prequel: Garden Show inspiration, ’96-’99

Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle:  favourite scenes

These are not the best photos, all being pre-digital and with a disposable camera (which was the easiest way to take photos of the garden show without being weighed down).    But they do help me remember the designs that spoke to me the strongest during these years.

I had missed all but a couple of hours of the show in ’91 because I was preoccupied with the Federal Building protest, in ’92 because I was ill from a miscarriage that week, had missed ’93 and ’94 because of the Sou’wester job.  I think we had gone in ’95 and stayed at Bryan’s rented house in West Seattle.

I usually attended 18 seminars, and took notes through every one.  Some day I hope to go through all my notebooks and type up the best of what I learned.  I hope a lot of it sunk in!  Hrm, typing my notes into this blog would be a great project for next winter.

1996

In February 1996, Bryan drove to the beach, picked me up and drove me to Seattle during a time of much flooding in Pacific County, Grays Harbor, and the Chehalis area. Just after we got through Chehalis the freeway went underwater and Robert, who did not enjoy attending seminars, was unable to drive up for three days.  This began a tradition of me going to the garden show by myself.

dripping rocks

rock wall

patio made of recycled materials

Mad Hatter’s Tea Party

sod table and chair (adorable!!)

Rapunzel’s tower

 

1997

This moss-scape made me realize I should qui removing the moss from the huge rock by our pond and just let it be green!

teapot

green roof. I still do not have one….

mysterious door

1998

Bryan had gotten married, so I took the train from Kelso and stayed with my old friend Carol in Ballard, an arrangement which turned into a fun yearly event for the next seven years.

I think this garden was designed by Dan Hinkley.

large water feature

garden shed

bridge and stream

fence with old tools

1999

I went to the garden show in 1999 and stayed at Carol’s, but did not take photos for this year or the next couple of years because the show for awhile provided video tours of the display gardens.

video tour of the display gardens!

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Peninsula garden tour 2012: Skordahl garden

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.

nurse log in driveway garden, 16 June

“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’.

driveway garden, 22 July

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.

along the driveway

There are two stairways to the house, one a sturdy, widely spaced concrete staircase…

16th June

22 July

stone stairs, 16 June

….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.”

stone stairs, 22 July

After ascending either stairway, we see the shrub border at the front of the house…

shrub border at the front of the house

and the lawn that leads back to the bay.

big pots hiding evidence of the septic field

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.

Sweet Williams

hydrangeas in a southeast facing nook

planted chimney

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!)

deck view and planters

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.

fire patio

On June 16th, Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ flamed in the flower border, mixed with metal art,  that curved around the lawn beyond the fire patio.

fire garden

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).

Rosa glauca and sculpture

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.

bird house pole

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.

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