Three Days in Seattle -- A Waterfall, Aquarium and Butterflies!

I may have to post this in parts, because I have a lot of pictures to share.

Recently Nigel took a week and a half of vacation time, and we spent three separate days gallivanting all around Seattle, doing all the touristy things we would have done if we had just come here for vacation, instead of moving here permanently like we did three years ago. So now I am doing my bit for Seattle tourism by telling you all about it and posting my photos.

Not everything has to do with gardening, but some of it does.

Our first stop was the Waterfall Garden, a small public garden with a huge waterfall. The Waterfall garden was built to honor the workers of United Parcel Service. You can read more about the Seattle Waterfall Garden here.

With bistro tables, the Waterfall Garden is a great place for workers in the area to sit and eat lunch.

The waterfall actually gets turned off at night.

Our next stop on our very first day was a Seattle Underground tour, and it was fascinating! In June 1889 a fire that was started by glue boiling over spread throughout a large part of Seattle, resulting in 32 city blocks being burned to the ground. The city was rebuilt from brick and stone, instead of wood, and was built on top of the old cellars, resulting in an entire underground part of the city that seldom gets used or sees the light of day. We learned quite a lot about the history of Seattle on this tour, led by a very talented raconteur who really managed to make it sound interesting and exciting. You can read more about the Great Seattle Fire here on Wikipedia.

Dark and gloomy, but fascinating!

A stained glass grid on the sidewalk above allows light into the underground, enough for ferns and mosses to grow.

After a quick food court lunch, we took off for a short cruise on a paddle-wheeler, from which we could view lots of the sights of the South Lake Union area, including this view of the floating house where Tom Hanks and his son lived in the movie Sleepless in Seattle.

That was a very full first day! We came home very tired, with aching feet and legs from all the walking.

On our second day, we went to the waterfront to check out the Seattle Aquarium. We had fun checking out the hands-on exhibits, where we could touch tidepool denizens such as starfish, and look at cool creatures such as octopi, seahorses, jellyfish, otters and seabirds.

The jellyfish were fascinating, as they swam so languidly under colored fluorescent lights.

I found Nemo!

Puffin preening

One amazing feature of the Aquarium is this cool domed room with a tank overhead, where you can watch fish swim through sunlit kelp beds.

The otters were adorable as they lay on their backs and basked in the sun.

We followed the Aquarium trip with a ride on the Seattle Great Wheel, an enormous ferris wheel with enclosed air-conditioned cars that give you an awesome view of the waterfront area. You can read articles about its construction and opening here. If you're looking for tickets, you can buy them here.

Seattle's Great Wheel

View of the waterfront

View of the Space Needle from the Great Wheel

After lunch at Mee-Sum Pastry at Pike Place Market, we walked up to Westlake Center and hopped on the monorail for a ride to Seattle Center, where the Space Needle, the Pacific Science Center and  Chihuly Garden and Glass are. The monorail, the Space Needle and the Science Center are all left-overs from the 1962 World's Fair. They are celebrating 50 years of operating this year. You can read about the history of the monorail here.

Seattle's monorail arrives at the station.

View of the Space Needle from below

Pacific Science Center

Our destination that day was the Science Center. They currently have a big King Tut exhibit installed there, but our purpose was not to see that. We saw a major King Tut exhibit many years ago at the Boston Science Museum, when we were living in Massachusetts.

No, our goal was viewing butterflies! The Science Center has a Tropical Butterfly House, a large greenhouse room full of tropical plants and exotic butterflies. They were so beautiful! I've seen swallowtails lately flitting around my garden, but they never light long enough on anything to take pictures. These butterflies seemed totally unperturbed by the presence of so many people, and many stood absolutely still on flowers and rotting fruit, just waiting for their adoring public to take their picture!

We hadn't been planning to check out the Chihuly Exhibit, we didn't have enough time left on that second day, because we had to catch a commuter train back home. Chihuly Garden and Glass beckoned us from behind a wall of green, offering nothing but tantalizing glimpses! I've bought and installed the work of glass artist Barbara Sanderson of Glass Gardens Northwest in my own garden, and have written about it here and here. But this post is getting rather long, so I'll write in my next post about my visit a few days later to the Chihuly exhibit...which was really quite astounding.

Big Plans Gone Awry

I had big plans yesterday to do a three-nursery tour on the other side of Puget Sound. I wanted to visit The Desert Northwest in Sequim, which was having its first ever open house, Far Reaches Farm in Port Townsend, and Dragonfly Farms in Kingston. From where I live south of Seattle, this was a major undertaking. Just to get to the ferry in Edmonds to cross to Kingston is a one-hour drive. I thought leaving at 9 a.m. would give me enough time. But when we reached the ferry terminal, we discovered that because this was also the same weekend as the Lavender Festival in Sequim, which is a once-a-year major celebration of the wonders of lavender, the ferry trip had a two-hour delay.

Normally, it would have taken me three hours to get to Sequim. Because of the ferry delay, it was going to take me three hours to make almost no progress. But I persevered, and stayed and waited for the ferry, thinking, well if I at least make it to the Desert Northwest for the rare open house, and have to visit the others at a later date, then that will still be a win.

It took us until 12:30 just to get to Kingston.

After which, we ended up in bumper-to-bumper traffic, all heading at a snail's pace into Sequim for the festival (which we were not attending, we were just going in the same direction). At the rate we were moving, it was going to take us 6 or 7 hours to make a trip I could usually make in 3.

Frustration and disappointment reigned. Well, at least it wasn't raining. In fact, the sun actually came out.

But, ultimately, we decided, instead of traveling all the way into Sequim, to veer off at Port Townsend and visit Far Reaches Farm.

Which was a treat. And a half. No, make that two treats.

Far Reaches Farm is owned and operated by Kelly Dodson and Sue Milliken, two plant-obsessed collectors who travel the world looking for garden-worthy plants. You can order online at their website here. You can read an article by Valerie Easton about them here. Ian Barclay, the proprietor of The Desert Northwest, wrote about his visit to their nursery here. They also usually have a booth at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show (I've bought plants from them there, as well as at the Bloedel Reserve's spring plant sale) and the NWFGS has written a short article about them here. It looks like they will be at the Fronderosa Frolic next month, which I'm planning to attend (if I don't run into a major traffic jam on the way). Anything I regretted not buying yesterday might be available then.

Seriously, follow those links and read about Kelly and Sue and their nursery. And then come back here, and check out all the pictures I took of their fabulous nursery and display gardens. My pictures do not do even a modicum of justice to it. It was a foliage orgy. I'm sorry I'm not knowledgeable enough about the plants to identify them all.

My first view of their sales tables. The flat-roof lath and shade cloth structure in back covers their shade display garden.

They have a huge selection of Crocosmias.

Pond and bog garden. On the left is their green-roofed gazebo. The blue strap-like shapes rising out of the pond are glass ornaments.

Sarracenia/Pitcher plant in the bog garden

I'm not a big fan of Tradescantia, but this one fascinated me.

Look at those fuzzy leaves!

Full sun bed

Mertensia maritima (simplicissima)

Some kind of thistle?

Part of the lath-house display garden. There are paths all throughout this sea of foliage. This is only about half the display, there is more behind me.

Don't know which Epimedium this is, but look at that wonderful red edge!

Love this planted log! See all the sori on the back of the fern?

Podophyllum with mottled foliage

Arum seedheads, bet they will look awesome when they turn red!

Persicaria 'Golden Arrow'

Don't have a clue what this is, but I love the big leaves and blue berries! Edit: Thanks to Scott Weber, I'm pretty sure this is Diphylleia cymosa, a wonderful PNW native!

Maidenhair fern

The flower here, probably a terrestrial orchid (Dactylhoriza ??), actually belongs with the straplike dotted foliage below. The big leaves are maybe a type of Chinese mayapple?

Hey, this is a combo I actually have in my own garden! Woo Hoo! Brunnera 'Jack Frost' and Begonia grandis

Primrose

I have no clue what this is, but isn't that peanut-like seed pod the coolest thing?

Something I can't identify with shiny black berries

I loved this combo of iris-like strappy foliage with a falling carpet of Epimedium below.

This looks like a hart's tongue fern, but the leaves/fronds were fuzzy and soft.

Hydrangea with a mottled leaf

Wonderful foliage combo -- long, thin and prickly with short, fat and prickly

Another amazing fern, I don't recall seeing it for sale

I realized once I got home that there were things I saw there that I thought I had taken pictures of --  an enormous Terapanax 'Steroidal Giant' for example -- but hadn't. And I completely neglected to get pictures of their long full sun border that runs along the driveway on the way into the nursery. And that cool gazebo with the green roof.

About five minutes after I arrived, a busload of gardeners on a tour showed up. Yet, I never felt I was annoying anyone with my questions or requests. A young man named Jason helped me out enormously, answering my questions ("What's that? Do you have it for sale?") and running all over finding wonderful, healthy specimens for me to take home.

So...what did I buy?

A large, beautiful Persicaria amplexicaulis 'Golden Arrow'

Sinopodophyllum hexandrum

Podophyllum delavayi

Epimedium 'Black Sea'

Impatiens omeiana

Harpochloa falx/caterpillar grass

Garrya elliptica 'Evie'

I also bought a Pacific Coast Hybrid Iris called 'Dorothea's Ruby', two pots of Asarum marmoratum (similar to Asarum caudatum, but with mottled leaves), Corydalis scouleri, and a pot of Mertensia maritima (simplicissima).

By the time we left, it was close to 4 p.m., and Dragonfly only stays open till 5, and all I had eaten since getting up that morning was a nasty cup of ferry coffee and a stale, mass-produced chocolate chip cookie. So we ventured into Port Townsend and explored there. What a sweet, charming town! We took a nice walk along the waterfront, checking out interesting shops and looking over several restaurant menus before settling on what turned out to be a satisfying meal at The Public House Grill. (I had a big plate of steamed clams and mussels in a tasty broth.)

We returned home after a long wait for the drawbridge across Hood Canal, not getting in until 10 p.m., 13 hours after leaving that morning. We only visited one nursery and had one meal.

But it was an excellent meal. And a phenomenally fabulous nursery!