30 June 2007 — Music in the Gardens, part one

You might think we never work anymore, just take days off and go on garden tours. Not so, but in order to get some time off it’s true that I’m so focused on work that I don’t get out the camera much on jobs.

This week we did accomplish one long awaited thing:  The Shelburne fence got its final coat of paint where the truck went into the garden and we were able to add soil and plants.  And at Anthony’s-darling-Home-Court, we pruned down the rhodos to let more light into the cabins.  And of course, we spent a half day at Jo’s garden getting it to shine on the “Music in the Garden” tour of the peninsula, a benefit for Water Music Festival.

We did some work at (left) The Shelburne and (right) Anthony’s Home Court.

Long Beach Peninsula garden tour

We began the tour by meeting Mary of Klipsan Beach Cottages and her mother, also Mary (known as “Mary Mom”), who joined us for the first part of the tour.  Then back we went to Long Beach so that the Marys could be part of the amazed visitors Jo’s garden which is so stuffed with colour and beauty that it fills one with joy to enter.  That effect is not achieved without much investment of love, time and money, good soil amendments and dependable watering.  Jo displayed some of her lovely garden quilts (an area where her talent is as great as gardening) and lemonade and cookies. Familiar faces already began to appear in the gardens:  Dianne Duprez, Seaview masseuse, and others whom I recognized but could not place a name to. It is awkward sometimes to be able to remember plant names so much better than human names.

Jo’s garden (left), with cookies! and (right) Mary Newell’s archway.

Onward to Mary Newell’s garden in Surfside…  I have always admired it as we drive by it on the way to work in Marilyn’s garden just a block away.   The brick arch, seen in the background, right, over a lawn with an island rose bed, impressed me deeply. The tour brochure said she has 125 roses, but I overheard a remark that it might be more like 200 by now.

Mary Newell’s garden

Mary Newell’s back yard (above) is a lovely shady dell with island beds, a playhouse, and a deck filled with those charming whimsical touches that skilled gardeners add to their hardscapes. She let me peek into her pot ghetto and there were only a few, maybe only ONE, unplanted plants in it: most impressive.

North and east over to Oysterville we drove to Polly Friedlander’s large back yard garden with its formal topiaries and live classical piano music.

Friedlander garden in Oysterville

I would never be able to have a garden like this; inside the fenced topiary garden (above left) are little geometrical beds which I would so soon have spilling over with plants that the lines would disappear.  I love the way the wilder part of the garden (above right) just spills out into the meadows with a view of Willapa Bay.

We toured one more garden before Mary and Mary returned to KBC, but oh my! it and the final garden on our tour will need their own entry.

So let’s move on to Allan and I visiting a tiny garden in Ocean Park at Debbie Halliburton’s tiny gem around a 1910 cottage.  You know how I love small houses so you can imagine my delight at this impeccably cute one.

The front of Debby’s tiny cottage, and the back deck’s inviting purple chairs. The garden greeter had a dog to pet…named Stinky…who wasn’t.

As we drove back through Nahcotta to the next garden, we passed the Charles Nelson Guest house and Allan said “People are dancing!” We knew it was on the tour and featured music to promote water music festival, but dancing? It turned out a wedding was in progress and the garden closed to touring for an hour and half, so we missed out on the fairy garden there.

Our next stop was Larry Warnberg and Sandy Bradley’s garden, with potatoes a particular feature. Sandy has promoted a project to plant potatoes in gardens all over the Peninsula.  Their poppy patch was so beautiful with a fringed purple poppy that I got a dreadful photo of, but perhaps I don’t want to show it anyway and get too much competition for the seeds.

Sandy’s “potatoes in a sandy land” foreground) and Poppies. Dibs on a few of the fringed purple seeds.