Adventures in gardening
Dogwood petals rain down in the breeze. The scent of lilac fills the air. A park turns pink with blooming azaleas.
Surprises like this are a hallmark of spring, and a series of guidebooks from Globe Pequot Press called “Gardenwalks” ($14.95 each) lists hundreds of lovely places to enjoy these experiences and more.
“Rather than focusing solely on gardens by top designers or those that exhibit rare plants, each ‘Gardenwalk’ entry expresses what you will find when you wander the paths of a variety of gardens, arboretums, nurseries and parks,” says editor Mary Norris.
She says the books “give garden-lovers the choice of many different types of sensory experiences in very beautiful settings.”
A separate “Gardenwalks” guide covers each of five regions: New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the Southeast, California and the Pacific Northwest.
The listing to the right shows some of the authors’ top picks for the Northwest and California, along with their comments. Check visiting hours before planning your trip; some gardens are open daily year-round, some in spring and summer, some only occasionally or by appointment.
Pacific Northwest
• Volunteer Park Conservatory, Seattle, (206) 684-4743. “A stunning Victorian glass conservatory,” filled with bulbs and blooming succulents, says author Alice Joyce, who writes the “Garden Walks” column for the San Francisco Chronicle.
• Washington Park Arboretum, Seattle, (206) 543-8800, http://depts.washington.edu/wpa/. From February through June, “bursting with vivid spring floral displays from magnolias to rhododendrons,” Joyce says.
• Bloedel Reserve, Bainbridge Island, Wash., (206) 842-7631, www.bloedelreserve.org. “Cultivated gardens and forests and a sweeping view of Puget Sound,” with magical springtime displays of wildflowers like trillium.
• Heronswood Nursery, Kingston, Wash., (360) 297-4172, www.heronswood.com/. A commercial nursery; display gardens can be visited by appointment. Founder Dan Hinkley “has created an Arcadian wonderland on the Kitsap Peninsula,” Joyce says. “You can find rare plants here that you won’t find anywhere else, as well as plants brought back from the wild, propagated and sold by the nursery.”
• Elk Rock Gardens at the Bishop’s Close, Portland, (800) 452-2562, www.diocese-oregon.org/Garden/. “An amazing cliffside setting on the Willamette River,” Joyce says.
• Nitobe Memorial Garden, University of British Columbia in Vancouver, (604) 822-9666, www.nitobe.org/. “One of the finest classical Japanese gardens outside of Japan,” with flowering cherry trees, azaleas, maples and distinctive bridges.
• Abkhazi Garden, Victoria, (250) 598-8096, www.abkhazi.com/. A storybook garden set amid massive outcroppings, built by a prince and princess who met in Paris in the 1920s, were interned in camps during World War II and later married.
California
• San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum, (415) 661-1316, www.sfbotanicalgarden.org. Incredible year-round but with spectacular entry borders in spring featuring “unusual plant forms from around the world” and a rejuvenated Eastern Australian garden, Joyce says.
• Filoli, Woodside (650) 364-8300, www.filoli.org. “Fabulous estate garden with exuberant displays of bulbs,” says Joyce.
• Arizona Garden, Stanford University, Palo Alto, http://grounds.stanford.edu/points/ gardens/arizonagarden.html. A cactus garden, designed for the Stanford family in the 1880s and recently rejuvenated.
• Cornerstone Festival of Gardens, Sonoma, (707) 933-3010, www.cornerstonegardens.com. Gardens designed like contemporary works of art, such as Earth Walk by Pamela Burton, in which “a massive wedge has been removed from the earth and you are allowed to stroll down a diagonal path, past an expanse of billowy grasses,” Joyce says.
• Walt Disney Concert Hall Community Park, Los Angeles, (213) 972-7211, www.wdch.org (open unless a concert is taking place). “Full of intimate spaces, sinuous paths, beds filled with herbs and perennials, along with flowering trees with sculptural forms that reflect on the building’s gleaming stainless-steel facade.”
• Huntington Botanical Gardens, San Marino (626) 405-2100, www.huntington.org. “Wisteria, camellias and azaleas embellish lyrical formal garden spaces.”