I set out today on my next adventure, a garden tour of Vancouver and Victoria. So far, I have only made it to Portland. I fly to Canada tomorrow to meet up with the Road Scholars. But in the meantime I wanted to kick things off right with a visit to the Oregon Garden. It has been on my radar for awhile but it is 12 miles off the interstate to the east of Salem, so this is the first time I took the time to make the trek.
And it was well worth the time and effort. There are 20 specialty gardens packed into 80 acres on the outskirts of Silverton. I’m glad they have good signage to get you there or I would surely have gotten lost. I’m glad I have a good map or I would surely have never found my way back to the Interstate. My first stop was the water garden and one of the employees pointed out a frog pretending to be invisible. I’m always looking for frogs to photograph and rarely find them so this certainly got me off on the right foot.
But it was HOT. The sweat was pouring off me but since I had made the effort to get there and paid the $12.00 to get in I felt I had to give it my best shot. So I shot some water lilies. I strolled through the Northwest Garden. I sought shade at every opportunity. Then I shot this beautiful flower that I learned from the sign was a Rose of Sharon.
I headed over to the rose garden but it was closed so I couldn’t go in. I swapped out lenses for the Sweet 50 and had some fun with blanket flowers. Then I went looking for the Medicinal Garden and s
aw a bunch of flowers in bloom including these Black eyed Susan’s. It was only after I headed into the Home demonstration Gardens that I realized I had just been photographing in the Medicinal Garden.
It seems that the Oregon Garden opened in 2001. Which surprised me because I was actually living in Oregon in 2001. Though I guess being in the depths of my mid-life crisis it escaped my attention.
Nevertheless, now that I know the way, sort of, I will definitely come back. If only to visit Oregon’s only Frank Lloyd Wright house, th
e Gordon House, which was moved to the Oregon Garden property in order to save it from destruction. When I come again though, it will be in the spring or fall. the Dahlias should be lovely in September. Though I did find a few blooming in July.
Learn more about the Oregon Garden at http://www.oregongarden.org/