Saturday, 23 July 2022
Master Gardeners of Grays Harbor and Pacific Counties present:
Our first garden was in Montesano, a town just east of Aberdeen. The home is next to Vessey and Sons contractors and its work yard full of big trucks. How enviable to have such a great source of wonderful rocks (which we assumed, perhaps correctly, were sourced by the Vesseys). As Allan and I tour together, we notice similar and different things.
This was my first foray into rollator touring. I’ve been in many gardens where it would have been a struggle to get through with such a device. This one was a dream to start out in, very easy to navigate.
The front garden is a parklike setting with shrubs and trees and beautiful rocks with pools of bright annuals.
The front entry garden with annual accents segues into a flawless lawn with massive boulders in the center.
At the front of the house, annual color brightens up the weedless beds.
The back garden is set up for entertaining in sun or shade.
The business work yard also has landscaping.
This was the only Montesano garden on the tour. We were now off to Aberdeen, a city that I love. We saw some wonderful old houses as we drove west through Montesano, and I wish we had stopped to photograph them, but the lure of garden touring was too strong to allow for getting sidetracked.
Tangly Cottage Gardening 
Montesano garden takeaway – big rock envy and lots of evergreen form for winter interest!
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You remind me that I used to do takeaways from each tour garden! Back when I was going to Hardy Plant weekends and touring more gardens each year.
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Oh Skyler, I knew I could count on you to show me what I missed out on with this tour. Really want to do this one next year. You and Allan always do a great job capturing these garden tours with your photos. Looking forward to the rest.
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I really thought we’d see all you sisters there!
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hmmm, It is too neat. It takes significant effort to maintain such neatness. I happen to like neatness, but if I were to put that much effort into it, it would also be symmetrical, . . . which is likely why I do not design gardens.
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They did a good job of shrub and tree placement to make it not jarringly symmetrical. In all the gardens on this year’s tour, I’d have more perennials instead of annuals at ground level, but I don’t think Aberdeen even has a collectors’ type nursery except for Juell’s nursery near Satsop. In 2016, there were a couple of gardens with more unusual sorts of perennials, but the garden owners told me they had mail ordered those plants or driven to Olympia area for them. I did hear of a new nursery opening up there, though…or wait, maybe it was Ocean Shores.
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Symmetry has been out of style for a very long time, and likely for good reason (although it will not stop me). Annuals, at least in drier climates of California, should be less common than they are. They are so consumptive. I see more of them in the Pacific Northwest, but I suspect that they are less consumptive there.
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A good shed. Everyone should have one.
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Thank you, Skyler! I really appreciate seeing these gardens through your photos and notes. Thank you to Allan, too, for his help with taking photos.
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I thought maybe we’d see the sisters there!
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Hope to be at the 2023 tour!
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