Friday, 5 June 2020
At last we managed to visit Steve and John’s garden by Willapa Bay. Although (due to the second spring clean up at work after our non-essential weeks and to the emergency building of our coyote-proof catio and then the time-consuming plant sale prep) we had missed the peak rhododendron bloom time, this garden has much to offer at any season.
When we arrived a few minutes early, Steve was tidying the garden with bucket and picker-upper.
Let’s walk through through the garden with Steve and John, enjoy the vistas, and give the plants some individual attention…social distancing, of course.
In the upper beds near the house:
I tried to take good notes, but had forgotten a clipboard, so many rhododendron names were illegible.
As always, Steve and John helped via email with the identifications.
A few more rhododendrons had kindly waited for our visit.
Many in this collection had leaves that, to me, are as good as any bloom. Visits to this garden have been a revelation from the standard rather boring rhododendrons that I had been familiar with before.
We now cross the driveway to the shady south beds under limbed up trees.
In the ferny beds…
We crossed over there, but I got too busy chatting about plants and only took one photo.
John had left us to prepare some tea and cake. We walked up the driveway…
…around the south side of the house…
…to …to the sheltered sit spot at the southeast corner of the house, where this was our view:
We had walked here to start our tour and to admire a little rhododendron growing in a stump on the north side of the lawn.
We sat for tea and cake with this backdrop.
We had tea from Beach House Teas...
…and observed proper social distancing.
John had baked a dessert of Dutch Spice Bread (Ontbijtkoek, aka Breakfast Cake). Delicious.
It was our first social outing since the stay at home order expired.
We were serenaded by birds…
…and visited by Mr. Towhee, a special friend of the family.
As we departed, we further admired the entry garden.
If you would like to visit this garden in other seasons and earlier years, just put “bayside garden” into our search box, and you will get a wealth of posts.
You can see a drone video of the garden (which also shows inside the house) on this realty listing…which also means you could dream of living here yourself.
Steven and John were organizing the big 2020 conference for the American Rhododendron Society, when the coronavirus reared up and postponed it till 2022. If you live in the US and all these amazing rhododendrons inspire you to become a collector, joining that organization would be a good place to begin.