Article and photos by Peg Smith
One delight of travel is to explore regional gardens, large or small. I enjoy seeing other design ideas, plant selections (even if I can’t grow them in Yolo County), and different ecosystems. Recently, a couple of trips to Seattle led to exploring the Bellevue Botanical Garden, some samples of the P-Patch Community Garden program, and the Sammamish Heritage Garden.
Bellevue Botanical Garden is located on the east side of Lake Washington. The grounds are beautifully cared for with garden areas such as The Native Discovery Garden, The Perennial Border, The Yao Japanese Garden, and The Waterwise Garden. The signage of plants and descriptions of collection areas are detailed and clear. For more information, go to the Bellevue Botanical Garden website.
The P-Patch Program is run by the City of Seattle and has 91 gardens. According to the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, “The P-Patch Community Gardening Program is made up of community-managed open spaces throughout Seattle where gardeners use small plots of land to grow organic food, flowers, and herbs. All P-Patch gardens are open to the public to enjoy and are utilized as communal spaces, restorative spaces, learning and idea incubators, and venues for community gatherings.”
I visited two P-Patch Gardens. One had honeybee education as its focal point. Two hives were in an enclosed space surrounded by plexiglass walls so that visitors could view the hive activities. Cleverly, the access for the bees to the hives was through an open wire mesh ‘ceiling’ about ten feet above the hives. This meant that the bees’ pathway to the surrounding bee garden was only by flying up through the mesh, then over to the surrounding bee garden. With this flight path determined for the bees, it meant that observers could stand close to the hives and observe through the plexiglass the bees’ movements without ducking a stream of bees entering or leaving the hives. Click here for more information about the P-Patch Gardens.
The Heritage Garden is located in Big Rock Park Central on the east side of Lake Sammamish. It was developed and is tended by the Sammamish Botanical Society. Per their website, “We (the Sammamish Botanical Society) have created the Heritage Garden near the Reard Historical House, restored by our partners, The Sammamish Heritage Society. The garden demonstrates heritage plants which might have been found in early gardens in our area. We have a large herb selection, fruiting trees, vegetables, and shrubs. Our beds will be harvested at regular intervals during the summer and fall, with donations to the Issaquah Food & Clothing Bank. Each growing season we deliver hundreds of pounds of produce! During the fall, we fill many beds with flower bulbs in anticipation of a beautiful spring show.” For more information and photos of this project, click here.
Other interesting places to visit are the greenhouses of the Biology Department at the University of Washington. They have an amazing collection of plants from around the world, especially cacti and succulents.
A visit to the University of Washington Botanical Gardens in the early spring, when the azaleas and rhododendrons are in full bloom, is an amazing sight.
The Seattle Japanese Garden is a delightful contemplative garden with its large koi pond.
Travel can be busy, and an afternoon wandering a garden can be replenishing. I look forward to finding more garden treasures and hope you will too.