The elegant Pepper Garden with a water view
September 07, 2024 By lunchtime, we’d already visited four gardens on the bonus Seattle day of the Puget Sound Fling. Three more to go! Our next stop was an elegant home right on Lake Washington, with welcoming owners Vangie and Daniel Pepper. Let’s start in the back garden and work ...
Playfulness and planters in the garden of Richard Hartlage
September 06, 2024 One garden I was eager to see during the Puget Sound Fling (on the bonus day in Seattle) was that of Richard Hartlage, head of design firm Land Morphology. I interviewed Richard years ago for an article in Garden Design and follow his work. To my delight, ...
Floating on an evergreen cloud in the garden of Tanya Bednarski
September 04, 2024 When two neighbors go all-in on their gardens, it makes for great street energy. Such is the case with two of the gardens on the Puget Sound Fling‘s bonus day in Seattle. Last time I showed you Bonnie Berk’s terraced hillside garden. Today let’s explore the garden ...
Taming a hillside with terraces and sculpture in Bonnie Berk’s garden
September 03, 2024 Steep lots make gardening — or even just mowing — a challenge unless you figure out a way to create safe, usable spaces. Seattle gardener Bonnie Berk installed terracing to tame her intimidatingly steep front yard, adding large sculptures to entice visitors uphill. I visited her garden ...
More exuberance at the Sparler-Schouten Garden, part 2
September 01, 2024 There was too much garden goodness and exuberance to contain in one post about Daniel Sparler and Jeff Schouten’s Garden of Exuberant Refuge, which I visited on the Puget Sound Fling. Here’s Part 1, if you missed it. Today, Part 2 starts on the back patio of ...
Exploring the Garden of Exuberant Refuge, part 1
August 30, 2024 If there was one garden that really spoke to my own sensibilities at the Puget Sound Fling last month, it was the Garden of Exuberant Refuge, the happy creation of Daniel Sparler and Jeff Schouten in Seattle. Colorful, quirky, irreverent, playful, and rewarding to the observant visitor, ...
Exploring Dan Hinkley’s Windcliff, part 2
August 27, 2024 Agapanthus and grasses When you’ve read about a garden and then visit in person for the first time, it can feel both strangely familiar and a little disorienting. As you walk around, you recognize certain features — plants, art, viewpoints — but you also don’t really know ...
Winding my way through Windcliff, part 1
August 25, 2024 Seeing Windcliff, the private garden of plantsman Dan Hinkley and architect Robert Jones, was a huge draw on the Puget Sound Fling tour. I read and reviewed Dan’s book Windcliff a couple years ago and hoped I might be able to visit the garden one day. And ...
Colorful garden with a view of Puget Sound
August 23, 2024 After leaving Heronswood, a public garden that was originally the private home garden of plantsman Dan Hinkley and architect Robert Jones, the Fling buses headed for Dan and Robert’s new garden, Windcliff, in Indianola. Because there were 100 of us on the Puget Sound Fling tour and ...
Heronswood’s shady woodland and tribe-influenced Renaissance Garden
August 22, 2024 The colorful house garden and potager stole most of my attention at Heronswood during last month’s Puget Sound Fling. Click for that post and the garden’s tumultuous backstory. Today I’m sharing other parts of Heronswood, starting with the woodland garden. Woodland garden One of the best features ...
Heronswood pilgrimage: House garden and formal garden
August 20, 2024 Two acclaimed gardens made by plantsman, plant explorer, and author Dan Hinkley (and his partner, Robert Jones) were two of the biggest attractions at the Puget Sound Fling in July. While I’d read about Windcliff and Heronswood, I’d never visited either. Day 3 of the Fling was ...
Nancy Heckler’s hydrangea-colorful woodland garden
August 15, 2024 The acclaimed gardens Heronswood and Windcliff were on the agenda for Day 3 of the Puget Sound Fling, and I was excited to see them. But first we split up onto smaller buses that could manage the narrow road to Windcliff, and my bus headed to Nancy ...
Pre-dinner stroll around Lakewold Gardens in Puget Sound
August 13, 2024 Day 2 of the Puget Sound Fling last month ended at Lakewold Gardens, a 10-acre estate garden in Lakewood, Washington. The Fling banquet dinner was to be held on the terrace, but first we had time to explore the grounds. A brass quartet, including co-planner Camille Paulsen‘s ...
Camille Paulsen’s Tahoma-flora garden
August 11, 2024 One of my favorite gardens on the Fling tour last month was that of Camille and Dirk Paulsen. As one of the co-planners of the Puget Sound Fling, Camille not only devoted a year of volunteer effort to bring Flingers to her region, but she managed to ...
Next-door gardening neighbors at Puget Sound Fling
August 10, 2024 As we rolled into co-planner Camille Paulsen‘s Puyallup, Washington, neighborhood at the Puget Sound Fling last month, my bus was invited to tour a couple of her neighbors’ gardens while the other busload of Flingers worked their way into Camille’s garden first. I was charmed that Camille’s ...
Plants and garden art at VanLierop Garden Market in Puget Sound
August 09, 2024 Lunch on Day 2 of last month’s Puget Sound Fling was held at Sorci’s Italian Cafe, which just so happens to share a location with VanLierop Garden Market in Sumner, Washington. Tasty appetizers, pizza, and salad plus plant and garden-art shopping? Yes indeed. VanLierop Garden Market After ...
