One Big Playground

On July 16th Mimi and I found ourselves on a flight to Seattle. We use sky miles so we have to go to Atlanta to get anywhere. The flight time for the day was 6 or 7 hours, that’s a pretty big fly day. When we arrived we had rental car ready to ride. We had about 2 hours to get to the house we rented on Bainbridge Island, still in Washington state. By the time we crossed over on the ferry and demolished a pizza in the little town of Winslow where we would stay for 2 nights it was dark so we didn’t get to see our surroundings until the next morning. Mimi is a professional cool house finder and she had done it again. This place was super modern but out in the boonies. We were hoping to find some places like this along the pacific coast, we hoped that WiFi would be spotty or at least a challenge to have. We needed a disconnect so we could rest our minds and our bodies from work and home and news.

We had definitely woken up in a new place. We were surrounded by sequoia trees, ferns and flowers that had dried up and blown away months ago at home. It felt somewhat like Big Sur but with a lot fewer people, the Pacific Coast has always been special for us, this section of it did not disappoint. We explored the property the next morning since we were in no rush to get to Heronswood Gardens 10 minutes up the road. In the back yard the sequoia trees led us right to the edge of the property with a view of the ocean. The owners had created a cool fire pit sitting area so we had our 2nd coffee there. It was nice and chilly in the shade so we knew about how to dress for the days garden visits, the highs were in the 70’s and we lucked up and had sunny days.

Herronswood Gardens were created in 1987 by plantsman Dan Hinkley and architect Robert Jones. In its early years the gardens were a tourist attraction and a vibrant nursery. The Burpee Seed Company bought the place on 2006 and eliminated the nursery part leaving it as just an attraction. It’s probably a good thing the nursery full of some of the rarest plants found on earth was not there or we probably would have had to cancel our flight home, rented a truck and trailer and driven that long way home. The gardens are now owned by a nearby indigenous group and still run by Hinkley and Jones with a small staff. we saw Robert that day fiddling around in the garden, we wouldn’t meet Dan Hinkley until we got to his house the next day.

The coastal area is very much like the Mediterranean coast only a lot more shaded and a good bit cooler. The plants that we were seeing as we slowly meandered through were hydrangeas, Flaxes, and all kinds of cedars. Foxgloves and Cleomes and Sweetpeas are ditch plants. Those plants I expected to see but the combinations of what I am accustomed to seeing as hot, dry loving plants growing along side shaded delicate plants was what caught our eye. Sea Holly growing with Agapanthus, Pitcher plants dancing with poppies, burgundy Barberry moving in the wind with Lucifer Crocosmia, Angels Fishing Rod mixed in with Switch Grass, mostly not possible here in Mississippi but you can bet we are going to try. Mimi and I moved into the fern forest wandering around in there getting inspiration for our under story in our bamboo forest at home. I can’t say enough about the Dahlias that were everywhere, planted in pots and in the ground. Some of the Dahlias had dinner plate size blooms, some with pincushion type petals and the colors are enough to make you stop. We are about 4 years into learning how to garden with Dahlias at home and so far we have had an easy time of it. I think we are about to turn some of our raised beds into permanent Dahlia beds with netting to hold their heavy heads up. The world of Dahlias offers some stunning colors and textures that we are excited to explore.

When we had taken 16,000 pictures and 4 hours later we found a place that poured us a couple of shots of espresso. We were going to need it because we had time to move on to the next garden which wasn’t too far away. Bloedel Reserve is a 140 acres that were the personal gardens of the Bloedels starting in 1958. In 1988 it became a public garden. Their gardening style appealed to us with its broad views and meandering paths through open fields and through deep forests of conifers. There was a moss garden that seemed like it ran deep into their woods, everything was covered in moss, very surreal. There was an immaculate Japanese garden with a tea house and some very old azaleas and rhododendrons, their Bamboo forest was gorgeous. I think their Bamboo forest is 70 years older than ours at home but it gave us hope that one day ours may look like that, or it winds up taking over Madison county.

We found some tasty sushi on the way home and enjoyed our quiet little place in the woods. We chatted for a while longer about what we had seen so far and made a game plan for the next day. We would be packing up and moving on, first for an appointed time to Dan Hinkleys house and personal gardens then a ferry ride from the top of Bainbridge island to Vancouver Island to jockey into position outside of Victoria for an early start to a day at Butchart Gardens. This entire area was beginning to seem like one big garden and playground to me.