Saturday, 23 July 2022
Master Gardeners of Grays Harbor and Pacific Counties present:


On every garden tour I attend, I have a favorite. I don’t think there has ever even been a tie. This does not make the other gardens lesser, as it’s a matter of personal idiosyncratic taste. This garden was our favorite for this year. This means there are about a million photos, so I will arrange them in galleries which you can enlarge by clicking through them, if you like this sort of thing as much as we do. We did our best to get every item in the correct spot.
We arrived at a handsome house with an interesting array of signs and containers on the front porch. One of the docents checking us in was Wendy, whose garden we loved the first time we attended this tour.






We then walked down the side driveway and came upon a huge parking area between house a long garage and shed. Against the wall were appealing arrangements of automotive relics and plants. I said to Allan, “Wow, these people really know how to display their stuff.”






I noticed people up on the large porch and went up a convenient ramp to see what was to be seen. I love the way all the plants and objects were displayed. It is a talent to put vignettes together so well.









Through an arbor is a secluded back porch room with transparent ceiling. I said to Allan how very much I want a room like that.











A lower level one step down had more delightful displays.








I peeked inside the open shed to see the well set up potting area.


The L shaped garden was off to the side (and front) of the house, and in the middle of it was an outbuilding which houses more vintage items.

I wanted to but did not go inside because of my Covid protocols; it was small with other tour guests coming and going. However, Terri of Markham Farm sent me her photos of the interior, so you and I can peruse them together. Garden owner Glenna, whose husband Mike gives her full credit for all the great arranging of stuff, sat on the porch and regaled us with a story of how one day while working on restoring the house, which had been full of rats, cats, bats, and blackberry vines when they bought it, she found a piece of wood with a man’s name written on it and wondered what the story was about it. Within a few hours, a truck had pulled up in front of the house with a man driving, who turned out to be that man, and out of the back seat emerged a tiny 99 year old woman who had been an original homesteader in the neighborhood. “We were all in tears by the time the visit ended,” said Glenna. The man then mailed her a packet of photos of the house as it once was.









Glenna and Mike restored the house and added the dormer and porches.
I explored the back corner of the garden…




…and the long side garden past the vintage display shed…
























…and discovered that the large side porch had even more impeccably curated displays.












Around to the front of the house, I admired the porch closer up but did not go out the gate. I liked the whole place so much that I walked around the whole thing in the other direction before we departed.





This sort of thing is exactly my cup of tea.
Wow! These people are quite the collectors!
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“Wow, these people really know how to display their stuff”… you can say that again! Although it does end up feeling like (to me) they’re living in a store, it’s so well merchandised. I can almost hear them saying, “come shop my house”. Which could be pretty fun actually.
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I am not sure but I kind of got the impression she might sell vintage items and antiques. It gave me a lot of inspiration for how to get more clutter out of my house and into the garden, at least in the summer. Also, I really want a porch expansion, not a big deck but a bigger side porch. Also, I don’t use many annuals and it gave me an appreciation for some of those really geometrically designed petunias.
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I totally see why this was your favorite garden. The amount of energy involved in keeping up displays like that, let alone organizing them in the first place, honestly makes me tired to think about. But such a fun place to tour. Thanks for the exhaustive documentation!
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It occurred to me later there were not all that many PLANTS except for on the deck…with annuals as carefully curated as the various collections. You’d surely have to be retired to keep everything so well displayed and sorted. Well, I’d have to be retired. I can barely keep up with just weeding and watering as it is!
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Agree with the above comments!
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My goodness, what a terrific garden. There is so much to see. Cool beans!
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I enjoyed this garden – and oh, the displays are right up my alley. But funky and quirky and country kitsch aside – a collection like this would cost tens of thousands of dollars to replicate. A local garden here has done something similar with a rustic art in the garden vibe – and has purchased all that rust at no small cost.
One person’s chihuly collection is another’s carefully curated vintage watering cans or spoked wagon wheels – but both still speak of money if they have to be purchased.
But perhaps the takeaway is that better display techniques make the difference between a gardener’s collection of stuff looking like junk in the grass – and an eye catching accoutrement to the garden.
Still, I would love to shop that garden, and shed, and deck…
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It really is a skill to make one’s stuff not look junky!!
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