GardenBook

  Spotty posting from me in the last couple of months due to a big mess in my Lightroom Catalog that I have been spending many hours trying to straighten out. As one of our IT dudes at the awfice says, this issue was unfortunately a PICNIC i.e. Problem In Chair Not In Computer. Mistakes were made both when I upgraded to a newer version of  Lightroom, and again when I moved photos to my new external hard drive. Most of 2019 is intact but 2015 is a mess-I may have lost most of my photos from that year. I hope to have everything cleaned up by the end of January. In the meantime here is another report from HPSO Study Weekend last summer in Portland.   I first visited this Portland garden in 2014 upon the occasion of Garden Bloggers Fling. The weather had been relentlessly hot , but we had a lovely heat respite on day three and in fact had a refreshing rain squall that conveniently dissipated as we arrived. Study Weekend was a fantastic event , but the garden touring took pl...

  If I lived in Portland and was in the market for garden design services  the living portfolio that is the private garden of designer Darcy Daniels would be a strong argument in favor of her firm Bloomtown Gardens . Ironically it wasn't the blooms that were the big draw for me in this garden. It was Darcys' skill at combining foliage shapes, textures and color in both shade and sun.I found it particularly inspiring and wished I had had more time to take it all in. I still have my photos to refer back to, and those of others as well including several on the Bloomtown website . Since I am embarking on yet another renovation  of my front garden in the next few months I've been paying close attention to details of gardens I've liked this year, especially those that feature plants that I can grow here in mine.  Streetside approach. I wish I'd taken more photos of the robustly planted hellstrip.  A sidewalk strollers view. The hellstrips in this Portland n...