Last weekend I attended the Hardy Plant Study Weekend, which I mentioned in yesterday's post. It's a weekend-long (Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday) conference that took place this year in Bothell, Washington. It rotates every year between four areas here in the Pacific Northwest -- next year it's in Portland, OR.
I know some bloggers like to take detailed photos and do posts about every garden to try to give readers a feel for what it's like to tour the garden, and I love reading those kinds of posts, but I'm rubbish at putting them together myself. So I'm going to share some nice foliage combos that I saw. Gardens in this part of the country excel at cool, leafy gardens, and foliage is trendy (personally I prefer flowers). Flowers and quirk (there was even less of that). I can count on one hand the number of gardens that featured flowers. I'm going to see if I can get through this post without showing you any Hakone grass too, which, believe me, will be a big challenge (God, it was everywhere, and I'm sick of it).
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| Bonus flower |
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| Bonus flowers |
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| Can I let this stand in for ALL the yellow and red/purple combos I saw all weekend? God, that got repetitive. |
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| Isn't that Loropetalum gorgeous? |
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| Another bonus flower |
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| Oh no, a little Hakone grass snuck in |
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| Ah bugger, there it is again, I couldn't crop it out |
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| Eek |
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| Agh, help me |
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| Pry my eyes out with a spoon -- I get it, it looks like water, but come on |
I bet you're ready for some flowers now. I sure was, after four days of this. There were really only two gardens in the entire four days that were flower-heavy, and one of those was a commercial planting. Believe me, I latched onto those like a starving baby.
