Thomas Vetter's garden has been on my radar for some time. A few weeks ago, I finally got the chance to see it and it is in a word - FABULOUS! It was raining and the plants were weighted down with moisture so I do want to return on a drier day. Fortunately, Mr. Vetter opens his garden on numerous occasions throughout the Open Gardens program.
His garden is packed with beautiful plants in lovely combinations with contrasting textures. There are a lot of plants in this garden and he has displayed them in the most artistic ways. This is the garden I strive for and he used many of my favorite plants too. And what a nice guy - accompanying me in the rain with my mouth hanging open and kindly answering questions. This is a great garden to visit on the HPSO Open Gardens Tour. It will be open again on August 13th.
Congratulations to RobinL, who is the winner of the contest! I recently received a great documentary and want to pass it along. Gardeners will love this! The subjects of "Portrait of a Garden" are a country estate owner in the Netherlands and an 85 year old pruning expert. The film follows them during the course of a year as they work in a vast kitchen garden. They grow every fruit and vegetable you can think of (and some that I had never heard of). Most of their time is spent painstakingly pruning espalied fruit trees. They chat about their methods (which they have been practicing since the days of Louis XIV) and how the world once revered great gardeners while today it is sadly a diminishing art. There is little dialog however (and the language is Dutch with English subtitles). Mostly the camera lingers on nature, resulting in exquisite photography. The beautiful images are accompanied by a mellow score. The whole film is mesmerizing (or it was for me) and I enjoyed it very...
Is it really September already? It has been a long, warm, dry summer but autumn is on the horizon. The temperatures are steadily back in the upper 60s and low 70s and we are getting sprinkles. There are autumnal hints everywhere in the garden - the Japanese maples and the dogwood tree are beginning a color shift and fall flowers, like Anenome and Goldenrod are blooming. The garden has been full of goldfinches during the past two weeks and hummingbirds have increased dramatically. Gardener Blogger's Bloom Day, hosted by May Dreams Gardens , is the place to see what is blooming in gardens across the United States. Check out the blog for a list of links. In the meantime, here are some of the flowers in our garden this month... Goldenrod ( Solidago 'Fireworks') is a sure sign that the season is changing. Crape Myrtle 'Dynamite' finally beginning to bloom. Aster dumosis 'Wood's Purple' and Mexican Feather Grass ( Nassella tenuissima ) Rudbeckia 'Goldst...
Just after you enter the gates of The Oregon Garden , the first thing you see on your left is The Gordon House, one of the last Usonian houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was the only house designed by Wright in the state of Oregon. It was commissioned by Conrad and Evelyn Gordon in Wilsonville, Oregon. Wright designed the house in 1957 and it was built in 1964 after his death. The Gordons lived in the house for the remainder of their lives and it was then donated to the Frank Lloyd Wright Convervancy, who meticulously dismantled the house piece by piece and relocated it to The Oregon Garden location after it was donated by the Gordon heirs. There is also a Frank Lloyd Wright home less than one mile from our former home in Florence, Alabama. I visited it twice and wrote about it in this post from 2012 . Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy
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