By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine
Two excellent garden tours are coming up this Saturday, July 10, in western Washington and Oregon. Both tours run from 10 to 4.
Portland/Vancouver
This year's Association of Northwest Landscape Designers (ANLD) Behind the Scenes garden tour puts the focus on private gardens in the northern part of Portland and Vancouver, Washington. All gardens are the work of landscape designers, and some are the designers' own gardens.
On this tour you'll see vegetable gardens, rainfall gardens, roof gardens, wall gardens, water features, woodland landscapes, and plenty of first-quality garden art. The range is impressive. In Sharri LaPierre's woodland garden, for example, metal-and-glass artist Zoe Bacon worked spirals into her sculptures (one is pictured at right) to pick up the spirals that show up in stonework and art throughout the garden. Landscape design is by Vanessa Nagel.
And Kristan Sias' Portland garden, designed by Darcy Daniels, you see how much a corner lot can do: it has a private water garden, vegetable garden (pictured above), a wonderful perennial border, and a lovely blend of blueberries and perennials.
Tickets are $20 each; buy them online or at retail nurseries listed on the tour's web page. Act fast; last year's tickets sold out.
Hillsboro
The Orenco Station neighborhood of Hillsboro (just off NE Cornell Road, between Northwest 229th Ave. and Northeast 61st Ave.) has made a push into organic gardening, strutting its stiff this year with a Tour of Secret Gardens. All 12 gardens are within a 10-minute walk.
You can buy tickets ($10) at Orenco Station's main park pavilion. Proceeds benefiting the Oregon Food Bank and Loaves and Fishes (meals on wheels). Each admission automatically enters you in a raffle. Parking is limited; take the MAX (Orenco Station stop) and your MAX ticket will get you an extra raffle ticket. Bring three cans of food for the food bank and you'll get another raffle ticket.
Photograph by Dan Hottenroth
