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...

In June I attended HPSO Study Weekend in Portland. I have yet to blog about all the great gardens I saw in association with that event , but no doubt that will occupy some of my time during those long dark winter nights that are looming ahead.  I always prefer to drive when  heading up to Portland  and because of the distance I do the trip with a stopover on the way. On my way home I did a partial Interstate 5 and coastal route combo and decided to take a detour off  I5 to drive by Terra Novas' dramatically colorful display gardens. My ultimate destination that day was Brookings, a seaside town only a couple of miles from the Oregon-California border, and since I had booked myself an ocean front room I wanted to arrive in time to enjoy the view for a few hours. What I should have done was to leave Portland an hour earlier , and call ahead to Terra Nova to ask if I could stroll the entire garden -as it was I stayed to the perimeter and the parking lot . Not the best ...

  In June, just a couple of weeks after Garden Bloggers Fling, I set off again to attend the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon Study Weekend in Portland Oregon. This was my first time attending this event and I can surely recommend it. It was informative, fun and the chance to see some great private gardens will always seal the deal. Study Weekend kicked off on Friday evening, with a welcome reception, plant sale and the keynote address by Tom Fichser of Timber Press. Early arrivals and the local folk also had the opportunity to visit a few gardens in NE Portland before the official opening. I drove to Portland that morning from Grants Pass and arrived in time to catch 3 of the 6 gardens on the roster.    I started my tour at the garden of Jeffery Bale , designer and mosaic artist. The garden is a refection of both his design aesthetic and the influence of his extensive global travels over many years. As you enter along the shady path through the front and side garden you a...

After 3 heady days of great speakers and great gardens at HPSO Study Weekend (more about this event in future posts) I had a couple of 'wind-down' days with relatives in Lake Oswego before heading home. My agenda included a visit to Rogerson Clematis Garden, which was located only a couple miles from where I was staying . No trip to RCG is complete without a stroll around the adjacent Luscher Farm Community Garden , where there is, I am told,  always a waiting list for plots.There is a robust mixture of flower gardens and edibles with bucolic farm-y views in every direction.  And it appears that scarecrows are A Thing. I took several hundred photos on this trip, and coming on the heels of Garden Bloggers Fling Denver my external hard drive where I store all my images is nearly full and will not accommodate my Portland photos from HPSO study weekend. Before I left for that event I ordered a new, larger storage external drive which I will install this upcoming weekend For now...