This image was created about twenty feet from the image in yesterday’s post. Instead of focusing on a single hydrangea looking through the garden, I stepped back and framed the historic Selah-Naches irrigation flume with the cherry trees and the row of hydrangeas. Borrowed scenes always add interest and enjoyment to our garden.
This fall will probably be the last time that the historic flume will be seen from our garden. It is scheduled to be replaced with a pipe line this winter. Progress is painful!
Some views in our Heatherwood garden provide a glance through the garden to a borrowed scene of the surrounding hills. Other views, like the one above, provide a “stop dead” vignette of a specimen plant surrounded by companions and a deep background of color and contrasts. The ‘Lime Light’ panicle hydrangea is clearly the star of this image. In the summer, the blooms emerge bright white with a little lime green tinge. As the summer progresses they become even brighter white. In the late summer/early fall, they start to turn slightly pink. Later in the fall, the blooms turn brown and the leaves change into their fall color. Then in late autumn, the leaves fall, leaving the bare stems topped with spent blooms which provide a structural interest for the winter.
The companion plants provide depth and a stage for the star. The color and varying textures of the rudbeckia, Russian sage, yellow twig dogwood, and other perennials provide the frame. The grasses, various shrubs, and trees complete the background adding depth to the vignette.
As we walk through the garden, new and different scenes appear daily.
Developing a garden is an evolution of ideas and time. Our Japanese-influenced garden started with my first planting of a Bloodgood Japanese maple in 2016. Additional trees and shrubs were added as I created a small section of garden next to the house in 2017 and 2018. In 2019, my ideas expanded to create a large Japanese style garden on the north section of our property. The concept of Heatherwood began. We converted a grassy slope into a large rock garden, complete with a pond, stream, and waterfall. Monsterous excavators reshaped the landscape. We planted the foundation trees and conifer shrubs for the garden. The foundation was complete, but there were many open areas to be finished. The work had just begun. In 2020, we added several ground covers around the garden pathways. This year we continued with the ground covers, additional border and shade trees, along with many evergreen and deciduous shrubs intended to fill in space and create a little contrast and multi-seasonal interest.
This little red twig dogwood was planted this spring. It looks small now, but when mature, it will reach 5-6 feet tall and wide. In the spring and summer it has light green foliage contrasting with the darker green conifers. In autumn, it is turning into yellow and red shades. In winter, its red stems create a beautiful contrast, especially when the ground is covered with snow.
The garden will continue to evolve. Each year we will add ground covers and additional fill-in plants. As the shade trees grow, we will replace sun loving specimens with shade specimens. Rhododendrons and azaleas are in the plan once we have enough shade to protect them. Developing the garden will be a never ending activity of joy.
Before settling down in the “Perch’s” Adirondack settee, our visitor takes a few moments to enjoy the scene that folds out below. From here, the stroller can view the Selah-Yakima gap, the rural Selah valley and rolling hills, and the Heatherwood landscape as a background to the Japanese garden stream and waterfalls. The dense cloud cover provides a contrast to the normally bright blue summer skies of the Yakima Valley. It is now time to sit down, relax, and enjoy a little peace with the rushing water and the song of birds providing nature’s wonderful music.
This posting is the conclusion for our stroller’s walk through Heatherwood’s Japanese Garden. There is much more to see and enjoy, but those will be left for a future stroll.
“Yukimi Lantern and Waterfall” Heatherwood Japanese Garden
It has been a couple of weeks since my last post. I guess it is time to continue the stroll through the garden.
After exiting the garden path, the visitor walks around a couple of trees and starts to walk up the lawn bordering the Japanese garden. The sound of the rushing waterfall catches his/her attention and they look over their left shoulder and catch this small vignette. As we developed the Japanese garden, we tried to create small windows of interest from various view points. This is one of my favorites.
Across the path from the Hokkoji, a Hana Matoi Japanese maple, captures our strollers eye. It is planted on the hillside and surrounded with rocks, ice plants, and thyme. The vignette created by the maple and ground covers can be seen from multiple spots through out the Japanese garden. It is one of the key focal points of interest. Below are a couple of highlights:
A Hokkeji lantern welcomes our garden’s visitors with a glimpse of what is to come. A newly planted (2021) Japanese Pagoda tree and Akebono Flowering Cherry tree leads (and disguises) a walker around to a viewing area overlooking a pond and waterfall. The viewing area is surrounded by a mature linden tree and several young Japanese maples and a Japanese Stewartia. Over time these will provide a living enclosure around a peaceful viewing area.
I am getting ready for an infrared photography workshop with Tony Sweet on Whidbey Island. I thought I needed to do a little practicing. In this section of Heatherwood, we are trying to create a woodland garden. It is a work in progress, and right now we have only small trees and a few “sun-loving” shrubs planted. The dark bark provides a striking contrast to the IR highlighted trees. In a few years, hopefully the ground will be covered with shrubs, ground cover, and shade-loving perennials. The envisioned garden path will provide the contrast needed for an IR image.
This image is the springtime perspective of the view from the southeast corner of Heatherwood looking north. A semi-circle of conifers and junipers surround an Adirondack settee from the back. Specimen conifers encompass the sides. And, the foreground area with shrubs, dwarf conifers, and ground covers focus our immediate interest. We borrow the distant background hills frame the view. We call it our little “Conifer Corner.”
“Meadow, Rock, & Japanese Gardens” Heatherwood Spring
Heatherwood is comprised of several separate garden areas. Each one has a distinctive feeling and character. Even though the gardens are distinct, common elements link them as they flow from one to the other. The scene above illustrates three layers of gardens; the foreground meadow, the mid ground rock garden, and the distant background Japanese garden. Conifers and rocks are repeated to transition from the Japanese garden to the rock garden. Perennials are repeated to transition from the rock garden to the meadow. Together they harmonize with each other.
