It was great fun to visit Hersonswood Garden last July with my fellow Flingers (the same day we also visited Windcliff, Dan Hinkley’s current garden). I think there were roughly 90 of us, but the garden is so large (15 acres) we quickly dispersed and only occasionally would we cross paths. Since I’d been a few times before, I was able to stroll at a leisurely pace and not try to see it all, I felt sorry for those folks who had to rush. Here are my highlights…
Pellaea gastonyi
Polystichum imbricans
Heading over to the Renaissance Garden (ferns!) you pass by some stately agaves…
The perfect wall for drainage and heat.
Lovely purples with the cotinus and acanthus.
This is the first time I’ve seen the Raining Wall (at the entrance to the Renaissance Garden) complete.
Blechnum penna-marina
Rhododendron valentinioides
Selaginella tamariscina ‘Golden Sprite’
Adiantum x mairisii
Adiantum aleuticum ‘Subpumilum’ (on either side of the moss).
Blechnum microphyllum
This was interesting to see. When at the Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden in February I spied a plant that looks a lot like this. I called that one out as perhaps Polygonatum mengtzense. But I had a phone screen shot in my files noting this plant as Maianthemum oleraceum. The plot thickens!
I’ve taken a photo of this container on several visits. Parts change, parts stay the same.
Okay, here’s a confession. I love this…
I hate this…
I’ve felt the extreme love/hate ever since my first visit to the garden. One seems like an interesting way to raise up planters above the ground level, the other seems overly contrived and out of place.
I suppose you could call this artful hedge contrived, but it’s plant based, not artificial.
Ditto for the potager.
I used to dislike the chanterelle fountain, but it’s grown on me.
Imagine rinsing your vegetable harvest here after picking them from the potager…
Lillies, the flower of July…
I loved the dusty hues of this vignette.
Globularia incanescens
Empty pot as framing device, it works. It really does.
A little further into the same planting.
The tree ferns! These have been here for years, surviving the seasons, unlike some newer tree ferns in the Renaissance Garden.
Dryopteris crassirhizoma
I feel extreme plant lust every time I look at a photo of this fern.
A last look at the tree ferns (Dicksonia antarctica).
Making my way out of the garden and back to our bus I passed this totem pole that had been left to rest, decay, and return to the land.
It was a great reminder that the garden is now owned by the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe and going forward the garden will meld their vision with that of it’s famous founder, Dan Hinkley.
