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!

The noonday light was harsh for photos, but in person it was bright with colorful flowers and golden and wine-red foliage.

I admired towering Asiatic lilies in shades of pink…

…and yellow.

Purple coneflowers too…

…abuzz with bees collecting pollen.

A triangular red arbor beckons you toward the next garden room…

…framing a magnificent variegated pagoda dogwood at the rear of a circular garden.

A bubbling fountain draws your attention to a formal rill along the border.

This garden of circles sits below the house garden, which allows for an overall view before you step into it.

Red roses and golden black-eyed Susans add bright color in the foreground. In back, tree foliage carries on the color theme.

Black-eyed Susans

Eryngium

The variegated dogwood poses like a bride in a tiered dress next to a pond with a boardwalk around the perimeter.

Her branches dipped low, but I squeezed under them to walk around the pond.

A bench backed by a circular lath screen, shaded by a Japanese maple, offers a pond-watching spot.

Lath screen

View across the pond back to the house

One last look at the graceful dogwood

Red Japanese maple leaves echo red flowers.

A cascading waterfall gently splashes into a small pond along the edge of the garden…

…and joins up with the formal rill (if I remember correctly).

Shallow steps climb back up toward the house, with a pot of aeoniums and other plants leading you on.

Euphorbia and red phlox in the house garden

And a purple clematis scrambling along the wall

Dreamy sky-blue hydrangeas — the signature plant of the Puget Sound Fling, in my view. I admired them everywhere.

In another part of the garden, arches form a tunnel leading to a triangular arbor — an aisle for a bridal procession, perhaps.

Twin cones of stacked gray rock make an interesting gateway into this formal garden.

It glows with golden and white flowers and foliage.

Under a long, curving arbor, the Flingers enjoyed their box lunches, plus a plant sale by local nursery Little Bird Gardens.

I spotted Kelly Kilpatrick from San Francisco and Andrea Fox from College Station, Texas, enjoying their lunch in the garden.

And Denise Maher of A Growing Obsession, who gardens beautifully in both Long Beach, California, and on the Oregon coast

But back to those hydrangeas.

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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