary certificate, so I content myself with window shopping.

Then I head to the agapanthus beds where I see some familiar names on the plant labels, like Portland gardener Nancy Goldman….

…. and my dear Seattle friend, Sue Nevler.  Said Dan of a happy day now a decade ago: “Robert and I had at last the opportunity to become married and we had a lovely party of friends coming in from all parts of the country and Europe, and we gave all the women a label and they got to go out and celebrate their favourite agapanthus seedling, and then we’ve named it for them.   So there will be a lot of feminine-sounding agapanthus being introduced into cultivation in the near future.” 

The perfume of sweet peas is in the air here, and I’m charmed that this sophisticated garden has devoted so much space to growing this old-fashioned annual.

Who can resist burying their nose in fragrant sweet peas?

Nearby is the vegetable garden.  Said Dan in his talk at New York Botanical Garden: “It was vegetable gardening that brought me into this whole world I feel so privileged to be a part of. As a young kid, I had the family vegetable garden responsibilities and it is still now the place you’re going to find me most often, in the potager that we put in at Windcliff….something we eat from every single day of the year. That is our reason for the garden, when it comes right down to it – this opportunity to have fresh vegetables that we know precisely where they came from, how they were treated, how they were loved.”

A clay pot is overflowing with spinach.

The greenhouse offers extra heat for tomatoes, which grow side-by-side with sarracenias.

While apples ripen on a tree nearby.

It’s time for us to head to Dan & Robert’s next-door neighbours, the Brindleys, for a group portrait, an annual event at the Fling.  I have just enough time as I bid farewell to snap a photo of a Mark Bulwinkle rusty iron screen.

I thought it was appropriate to include this photo in the lovely Brindley garden overlooking Puget Sound, courtesy of Becca Mathias.  I am slouched in the front row, second from left. If I look happy as a clam, it’s because I’ve just spent a few hours in what passes in gardening for heaven.  Thanks, Dan and Robert!

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Are you tired of looking at garden photos yet? No?  Well, I have been fortunate to visit and blog about a few other personal gardens designed by eminent plantsmen, including:

A Return to Heronswood

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My first visit to Heronswood was nineteen years before my recent one, on July 21, 2024 on a tour with the Garden Fling. My earlier visit was in September 2005, when I flew from Toronto to Vancouver to take my 83-year-old mother on a self-guided garden tour through the Seattle Region and Puget Sound. I was writing a weekly newspaper column then and always looking for story inspiration. We toured Bellevue Botanical Garden in Renton enroute to our bed-and-breakfast on Bainbridge Island. There we visited Bloedel Conservatory and I interviewed David Little and George Lewis at their renowned garden and sculpture studio. We also dropped in on a generously welcoming Linda Cochran at her old garden. But the highlight was our last stop at Heronswood Nursery in Kingston, on the Kitsap Peninsula.  Anyone who knew anything about gardening knew that this was THE mecca for plant-lovers, with rare plants arrayed not just in the retail nursery but planted in gardens throughout its 15 forested acres.  Started in 1987 when plant explorer Dan Hinkley and his partner, architect Robert Jones, laid out the paths and built their home there, the nursery business had become too all-consuming for them by the late 1990s. They found a buyer in 2000 in the big Eastern firm W. Atlee Burpee Company and its chairman George Ball, who wanted the nursery for its vast plant collection, including many rare species. (This was in those manic dot.com bubble days when every mail order catalogue looked like a great opportunity to take online – I know, I was in a similar short-lived situation.) Dan and Robert continued to work for Burpee under contract as managers and it was nearing closing time when I saw him that September day. Though he was rushing away because the staff had a cake waiting to wish him a happy birthday, he posed long enough for me to snap the photo below. 

What happened nine months after my visit is well-known.  In June 2006 Burpee boss George Ball, having discovered that plants that thrive in the Pacific rainforest do not necessarily grow in gardens in the Midwest, closed the nursery.  The garden was kept minimally maintained and opened three days annually to visitors via the Garden Conservancy. In 2012 Burpee sold the garden and nursery for an undisclosed amount via a sealed bid to the local Port Gamble S’Klallam tribe, which continues to manage it today as the non-profit Heronswood Botanical Garden with Dan Hinkley as Director Emeritus.  The Woodland Garden is as lush and beautiful in mid-summer as it ever was, so let’s take a walk through it to be begin our tour.

I like the big lacecap inflorescences of Hydrangea serrata ‘Macrophylla’, below, which taxonomically is an intriguing mashup of two species names.

It feels humbling to walk through an old Pacific Northwest forest, with its towering Douglas firs and hemlocks. I note the giant Himalayan lily (Cardiocrinum giganteum) already forming seeds near the Japanese hydrangea vine (Schizophragma molle), right.

Schizophragma molle can reach up to 40 feet (12 metres) in height, climbing via aerial rootlets.

There is an impressive collection of hydrangeas and their kin in the Woodland Garden. This gold-variegated lacecap is H. serrata ‘O Amacha Nishiki).

It takes me a while to figure out what plant is in fruit under the leaning Aruncus dioicus ‘Kneiffii’ here: Paris quadrifolia. 

I stop to admire this trio of Little & Lewis pillars topped with pots of trailing ivy.

Another beautiful hydrangea, H. macrophylla f. normalis ‘Veitchii’, bred by the English nursery of the same name in the early 1900s.

Lovely Anemenopsis macrophylla ‘White Swan’ is a new one for me (and if my knees were better I might have knelt to photograph it from below…..)

The juxtaposition of the big trees and the shade-loving hydrangeas and other woodlanders is inspiring for gardeners who complain about shade limiting their choices.

A thalictrum bends gracefully over other leaning plants.

Then it’s into the Formal Gardens via the iconic Arched Hornbeam Hedge, sculpted from Carpinus betulus ‘Fastigiata’.

This is one of the original Heronswood gardens and it looks as beautiful today as when I saw it in 2005.

It surrounds a lily pool edged with carnivorous pitcher plants (Sarracenia spp). Stone benches offer a place to sit and reflect.

The far side of the Hornbeam Hedge garden is adjacent to the Formal Potager.

When I was here 19 years ago, the Potager Garden was filled with vegetables.

Today, a combination of annuals and perennials fill the box-lined spaces.

This is my favourite view because the axis leads to the fountain focal point.

It is filled with Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’, a popular catmint.

I recall this whimsical Little & Lewis chanterelle sink fountain from my first visit here. It’s surrounded by a brilliant chartreuse planting of Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Golden Arrow.

Flower beds line the outer paths in the Potager and feature lovely combinations, like this Ligularia przewalskii with Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Firetail’.

I realize in looking closer that every stem of the wine-leaved plant has been cut. Is this a Chelsea chop to keep it smaller and bushier? Or does Heronswood have plant-pruning deer like I do?

A beautiful mix in one of the perimeter borders includes a cloud of bronze fennel.

The luscious Orienpet hybrid lily ‘Silk Road’ consorts nicely with yellow Hypericum x inodorum ‘Ysella’ and a malva of some sort.

It’s easy to look at the ‘forest’ of a garden and forget all the ‘trees’, like this humble annual love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena) with its complex structure.

Thalictrum adds an airy lilac cloud to the yellow heliopsis.

So many lilies! (Possibly L. regale?) If you can keep them free of red lily beetle (I cannot in Toronto, despite my efforts), they are the perfumed stars of the July garden.

On the way towards the formal garden surrounding the building that was once Dan and Robert’s house, I find a stand of hardy ginger (Roscoea purpurea) from the Himalayas.  The last time I saw these was at RBG Edinburgh!

A path leads through shrubs and various beds….

…. past a raised gravel garden filled with drought-tolerant plants….

…. like what I think is Sedum album ‘Coral Carpet’.

Near the house is an eye-catching combination of a golden redbud (Cercis spp.) and blue agapanthus.

There are more Orienpet (Oriental x Trumpet hybrid) lilies near the tent where we pick up our catered lunches. The tent had been in use for a wedding, one of the ways photogenic Heronswood now generates revenue, along with admission fees, lectures and plant sales.

A long pergola hosts numerous types of vines.

Near our lunch table is a bouquet that looks like the work of Riz Reyes, Assistant Director.

No sooner do I snap a photo than I see Riz himself – and he offers to pose next to Heronswood’s “it” plant, Lilium ‘Zeba’. In fact, Riz wrote an essay for Fine Gardening magazine on this very lily, the product of a cross between L. nepalense and L. ‘Kushi Maya’, itself an L. nepalense-Oriental cross.  

Here it is in combination with Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Firetail’ – don’t they make fine music together?

The lush beds in the formal gardens near the house feature ornamental grasses, perennials, towering trumpet lilies and agapanthus.

An empty urn acts as focal point here.

Time is fleeting on our stay here so I finish lunch and head towards the new, ecologically-focused gardens near the entrance. I do love a meadow and this one near the S’Klallum Connections Garden features a pair of native Washington state annuals, blue-headed gilia, Gilia capitata with pink farewell-to-spring, Clarkia amoena (aka godetia).  Interestingly, this is the second time I’ve seen Gilia capitata used in a meadow this season – the first time in Nigel Dunnett’s seed-mix for the wildflower moat at the Tower of London, which I blogged about recently.

The S’Klallum Connections Garden is still being developed but it promises to tell a powerful story about the relationship between the tribe and the land.

It will use the garden to tell stories, actual stories.

There are wetlands…

…. and native forest plants like salal (Gaultheria shallon). Florists know this shrub as a glossy, green filler for bouquets, but for Native Americans it is a food and medicinal plant. Other traditional plants in the garden include camas, soapberry and sweet-grass.

Sword fern (Polystichum munitum) is no less beautiful for being common in the woods.

The S’Klallum Connections Garden has a very quiet, naturalistic feeling.

An old totem pole has come to the end of its journey and is “resting” now in the garden, being allowed to return to the earth.

The Traveller’s Garden is another new space intended to highlight plants that reach the garden through the exploits of plant explorers. As the website says:    “Heronswood is well known for its rare plants, obtained around the world and the Traveler’s Garden, still under construction, tells the tale of plant hunters, what they do and how they do it. Follow in their footsteps and lose yourself in a Chilean forest, on a Vietnamese peak, or in the American West.”

Speaking of Vietnam, one of the interpretive signs in this area features founder Dan Hinkley rejoicing at the summit of the tallest mountain in that country.  If you want to read Dan’s essay on his ascent to this peak, it’s here on his website.

Himalayan hydrangea (H. heteromalla) is one of the uncommon plants in the Traveler’s Garden.

With the buses arriving to take us back to Tacoma, I run to the Renaissance Garden adjacent to the parking lot but just have time to snap a quick shot through the alders.  As the website says: “Sheltered amongst mossy logs, this garden tells of the interaction between nature and the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe through a recreation of an abandoned logging camp. Initially developed in 2018, it contains over 250 different types of ferns together with other shade-loving plants under a canopy of western red cedar, a tree of significant cultural importance to the tribe”.

As I leave this garden, I spot a sign that reminds me of my youngest grandson, the “salamander-whisperer”.

Between the parking lot and the Woodland Garden is a lovely container that needs its moment in the spotlight.

I take a few minutes to walk around Heronswood’s Gift Shop/Ticket Office….

…. where the raised garden contains some treasures, including lovely Lilium ‘Zeba….

…. the mangave (Agave) ‘Mission to Mars’…

…. and Peruvian lily, Alstroemeria isabellana.

 Heronswood’s director Dr. Ross Bayton, below, is particularly fond of another new space near the entrance that’s still being developed….

…. the Rock Garden. It includes “five rocky islands, each studded with miniature treasures that grow at high elevation. The garden currently showcases alpine plants from North America’s western mountains and southwestern deserts but will expand to include other regions plus Mediterranean landscapes.”  The yellow plant is sundrops, Calylophus berlandieri.

Included is a small bog devoted to carnivorous native plants like California pitcher plant, aka cobra lily, Darlingtonia californica….

…. and western false asphodel, Triantha occidentalis, recently found to uptake nitrogen through insects that get trapped by its sticky stem hairs. 

The Rock Garden has a poignant dedication sign.

The time we’ve had at Heronswood has been generous – if not nearly enough to see all its treasures. But I’m so happy I got back after 19 years to see for myself that the garden is once again in excellent hands.

A Garden of Endearing, Eclectic, Exuberant Refuge

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Of all the gardens I visited during the July 2024 Garden Fling in Washington State’s Puget Sound region, I was completely smitten by the Seattle garden of Daniel Sparler and his husband Jeff Schouten. Located in the city’s Seward Park neighbourhood, they call it their “garden of exuberant refuge”, but I would add some more “E” words, besides the ones in my title. Like “excellent”, as in horticultural excellence; “ebullient”, as in cheerful and colourful; and “exotic”, as in featuring plants from many of the far-off places where Daniel has worked or visited, including East Asia, South Asia, South Africa, all over Latin America and the Mediterranean. So let’s start our tour at the front of the house and this collection of pots planted with cordylines, cannas, bananas, agapanthus and other choice treasures.

Daniel is the expert gardener — and writes a column called ‘Horticulturally Yours’ for the Northwest Horticultural Society — while Jeff has built the garden’s many structures and hardscape elements, like the painted concrete posts below. Sculpture is featured throughout this garden and whimsical elements occupy each nook and cranny.

I love this curved, purple wall that acts as backdrop and shelf while separating the patio from the plantings behind it.

Throughout the Pacific northwest, I’m blown away by the magnificent lilies in almost every garden. I realize I almost never leave our lakeside cottage north of Toronto in the summer months, so a July garden tour means seeing a cornucopia of horticultural riches.

Having visited our youngest son and his wife in Tuscany in early June where perfumed star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) grows on every arch and stone wall (in fact, we gave them this vine as a housewarming gift), it is fun to see it here in full bloom against a trellised pergola.

On a bench inside, a mossy Buddha invites a moment of tranquility.

And though I’m sure the garden has no shortage of the real things, a menagerie of toy frogs and lizards surround the Buddha.

Metal woodpeckers climb the stem of the windmill palm.

A gravel path is edged with a long line of moss-covered, concrete columns, many topped by a bromeliad or succulent.

The fun of Daniel and Jeff’s garden is the effort they’ve made in creating so many artful delights for the eye, like this pile of beautiful slag grass in its rebar cage next to a column topped with glass art pieces.

Along the path, a lily offering sits before a Shiva

Whimsical bamboo vases on the trellis hold allium seedheads and a coiled visitor of the non-venomous variety.

A green ceramic ball partners with a beautiful houseleek (Aeonium arborescens).

On the north side of the 1952 brick house which Daniel and Jeff bought in 1992, a path winds past shade lovers arrayed around an interesting mask-decked iron screen.

As Daniel said in a video online about the garden: “My philosophy of gardening is pretty simple. A garden should be authentic. Which means it should reflect as accurately as possible the values, experiences and even the whims of the gardeners.” 

Further along the path we see shade-lovers such as Tasmanian tree fern (Dicksonia antarctica), Chinese mayapple (Podophyllum pleianthum), astilbes, hostas and other shade and moisture lovers.

Isn’t this a beautiful vignette? That’s a shrubby St. Johnswort (Hypericum androsaemum) in the centre with the glossy Chinese mayapple.

In the back garden, dense plantings edge a flagstone patio.

A potted ponytail palm (Beaucarnea recurvata) mulched with polished glass stones tops a concrete post.

Daniel and Jeff built this viewing pavilion in 2007, the perfect place to contemplate the garden, martini in hand. We are fortunate to visit on the one day the white epiphyllum cactus is in bloom. Behind is an 80-foot tall blue eucalyptus (E. glaucescens), the sole survivor of the original 14 species acquired by Daniel in an early fit of “eucalypt fever”. As he wrote in an Oct. 2022 column called “Eucalpytus: Gumming up the Garden”, “Within a few years the tally had withered by two-thirds as several were either slain by sudden, brutal cold snaps (as in November 2010) or deliberately killed by Yours Truly once I awoke to the reality of their obstreperous nature.”

I find the owners of this fabulous 1/3-acre garden holding court in the back. Daniel Sparler, below, is a retired teacher of humanities and Spanish at Seattle’s Northwest School. Apart from his writing, he also teaches Botanical Latin for the Northwest Horticultural Society.

Dr. Jeff Schouten is a physician, associate professor at the University of Washington, and former director of HANC (HIV/AIDS Network Coordination Center) at Seattle’s Fred Hutch Cancer Center.

Back to the garden and its gorgeous plants: of course, there are hydrangeas here, as there are all over the Puget Sound gardens on our tour.

And a nicely-grown tiger flower (Tigridia pavonia).

In the gravel garden is a ghostly eryngium with a very distressed-looking gargoyle and a pair of blue Dustin Gimbel ceramic cacti.

A pot containing a ‘Snow Leopard’ mangave (Agave) sits in the gravel garden surrounded by blue glass art.

And in a place of honour on a table nearby sits the spiral cactus Cereus spiralis ‘Forbesii’.

Breadseed poppy (Papaver somniferum) seedheads form near an indigo-blue obelisk, part of the ‘blue garden’ vibe in this part of the property.

It’s my first time seeing double tiger lily (Lilium lancifolium ‘Flore Pleno’), just one of more than 4,600 taxa that Daniel has amassed in what has been described as a terminal case of “Compulsive Plant Collecting”!

Speaking of plant collecting, I stop to marvel at the shelves of cacti and succulents against the house wall…

…. and occupying a ledge and every step of the stairs, along with the resident dinosaurs.

Bordering the path in the sunny, south-facing side-yard is a pot containing Agapanthus Twister (‘AMBIC001’), my favourite agapanthus. It was selected in 2008 by Quinton Bean of De Wet Aloe Farm in South Africa, a single, bicoloured plant from a complex cross involving A. pracecox subsp. orientalis and A. campanulatus.

A beautiful solanum (S. crispum ‘Glasnevin’, I believe) is in full flower on this side.

Agaves and aloes enjoy the reflected heat from the house.

Jeff has adorned an octagonal concrete post with coloured tiles, creating a fancy perch for the winged griffin and an eye-catching background for the plants at its base, including a pot holding a restio AND a cordyline!

The pendant flowers of Fuchsia boliviana ‘Alba’ catch my eye here.

Daniel and Jeff are rightfully proud of the compost that nurtures their garden, so I stop to pay homage.

Circling back to the front (I think…. it’s a little confusing in a garden so densely planted), I come to the striking, above-ground, concrete pool. Constructed in 2002 to replace a large, naturalistic pond they had built in the 90s that had become too difficult to maintain, this, I think, is Jeff’s masterpiece. The fact that I’m crazy about chartreuse in the garden might be a factor! It’s adorned with its own crocodile….

….. and a flotilla of coloured glass balls.

I’m also a fan of purple accents in the garden, so I love this handsome bench.

A pot of tillandsia on a moss, tile-adorned post would have been impressive, but why not encircle it with a snake and add a lizard, too?

I think I’ve circled around the house again, because the blue glass agave on its painted post is part of that ‘blue garden’ theme.

As is the blue Hydrangea serrata.

Himalayan maidenhair fern (Adiantum venustum) cascades gracefully over a mossy rock.

Scent is important in this part of the garden and rubrum lily (L. speciosum var. rubrum) adds lots of perfume.

A bumble bee forages in a dahlia flower. Singles and semi-doubles like this variety are popular with pollinators, who cannot access the stamens and nectaries of the fluffy doubles that many gardeners like.

Phormium ‘Jester’ pops up behind dark dahlia foliage.

It’s impossible to capture all the amazing plants and vignettes in our short visit, like this big schefflera.

There are bromeliads mixed in, including this Vriesea splendens.

A Rex begonia gets the star treatment with its circle of green slag glass — the honour, according to Daniel, owing to the fact that it miraculously survived the terrible January deep-freeze.

There’s an inner child in all of us and the Garden of Exuberant Refuge embraces that notion fully.

A broken clay pot in a sea of ferns becomes a vehicle for a waterfall of green slag glass.

As I head back to the bus to continue our tour of fine Seattle gardens, my final image in this garden of delights is a perfectly pink lily.

Thank you Daniel Sparler and Jeff Schouten. May your abundant, exuberant garden continue to be a place of beauty and refuge for years to come.

*******

Like playful gardens executed with polish and horticultural skill? Have a look at my blog on The Giant’s House in Akaroa, NZ, the mosaic domain of artist Josie Martin.

In Camille Paulsen’s Puyallup Garden

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In the past decade, I’ve had the great joy of travelling in the United States — along with dozens of other garden writers and photographers from far and wide — to participate in an event called the Garden Fling. It’s allowed me to see the finest private and public gardens in Washington DC, Austin, Denver and Philadelphia. This year the Fling was centred in Washington State’s Puget Sound region, and was organized by Camille Paulsen, with help from a fine team of volunteers from Tacoma and Seattle and her own husband Dirk. So my first blog honours the gorgeous Paulsen garden in Puyallup, Washington overlooking the Orting Valley and lofty Mount Tahoma/Rainier. Let’s begin at the handsome entrance to the front door……

…… where you can already see Camille’s penchant for textural plant combinations, especially in shade.

The front garden also features a waterfall and tiny stream….

…. leading to a large, naturalistic pond stocked with koi. Dirk Paulsen, an airline captain, has done much of the hardscaping and woodworking in the garden.

Start walking the path through the side-yard to the right of the house and you come to a large, gnarled log that Camille found in her travels nearby and had delivered to the garden. (She uses driftwood, too.) In its hollow end is western maidenhair fern (Adiantum aleuticum).

Moss grows in nooks and crannies along the log and beneath it is are ferns, hostas and other plants – demonstrating Camille’s deft touch with texture.

I love this hollowed-out, hanging birch log planted with orchids and a staghorn fern.

Hardy impatiens (I. omeiana) is one of countless plants chosen for season-long foliage interest, even when out of flower.

I believe this is lovely Japanese maple is A. palmatum ‘Butterfly’.

Further along, keeping company with a rhododendron and ferns, is a variegated dove tree (Davidia involucrata ‘Lady Sunshine’).

Camille has shared online that her garden contains approximately one hundred Japanese maples and an equal number of conifers. That’s serious ‘collector’ level!

This basalt rock fountain is one of many water features in the Paulsen garden.

Rodgersia was bearing rosy-red seedheads.

Another gnarled stump offers a niche for ferns and succulents.

Camille had lots of pressure with two buses full of garden tourists, four days of carefully orchestrated scheduling and her own garden to prepare, but she handled it with aplomb – and a beautiful smile.

Tahoma or Mount Rainier is an active 14,411-foot (4,392 metre) stratovolcano and the highest peak in Washington State. The view from the Paulsen garden is spectacular – especially when Camille captures it on a clear day. (My so-so view was on a very hot day when there was haze above the snowy peak and the nearby Orting Valley). Though its last volcanic activity was in the 19th century, it has been called a “Decade Volcano”, one of 16 worldwide so named because of its potential destructive eruption capacity and its proximity to densely-populated regions. In fact, many of the surrounding communities are built atop old “lahars” from Rainier, i.e. volcanic mudflows triggered by melting of the mountain’s glacial ice. The most famous was the Osceola Mudflow some 5,000 years ago.

The closer view at this point, glimpsed through drifts of Mexican feathergrass and an iron sculpture, is a lower level swimming pool below the ferny, wine-red foliage of Albizia ‘Summer Chocolate’ .

Colourful dahlias in a raised bed light up the area behind the house.

Corten planters behind Camille’s greenhouse hold a mix of culinary herbs and flowers.

More pots feature tropicals and succulents.

It’s not surprising that in the land of renowned, Tacoma-born glass artist Dale Chihuly, colourful blown-glass ornaments play a role in many Puget Sound gardens, including these pendants hanging from a ‘Twisty Baby’ black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia).

Stone stairs lead to the swimming pool level – a journey past more maples, rhododendrons, ferns and shade plants.

I like the chunky bamboo railing leading to the lower level.

As I said, Camille’s garden is one of the finest examples I’ve seen of textural plant combinations, including white-flowered chameleon plant (Houttuynia cordata) and variegated Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum odoratum ‘Variegatum’) with ferns, hostas and tiny succulents.

One of my favourite vignettes features foliage of a variegated ginkgo (G. biloba ‘Variegata’).

The lower level features a naturalistic pond edged with mossy flagstones, overhung by trees with moss-covered branches. Bamboo makes interesting reflections in the water. (Sadly for the photographers but happily for everyone else, the sun shone bright in a blue sky for much of our Puget Sound visit).

Camille has collected delightful windchimes.

With so much water in the garden, engineering the journey over it is important, and this handsome stone slab does a beautiful job of moving people through.

Tucked into a garden on the swimming pool level are touches of blue and purple, including Clematis ‘Rooguchi’ and big-leaf hydrangea (H. macrophylla).

Azure-blue pots and hedging surround the swimming pool….

…. and the iron fence is cleverly disguised by a weeping blue Atlantic cedar (Cedrus atlantica ‘Glauca Pendula’) trained along it.

Even the garden furniture fits a pretty colour palette.

Colocasia and canna bring the tropics poolside, along with a dark-leaved begonia.

Abyssinian banana (Ensete ventricosum ‘Maurelii’) occupies another pot.

The pool fence has a raised planter shelf with pots of succulents.

On the other side of the house, geometric stone flags set into a corten-edged grit path create a sinuous walkway past still more shade-loving plants.

A luminous golden fullmoon maple (Acer shirasawanum ‘Aureum’) lights up the shadows here.

The stone flags give a Mondrian feeling to this path.

A stone face sculpture is nestled between a Fatsia japonica and a dark-leaved persicaria.

Coming back to the front garden, I sit and chat in a pergola with a friend from Maine, but my eye catches another of Camille’s sweet windchimes. It’s a garden I would dearly love to have spent many hours chronicling (without having to dodge a hundred fellow enthusiasts while shooting), but it has been a great delight to be here. Thank you, Camille and Dirk, for sharing it with us.

Follow Camille Paulsen on Instagram @tahomaflora.

The Garden Museum and its Garden of Treasures

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For a Canadian gardener in London in May to visit the Chelsea Garden Show (see my first and second blogs) and later the Chelsea Physic Garden and the Wildflower Moat at the Tower of London, it was a pleasure to climb out of our Uber on the far side of the Thames near the impressive gate of the Garden Museum.  If it felt a little like attending a church service, that’s because the modern museum was constructed inside the deconsecrated Church of St. Mary at Lambeth.  Although a church at the site was mentioned in William the Conqueror’s Domesday Book of 1086, it was erected in its present form in 1377, with the interior largely rebuilt in 1851.  In 1638, when the famed plant hunter and gardener John Tradescant the Elder died, he was buried in the churchyard. In 1662, when his son John Tradescant the Younger died, his widow Hester arranged for an ornately-decorated tomb, which we’ll see later. Vice-Admiral William Bligh resided nearby on Lambeth Road; having lived through the 1789 mutiny on his ship HMS Bounty, he died in 1817 and his tomb is also here. Second World War bombs broke the 1888 altar donated by Sir Henry Doulton of Royal Doulton Ceramics fame and damaged the stained glass windows. Though an estimated 26,000 burials occupied the site, most were re-interred elsewhere when the dilapidated church was declared redundant in 1972, its riverside neighbourhood including historic Lambeth Palace, the London home of the Archbishop of Canterbury, then somewhat sad and derelict.  Within 4 years, it was boarded-up and ready to be demolished.

Enter Rosemary and John Nicholson who visited in the 1970s to see the Tradescant’s gravestone and were shocked to see the church’s condition and what was about to happen. They founded the Tradescant Trust to develop a Museum of Garden History, opened in 1977, and save both the tombstone and the church.   Between 2008 and 2017, the Museum underwent two stages of renovations to erect a sleek, modern infrastructure and mezzanine within the stone walls of the old church; to add a new gallery and café; and to develop gardens around its exteriors. It was also renamed The Garden Museum. The front garden near the entrance was designed by former architect-turned-garden-designer Christopher Bradley-Hole, while Dan Pearson was commissioned to create a garden in a courtyard occupied by a formal 1980 knot garden designed by Tradescant enthusiast and then-President of the Museum of Garden History, Lady Mollie Salisbury.  But I knew little of the history as I wandered along the gravel paths among the tombstones in the front garden, where Bradley-Hole created lovely combinations of pale yellow-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium striatum) and Turkish sage (Phlomis russeliana), silver curry plant (Helichrysum italicum) and pink Madeira Island geranium (G. palmatum).

Parts of the front garden look almost wild, like this pretty combination of Serbian bellflower (Campanula poscharskyana)and Mexican fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus).

Foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea) pop up here and there.

The churchyard provides an oasis of green in the neighbourhood, flanked by St. Mary’s Garden and a row of plane trees beyond the iron fence. More on that later.

Intriguing raised gardens hinted at the exhibition we would see in the museum.

Then it was inside to marvel at the way Dow Jones Architects transformed the church, the blonde wood, a cross-laminated timber product, matching the light stone.  

I loved the way the ancient church architecture nestled seamlessly within the modern finishes.

This alabaster wall monument within the Pelham Chapel honours a young soldier – the fourth son of Francis Godolphin Pelham, Earl of Chichester and Rector of the parish 1884-94 – who died in France in the First World War.

Garden books for sale were displayed under wall monuments to 18th and 19th century clergymen. The gift displays featured painted lampshades and bases by ‘Bloomsbury Revisited’, artisans inspired by the work of the museum’s featured artists, including Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell.    

Another gift display in the museum. 

Museum displays are found throughout the building, including this reproduction Wardian Case, invented in the mid 1800s by Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward to create optimal conditions for the transport of plant collections on long ship voyages. 

The permanent collection at the Garden Museum features artifacts related to all aspects of gardening, including this display of vintage seed packets.

“Gardeners at War” traces the history of government-mandated gardening initiatives through the Boer War, WWI and the “Dig for Victory” program of WWII.

I found the write-up on horticulturist Ellen Willmott, right, fascinating; it inspired me to look up her Wiki page which ended with: “Willmott’s prodigious spending during her lifetime caused financial difficulties in later life, forcing her to sell her French and Italian properties, and eventually her personal possessions.  She became increasingly eccentric and paranoid: she booby-trapped her estate to deter thieves, and carried a revolver in her handbag.”  Something to ponder the next time you gaze on that silvery giant sea holly, Eryngium giganteum ‘Miss Willmott’s Ghost’.

I adored this 1960 painting by the renowned society photographer/fashion designer Cecil Beaton titled “Cutting Garden Flowers”.

The first of these prints by prolific illustrator James Sowerby (1757-1822) looked so familiar – since I collect botanical prints of campanulas, including one from Sowerby’s Botany.  He is buried nearby in Lambeth.

A spectacular juxtaposition of garden tools with a stained glass window.

Gertrude Jekyll’s c.1840 desk sits under her portrait.

Then it was into the temporary exhibit – a delightful collection of paintings, writings and artifacts titled “Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors”, featuring Lady Ottoline Morrell, Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. As the museum stated: “Ottoline Morrell described Garsington Manor as a kind of ‘theatre’ for social gatherings, and during the First World War she offered her home as a farm that would provide employment for conscientious objectors and pacifists”. Artists and writers who visited Garsington including Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler and John Nash had work in this exhibit.  

Vanessa Bell was Virginia Woolf’s sister.  She and her lover, artist Duncan Grant, renovated a wild garden at a Sussex farmhouse called Charleston, which would become their outdoor studio. As the Charleston website says:  “Charleston became the country home of the Bloomsbury group, with artists, writers and intellectuals making regular visits to the rural home in Sussex. Bell and Grant’s domestic and creative partnership would endure for 50 years, and, although Grant’s sexual relationships were generally with men, they had a child, Angelica, together in 1918. Despite their close partnership, Bell and Grant maintained creative and romantic connections with other people…”

Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard moved to Monk’s House, a 16th century cottage overlooking the Sussex Downs, after the First World War; she would remain here until her suicide in 1941.  Near the garden they built, she had a writing lodge where, according to the exhibit signage: “she infused her prose with the sensory intensity and mysterious life of the natural life surrounding her, interwoven with gardens from her memory and imagination.”  Monk’s House would be a place of retreat from the London world of Bloomsbury and solace for Virginia in her times of severe depression.

I was fortunate to visit Sissinghurst for the second time in 2023 and wrote a blog then about the garden and Vita Sackville-West called “Sissinghurst in Vita’s ‘Sweet June’”, so it was a pleasure to see in living colour the 1918 painting of her by William Strang. This part of the exhibit included photo albums and some of Vita’s journals including….

….. this one, noting changes she wanted made to her garden with its dark rosemary hedge which could be improved by removing the santolina and replacing with a foreground planting of orange roses, Iceland poppies and tiger lilies.

We were looking forward to going outdoors to the new garden but stopped to watch a little video. The segment with Ken Ralph of Canewdon, shown below, was particularly poignant – since Ken is a tradescantia breeder and he aimed to create a “Chelsea standard” tradescantia for the reopening of the Garden Museum, whose development began with a visit to the Tradescant family tomb and creation of the Tradescant Trust. 

Then we went downstairs and out into the new courtyard garden with its funerary muse, the Tradescant chest tomb.  An 1853 replacement of the 1773 replacement for Hester Tradescant’s original 1662 commission for her husband, botanist and plant collector John Tradescant the Younger (1608-62), it also commemorates his father, the great plant collector John Tradescant the Elder (1570-1638), his wife Jane, his daughter-in-law Hester and his grandson John. It is ornately carved with references to nature reflecting The Ark, their family museum, now recalled in a gallery of the same name in the Garden Museum. Wrote Owen Moore in a 2017 article in The Guardian: “In the Ark, the cabinet of curiosities that they created by their home in Lambeth, south London – and which became the basis of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford – they brought together the natural, the artificial and the supernatural: carvings on cherry stones, seashells, the cradle of Henry VI, a stuffed crocodile, religious objects, talismans. This was more than whimsical mixology: it was a view of the world based on the connectedness of things.”  There is much more information on the Tradescants and their 17th century museum nearby on this blog.  

Backing up a little, we now see the Tradescant tomb at the edge of the courtyard garden created by Dan Pearson for the museum’s reopening in 2017. Surrounding it are new pavilions, their walls clad in bronze tiles, separated by a cloister.  One pavilion hosts the garden’s lovely café, whose seating extends out into the garden.

In 2023, I visited Hillside, the Somerset garden Dan Pearson shares with his partner Huw Morgan and wrote a blog about that delightful day. Here at the Garden Museum, as he wrote in Nov. 2018 in his newsletter Dig Delve, he looked initially at abstracting Lady Salisbury’s knot garden, but decided instead with his usual brio to invoke the plant collectors’ memory: “With the exploits of the Tradescants as inspiration, it was a small step to imagine this courtyard as a giant Wardian case – an aquarium-like structure invented in the 19th century to transport exotic and delicate new plant discoveries long distances by sea in a protected environment. The glassy cloister, our metaphorical Wardian case, allowed us to present a garden of curiosities and treasures.”

In the centre of the courtyard garden is the 1817 tombstone of Vice-Admiral William Bligh, who lived at 100 Lambeth Road a few blocks from the church. Having survived the 1789 mutiny on his ship HMS Bounty in the South Pacific in which he and 19 loyal crew members were set adrift in the ship’s open launch, he sailed 3,500 nautical miles, with stops enroute in Tonga and Australia, to the Dutch colony of Timor where passage back to England was arranged. To the left of the tombstone is honey bush (Melianthus major), to the right is a schefflera from plant hunter Bleddyn Wynn-Jones at Crûg Farms Nursery and Nandina domestica with its red berries.  

I liked this dramatic pairing of autumn fern (Dryopteris erythrosora) and Geranium macrorrhizum ‘White Ness’.

The big palmate leaves of rice paper plant (Tetrapanax papyrifer ‘Rex’) frame the stained glass window of the church.

Then it was time for lunch. We had no reservation (highly advised) but were seated quickly. The menu was varied but my choices were absolutely delicious: an asparagus-goat cheese tart and butter lettuce salad with rosemary focaccia and a glass of white.

As we left the Garden Museum, we stopped at some signs inside describing the current initiative to create a garden complex outside the churchyard. “We have restored the church and made a garden and now we want to make Lambeth Green again.”

Lambeth Green is the next step in this community revitalization.

Walking out of the museum, we strolled along the path of St. Mary’s Garden adjacent to the churchyard. This is a lovely, public community space. You can see the Lambeth Bridge over the Thames in the distance.  When Lambeth Green goes ahead, it will incorporate and transform this space and a reconfigured traffic roundabout.

And we took a final glance back through the foxgloves and euphorbia at the old church, looking the same on the outside but wearing its shiny new museum clothes on the inside.