Hopping around Froggsong Gardens
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/01_House_garden.jpg)
Lunch on the first day of the Puget Sound Fling was held on beautiful Vashon Island at Froggsong Gardens, a private home with a 5-acre estate garden that can be rented out as a wedding/event venue. Needless to say, they were well set up to host 100 hungry visitors for a comfortable, shaded lunch. But first, let’s tour the garden!
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The noonday light was harsh for photos, but in person it was bright with colorful flowers and golden and wine-red foliage.
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I admired towering Asiatic lilies in shades of pink…
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![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/04_Yellow_Asiatic_lilies.jpg)
…and yellow.
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/09_Purple_coneflowers.jpg)
Purple coneflowers too…
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…abuzz with bees collecting pollen.
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A triangular red arbor beckons you toward the next garden room…
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/08_Red_arbor_Var_pagoda_dogwood.jpg)
…framing a magnificent variegated pagoda dogwood at the rear of a circular garden.
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A bubbling fountain draws your attention to a formal rill along the border.
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This garden of circles sits below the house garden, which allows for an overall view before you step into it.
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Red roses and golden black-eyed Susans add bright color in the foreground. In back, tree foliage carries on the color theme.
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/14_Flower_border_lawn.jpg)
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/15_Black_eyed_Susans.jpg)
Black-eyed Susans
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Eryngium
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/18_Variegated_pagoda_dogwood.jpg)
The variegated dogwood poses like a bride in a tiered dress next to a pond with a boardwalk around the perimeter.
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/19_Variegated_pagoda_dogwood_Pond_Jap_maple.jpg)
Her branches dipped low, but I squeezed under them to walk around the pond.
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/17_Pond_garden.jpg)
A bench backed by a circular lath screen, shaded by a Japanese maple, offers a pond-watching spot.
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![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/21_Circle_screen.jpg)
Lath screen
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/23_Pond_conifer_garden.jpg)
View across the pond back to the house
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/24_Pond_Var_pagoda_dogwood.jpg)
One last look at the graceful dogwood
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Red Japanese maple leaves echo red flowers.
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A cascading waterfall gently splashes into a small pond along the edge of the garden…
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…and joins up with the formal rill (if I remember correctly).
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/28_Succulent_pot_Stairs_Yucca.jpg)
Shallow steps climb back up toward the house, with a pot of aeoniums and other plants leading you on.
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/29_Euphorbia_Red_phlox_House.jpg)
Euphorbia and red phlox in the house garden
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/30_Clematis_on_house.jpg)
And a purple clematis scrambling along the wall
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Dreamy sky-blue hydrangeas — the signature plant of the Puget Sound Fling, in my view. I admired them everywhere.
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/32_Arbor_tunnel.jpg)
In another part of the garden, arches form a tunnel leading to a triangular arbor — an aisle for a bridal procession, perhaps.
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/33_Stone_cones.jpg)
Twin cones of stacked gray rock make an interesting gateway into this formal garden.
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/34_Formal_flower_garden.jpg)
It glows with golden and white flowers and foliage.
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/35_Lunch_arbor.jpg)
Under a long, curving arbor, the Flingers enjoyed their box lunches, plus a plant sale by local nursery Little Bird Gardens.
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I spotted Kelly Kilpatrick from San Francisco and Andrea Fox from College Station, Texas, enjoying their lunch in the garden.
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/37_Denise.jpg)
And Denise Maher of A Growing Obsession, who gardens beautifully in both Long Beach, California, and on the Oregon coast
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/38_Purple_hydrangea_White_tree_Hosta.jpg)
But back to those hydrangeas.
![](https://www.penick.net/digging/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/39_Blue_hydrangea_Pam-CatJonesPhoto.jpg)
On the way out, Cat Jones snapped a photo of me in my hydrangea-matching t-shirt.
Up next: Scenes from Point Defiance Park and Owen Beach in Tacoma. For a look back at the Carharts’ woodland garden with a view on Vashon Island, click here.
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Digging Deeper
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All material © 2024 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
The Texas blogger with the blue-toned garden looks lovely posing with a blue hydrangea in her blue jeans and blue t-shirt. Lovely blog.
Thanks, Janet. You’re right — there’s an affinity for blue here!
Just wow. This looks like the garden of all gardens.
Holly, it was lovely, and I’m so sorry you had to miss coming to the Fling this year. You were missed!
That was the best specimen of a variegated dogwood tree I have ever seen. Froggsong Gardens was wonderful spot for lunch. Perfect colorful location for a group as colorful as us.
I agree, Jerry. And that tree was the belle of that garden ball.
I became entirely fixated on the mixed borders, and particularly the lilies and hydrangeas, and missed many others areas of the larger garden. Thanks for sharing your photos, Pam!
It was a large garden, and I feel sure I missed some areas too, Kris.
I always delight in your pictorial garden tours. This is one busy fine garden. I love the circle garden. I have several circle gardens in my small garden. I am happy to see someone else likes this configuration. Of course my circles are much smaller. Some have become oval over the years. When is saw the picture of you at the end I thought at first it was your daughter. Good to see you again. 🙂
Oh Lisa, you flatterer. 😉 Thank you, and I agree about circles in a garden. I have some too!
I loved the Little Bird plant and gardening products sale. I just couldn’t take any plants home to Europe! This was a lovely garden and I can imagine it to be a fine venue for a wedding. Those Hydrangeas were glorious and the circular garden and the Cornus…..to be honest….there was so much planting and colour….it really was a feast.
I never bother with plants at the Fling because Texas is its own universe as far as what will thrive here. But I sure did enjoy Little Bird’s garden art offerings.