Here’s our tour of Helen Westbrook’s beautiful Mill Pond Village garden last Saturday, a garden I discovered on the July 2012 Astoria garden tour and then saw again in March on one of the last days of winter.
view from our parking spot, SW corner of townhouse
approaching the entrance (Hebe)
just as beautiful as I remembered
I’m going to give you every view, because why should you not enjoy it to the fullest?
One of my favourite features of this garden is the dry creek bed or swale which captures winter water runoff.
looking east over the swale
I find this so very pleasing.
To the right, above, you can see a bit of the Sambucus ‘Black Lace’. Helen said she had recently pruned it and brought some of the flowers into the house and said they did not smell very nice.
Sambucus ‘Black Lace’
- looking west over the swale
seating by the swale
barrel planter
arbour into the center to the garden
arbour detail
a little wishing well
Below, you can see how shrubs have grown in the last year and provide a privacy screen for the porch of the neighbour to the north. The garden itself is on an unbuilt lot between the two townhouses.
view looking west
shrub screen
By now Helen had emerged from her house. We wondered together whether or not it was normal for the Physocarpus ‘Coppertina’ (?I think it is that one) to be showing both white and copper flowers.
two colours
a fragrant rugosa rose in the hedge
Looking from the hedge toward Helen’s porch
a comfy bench
blue table
to the west of the table, a solar powered water feature
Helen says even a passing cloud will make it turn off, but it would still be attractive.
bicycle basket
That combination of sedums and ferns is unusual and most attractive.
I marveled to Helen at the detail in her groundcovers; even without being on a garden tour this year, she has attended carefully to creating small vignettes which I know take attention to maintain.
shells and moss and stones
a little jug
a tiny clearing for stones
and precious jewels.
This makes me want a smaller garden so I can attend to such details, but Allan has time for effects like this in his shady fern garden.
Anton memorial
Anton was a golden labrador who was friends with all the residents of Mill Pond Village. Helen described him as bringing neighbours together. He died recently and his ashes were shared among his human friends, and some are buried here.
There must be a gardening bond among many of the residents as almost all have little curbside gardens (which were featured on the Astoria Garden Tour several years ago).
a floriferous porch
along a shady walkway
If Loren of Futureworld sees this post, I hope he will tell me if the hosta above is more interesting than the ones he described earlier this year.
on a corner
lawn between townhouses
At the end of the long lawn is the Astoria Riverwalk along the Columbia River, and in summer the adorable trolley goes by.
It was such a treat to see Helen’s garden again and we would have liked to walk all around the village and see the little gardens and the houses that are built right by the old mill pond itself, but we had nurseries to get to…so perhaps we will make another visit in late summer.
Tangly Cottage Gardening 