The arms of this beautiful Weeping Douglas Fir reach out greeting the garden stroller to another beautiful view. Many beautifully sculptured trees are strategically placed throughout the gardens. They captured my sight as I walked along the paths. They made me stop and admire the specimen and how it was placed in the landscape. I scrambled to see the specific cultivar or variety, many of which I had not previously seen. I noted many that I plan to search for to add to our Heatherwood garden.
Autumn Garden Overlook Vista Gardens, Bremerton WA
I recently spent two days exploring the beautiful and educational Albers Marcovina Vista Gardens in Bremerton, Washington. It is a meticulously designed 4-acre hillside landscape overlooking Dryers Inlet off Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains in the distance. The garden displays a multitude of species and cultivars that can be grown in the Pacific Northwest. It focuses on sustainable landscape design that can support plant species which require no or minimum supplemental water. Plants are intertwined together which stabilizes a relatively steep hillside. Hand-laid stone and gravel paths meander throughout the garden to provide close access to the various plants. Artwork is incorporated into the landscape to provide special highlights.
From one perspective, the garden is absolutely beautiful throughout the four seasons. From my novice background, I found the garden a deep educational experience as well. John Albers, the founder and curator of Vista Gardens considers the garden as his laboratory to test plants and environmental ideas. The result is a display garden of unique resilient plants and sustainable landscape design concepts. I anxiously look forward to my next visit.
Vista Gardens is open to the public. Educational tours are also available. To plan a visit, go to their website: VistaGardens.org.
Over the past several years, we have been gradually developing a garden path along the perimeter of our lower Heatherwood garden. The image above is the transition from our lower conifer garden to the woodland garden. The Lebanon cedars on the left and the birches on the right form a doorway across the lawn into the woodland garden above. Along the path, benches provide shaded places to rest and become immersed into the garden’s beauty. It’s time for a walk!!!
Conifers, grasses, Japanese maples, perennials, and deciduous trees all blend together to form an abstract collage of color. Colors change every passing day for a new display. This window into our Heatherwood garden provides a little vignette to greet our daily walkers along the street. The garden provides us the gift of being able to walk among nature every day.
The sagebrush covered hill above along with its ridge of a past volcanic lava flow puts history in perspective. It also provides a reminder of the importance of our 100-year old irrigation canal that has brought water to our fertile valley.
Looking Up Into the Japanese Garden Heatherwood Fall
Colors abound as we look from the back yard up into the Japanese inspired area of our Heatherwood garden. The reds of the Autumn Brilliance maples and the yellows of the linden and other Japanese maples provide the bright color. The blues and greens of the various conifer trees and shrubs fill in the gaps. The bright orange of the heather provides a special accent in the bottom center. The tan of the background hill sets off the garden colors. The Japanese Kotoji lantern stands out to orchestrate the changing colors. Soon the chartreuse of the Wintersonne mugho pine on the left and the green of the Saratoga ginkgo in the center will turn to brilliant yellows.
The autumn colors seem to change every day. Our daily walk through the garden is always full of surprises!
We have been blessed with many beautiful blue-sky early fall days this year. Some trees have already turned color and lost their leaves. Others are just starting to turn into their fall colors. Soon many of the orange maples will turn into scarlet red. We always enjoy the contrast of the garden colors with the stark beauty of the hill above accented by the bright blue sky.
Japanese Garden Lower Path Heatherwood Late Summer
Shades of green dominate the lower path of our Heatherwood Japanese garden area in late summer. The light orange tinge of a Japanese maple in the background is a harbinger of the beginning of autumn. During the next several weeks the path will gradually sparkle with the changing colors of the Japanese maples and other deciduous trees that grace the landscape. Fall is just around the corner.
Today marks twenty-five years since the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon were attacked. It is a day that I will never forget. Since then, the turbulence in our world has continued in many different places by terrorism as well as direct military conflict. What have we learned? I am afraid to say, not much.
New buildings have risen over what has been destroyed. New hope sparkles as we move forward. There are many things that are right with our world. Our challenges and responsibilities are to do what we can do to learn from the past and move forward to a better future.
Historic Irrigation Flume in NW Bed Heatherwood Late Summer
Irrigation gives life to our Heatherwood garden. Without the water that the Selah-Naches canal brings, our landscape would be a dry shrub steppe area like what can be seen on the hillside rising above our home. This small section of the wooden flume that originally brought water to the area is a reminder of the canal that was built over 100 years ago. It brought precious water to the fertile soil for the orchards and farm lands of our valley.
We have had a continuous drought for several years. The mountain snow pack and reservoirs have been low. So far we have been able to keep our little oasis thriving. We are very conscious of how we apply the limited water supply. Over time, I am sure that we will need to replace much of our landscape plants with ones that are much more drought tolerant.
It seems like I returned back home to Selah, Washington from Doylestown, Pennsylvania just yesterday. It has been a little over ten years! The years have flown by so very, very fast. Throughout my life, we have developed personal gardens in each location that we have lived in. It all started from a little bed we planted with daffodils and tulips in Richland, WA. Over 50 years our gardens have evolved through eight locations moving from Richland to Seattle to Washington, DC to Kent, WA to Woodinville,WA to Doylestown, PA and finally back to my home town, Selah, WA. The journey has culminated in our little Eden we call Heatherwood.
The above image is from our patio looking over our lower garden to the valley and hills to the south. Nine years ago this was a simple pasture similar to our neighbors. Slowly we added lawn grass, multiple planting beds, and a lower patio. As plants, trees, and shrubs have grown it has matured into a multidimensional landscape. Each year we add a little more here and there. It is hard for us to believe how much things have changed from when I first moved in. The image below is what the lower property looked like before we started re-landscaping in 2018. What a difference eight years has made.
