Rocking a gravel garden in the Kuzma Garden: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
August 14, 2014 After the barely controlled excess of Floramagoria, the next garden we toured on the Portland Garden Bloggers Fling seemed, at first glance, restrained, even austere. No seating was visible aside from garden walls and steps. With the exception of a few monumental, colorful pots placed as focal ...
Garden magic and whimsy at Floramagoria: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
August 13, 2014 As we entered the intriguingly named Floramagoria garden on the recent Portland Garden Bloggers Fling, thunder rumbled and raindrops pelted our group of 40 or so bloggers. The reasonable — and hungry — among us ran for the two covered pavilions with box lunches in hand. The ...
The Dancing Ladies Garden of Linda Ernst: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
August 11, 2014 Do you ever fantasize about another gardener living right next door? Linda Ernst and Joanne Fuller are living the fantasy. Aside from being friends and next-door neighbors, they both love to garden, and each tends a beautiful space linked by a friendly gate in back and a ...
The artful Fuller Garden: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
August 08, 2014 We were treated to two gardens for the price of one on the 3rd day of the Portland Garden Bloggers Fling last month. Friends, gardeners, and art collectors Joanne Fuller and Linda Ernst live next door to each other in a charming older neighborhood, with a friendly ...
Splendor in the grass at Rhone Street Gardens: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
August 07, 2014 The 3rd and final day of touring on the recent Garden Bloggers Fling in Portland, Oregon, dawned cool and misty — exactly what Portland should be, at least according to heat-shunning me. After two days of unusual heat, I was thrilled, even when it started to thunder ...
Checking out Chickadee Gardens: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
August 03, 2014 The Garden Bloggers Fling takes you to so many wonderful gardens that it would be understandable if you simply overloaded by the end of the day, unable to appreciate one more. Thankfully I find new gardens energizing, and when our bus pulled up at Portland blogger Tamara’s ...
JJ De Sousa’s bold garden digs: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
July 31, 2014 What’s black and white and red-orange all over? The stylishly mod yet playful garden of JJ De Sousa, that’s what. Owner of Digs Inside & Out home-and-garden shop, which I visited pre-Fling, JJ has an enviable talent for creating inviting, colorful garden rooms, perfect for entertaining, which ...
Loree Bohl’s Danger Garden: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
July 27, 2014 One of the most anticipated gardens on the 2014 Garden Bloggers Fling in Portland, Oregon, recently was Danger Garden, the plant-lustful playground of one of our hosts, Loree of Danger Garden blog fame. With an adoration for spiny, spiky, and bold-foliage plants and an artistic eye for ...
Portland Japanese Garden: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
July 25, 2014 The second day of the 7th annual Garden Bloggers Fling, held in Portland in mid-July, began in the renowned Portland Japanese Garden, often described as the most authentic of its kind outside of Japan. I had visited a few days earlier with my husband on a hot, ...
Westwind Farm Studio: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
July 23, 2014 Both buses filled with 80 hot, tired bloggers bumped into a lavender field at the end of the first touring day of the Garden Bloggers Fling in Portland, Oregon, in mid-July. I tiredly thought, “How nice, a lovely field of lavender.” But what I didn’t realize was ...
Old Germantown Gardens: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
July 20, 2014 The first private garden on the Portland Garden Bloggers Fling tour last weekend was, at 2 acres, large enough to accommodate our entire group of approximately 80 bloggers. Old Germantown Gardens, created over 23 years by Bruce Wakefield and Jerry Grossnickle, is a masterpiece of a garden ...
Joy Creek and Cistus Nurseries: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
July 19, 2014 After touring Lan Su Chinese Garden in downtown Portland, the two Fling buses headed out to scenic, agricultural Sauvie Island for our visits to two premier nurseries: Cistus and Joy Creek. Cistus is a plant lover’s mecca, with rare and interesting plants from all over the world, ...
Lan Su Chinese Garden: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
July 17, 2014 Austin and Portland, Oregon, are soul-sister cities, sharing a love of “weirdness,” food carts/trucks, huge independent bookstores, and tattoos, as I can attest from my recent visit. Austin and Portland also share a vibrant gardening culture and even the same hardiness zone (8b), although our climates couldn’t ...
Nature Nights introduces kids to the Wildflower Center’s new Family Garden
June 17, 2014 My kids are teens now and well past playground age. But I’m not! Since the Luci and Ian Family Garden opened on May 4, I’ve been wanting to check it out. I previewed the garden before it was completed in mid-March and could see it would be ...
Shelley’s sunflower forest and neighbor-friendly patio
June 14, 2014 To celebrate her daughter’s graduation from high school last week, my dear friend Shelley threw a casual garden party. I enjoyed her garden so much that I popped back over yesterday afternoon to take a few pictures to share with you. Shelley and Isabel call this their ...
Hippos, bottle art sculpture, and a free-spirited garden journey with Donna and Mike Fowler
May 22, 2014 Could the official mascot of Hutto, Texas, possibly be anything other than a hippo? The Hutto Hippos. Nope, it’s perfect. Located 30 miles northeast of Austin, the formerly sleepy hamlet of Hutto is growing as quickly as a hippopotamus in a lake full of duckweed. But the ...
