Last Saturday, we took a long trip to Estacada, Oregon, to visit another open garden - Laurel Hedge. It was well worth the drive. This is the garden of landscape designers Darin Simmons and Matthew Greydanus. There is also a nursery and gift shop on the premises. There was a wonderful birdhouse that I am still kicking myself for not buying.
The extensive gardens cover two acres and have just about everything you can think of - the catalog description reads "a Bamboo garden with tea house, koi pond with rustic pavillon, white-flowering spiral garden, rose garden, hornbeam-lined allee, flower garden with greenhouse and many others". I would add to that - a pond, several water features, statuary, containers, bridges, bird houses, and a beautiful selection of plants.
As we were ooo-ing and ah-ing around every corner, I kept saying to myself - "We are downsizing, remember?" It was all gorgeous and a tremendous amount of work has gone into it. We chatted with Darin Simmons, one of the owners, and he said they do almost all the work themselves!
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| Darin says that he is a plant collector and Matthew does most of the design work. I am making it a point to carry a notebook with me from here out because I cannot remember the names of plants afterward. He told us the name of the tree on the left and of course, I have forgotten it. There were numerous stunning hydrangeas. |
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| Mutabalis, one of my favorite roses |
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| I will close with another stunning dahlia. Dahlias are another plant that seem to do very well here in the Pacific Northwest. |
Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy
