On June 16th, a month before the Music in the Gardens tour, I went to pre-tour Ann and Gary Skordahl’s garden with tour organizer Nancy Allen, to help write up the tour programme. I had met Ann on many another garden tour; each year she brings a tour group of friends from Vancouver, Washington, about a month after tour day to see her favourite gardens of the year’s selection, so she had been twice to both my old garden and my mother’s garden.
“A gold leafed heron announces the South Bay gated community where Gary and Ann Skordahl have created a home and richly textured gardens fronting Willapa Bay. First be greeted by a circular shady entry garden of hostas….”
Below, the same area on our post-tour day, July 22, when most of us who had opened our gardens toured each others’.
Beside the driveway: a 60 foot flower border within curving basalt stone walls from the family owned rock quarry, set into place by the Skordahl men.
There are two stairways to the house, one a sturdy, widely spaced concrete staircase…
….and the other nearby picturesque stairway of stone softened by creeping thyme. “Climbing up their stone steps, softened by fragrant creeping thyme, you will pass rhododendrons, escallonia, hydrangeas and ceanothus which anchor the wonderful home.”
After ascending either stairway, we see the shrub border at the front of the house…
and the lawn that leads back to the bay.
At the north side of the large lawn, a square of flowers made a tidy contrast to a wilder field of native shrubs and wild roses.
A sweep of blue hydrangeas nestled in a southeast facing nook of the house thrives and is not preyed on by the deer that create a big planting challenge for Ann. The hydrangeas draw our eye around the corner of the house to a massive stone chimney, also made with rock from the Skordahl quarry, that flares out to a planted rockery base.
The windows on either side of the chimney are those of a gorgeous sun room with a view of the bay. Ann had it open on tour day for the musicians who accompany the Music in the Gardens tour and served white wine and elegant refreshments on the side deck; tour guests were still speaking happily of this when they arrived at our garden down in Ilwaco, and frankly, I am surprised they could tear themselves away! Ann told us that she served…I think…18 bottles of wine. (Remember, there were over 500 tour guests!)
Gary loves to mow and has created the vast lawn and paths to the bay out of wild meadows.
To the north of the house, a fire pit is sheltered from the north summer wind by a belt of shrubs and trees.
On June 16th, Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ flamed in the flower border, mixed with metal art, that curved around the lawn beyond the fire patio.
Around the north side of the house, we find more garden art in a bed with the steely blue foliage of Rosa glauca (which, amazingly, the deer are not eating).
Before we walk down the lawn past that 60 foot long basalt rock edged garden and back to the driveway, we stop to admire Ann and Gary’s tall pole of birdhouses.
We would be seeing Ann again in a couple of weeks when she brought her Vancouver garden club to visit our garden and the Hornbuckle garden.
So many lovely things to look at! I just looove the stone stairs and the planted chimney!!
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Thank you, Mary!
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[…] from Vancouver toured our garden and Tom and Judy Hornbuckle’s garden four houses down. Ann’s garden was also on the garden tour this year. Every year, her club visits a couple of weeks later to see […]
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[…] a real bond being on the garden tour (a bond we also share with Ann of today’s garden club, whose garden was also on the Peninsula tour). We worried about weeding, new plants, had we spent too much? (no doubt!) and what refreshments […]
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[…] Every year, Ann S’s garden club from Vancouver, Washington comes to the Peninsula for a post-Music in the Gardens tour. Usually Ann picks her favourite gardens on tour day and asks the owners if she can come back in three weeks, on a weekday. This year, she herself was unable to make the big tour, so I decided to take the day off and go with the group to most of the gardens that were on the tour. (Last year, Ann’s own bayside garden was on the Music in the Gardens tour.) […]
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