Each year The Garden Conservancy sponsors public and private gardens that open their gates to the public throughout the gardening season around the U.S. I started this blog to chronicle the countdown to my garden’s Open Day, on Saturday, July 7. Here’s how it happened.
At the January Avid Gardener’s Board Meeting in Eugene, Oregon I said yes. I said yes, I will show my garden on July 7. ARGHHH.
This is not my garden. This is Northwest Garden Nursery.
Fellow board members, Marietta and Ernie O’Byrne, owners of Northwest Garden Nursery and breeders of Winter Jewels Hellebores™ had already offered their nursery display garden—one of the finest I have ever seen.
Mark Bloom, the Avid Gardeners’ president, will open his garden at Bloom River Nursery as well. I’ve written about both of these gardens for Horticulture and Sunset.
This was my garden when we bought the house in 1992.
This was my garden a few years later.
So why did I say yes? It was a certain now-or-never feeling. My one-acre country garden has come a long way. Now in its 21st year, the grounds have reached their majority. Perhaps I am seeking legacy in that most ephemeral of arts. Like other life milestones—weddings, births, graduations—for one day, and one day only, our garden will have arrived.
Lawn parties are the best.
Perhaps I want to celebrate the lives lived in this garden—my children growing up here; my friends and other families who have sat at our outdoor tables over the years, the summer Solstice bonfires, the Christmas candle lit-walks.
And I do have an out. At the board meeting I mentioned a fabulous garden my neighbor Barbara has. It’s a mile down the road from our place. “I’ll see if she wants to open hers,” I told the board. “If she does, then I will.”
Barbara is busy going back to school, working on probably her third career—she’ll never say yes, right?# # # #
