Museum Mother’s Day tour to take in rock work across the Spokane area

This year’s Mother’s Day Tour is going to offer a change of pace.

Instead of examining fine historic homes in Spokane, this year’s 28th annual tour will focus on homes, gardens and a church framed and built with exquisite rock work.

“I wanted to try something different this year,” said David Brum, tour organizer with the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, which benefits from the tour proceeds.

One of the highlights this year will be a rarely seen residential garden built with rounded “river rock” collected in the region, a visual testament to the power of the Missoula floods which scoured the land at the end of the Ice Age.

H.M. Blakely, owner of the Blakely Dry Goods Co. in Spokane, built the gardens before 1930 on what was then a 70-acre estate on the Spokane River just east of Boulder Beach. They were meant to be an escape from the city, according to the Spokane City-County Historic Preservation Office.

“Called ‘Mon Reve,’ or ‘My Dream,’ by Blakely, the gardens are both a fascinating example of native rock construction as well as a peaceful escape from the outside world,” according to the preservation office’s website.

The gardens are nestled on a promontory next to Upriver Drive at Hodin Drive. The most impressive part features an arched bridge over a pond with waterfalls. The water spills beneath the bridge and next to a stone staircase, all in river rock and concrete.

Granite bedrock creates a zone for succulents and herbs. Ornamental cherries, dogwood and conifers provide the basic plant structure underneath an old Ponderosa pine stand. The garden even includes a swimming hole, which is not in use any more.

An adjacent piece of the garden is left as a native area with arrowleaf balsam root and other indigenous plants such as serviceberry.

In the 1930s, the gardens became a popular tourist attraction after Blakely opened them to the public.

But it’s been decades since they’ve been open. When Blakely died in 1943, he willed his estate to the Shriners Hospitals for Children, which subdivided the land for new homes. In 2016, Dan and Valerie Rhoads purchased the property.

“It’s a nice coup that these folks have been generous enough to be on the tour,” Brum said.

The Rhoadses have been restoring the gardens and adjacent home.

“We felt like we were in a wonderland,” Valerie Rhoads said. “It’s like Manito Park.”

The Rhoadses said they bought the garden as an oasis. “We feel like we are not in the middle of the city,” Dan Rhoads said.

Their oasis is a magnet for wildlife, including deer who nap on the bedrock, Valerie Rhoads said.

A similar garden on the tour is the Royal Riblet House, now known as the Cliff House at Arbor Crest Wine Cellars, 4705 N. Fruit Hill Road. The grounds feature the rebuilt mansion and extensive rock garden with a pool and large chess board. The gatehouse and caretaker house are also done in rock. Minors are not allowed on the winery grounds

Also on the tour are the Glover Mansion, the Westminster Congregational Church, C.C. Koerner House, the Ralston and Sarah Wilbur House and the Vera Water and Power Well House.