It’s always worth a visit to SE Portland’s Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden; this is especially true if you like rhododendrons, as they are omnipresent there.
16+ acres of lush forest and flowering plants from around the Northwest, and you will get a very different experience depending on what time of year you visit.
Even though it was in the heat of summertime, we still saw many animals in this botanical garden, including a few very happy and loud frogs.
Taken with my Canon AE-1, still hanging on from the late 1970s. A great little camera and a ton of fun to shoot with, even on a dark and rainy Portland day.
On a cool drizzly early spring morning, there were plenty of beautiful sights in the garden, from honking geese to blooming flowers of various varieties (including, yes, rhododendrons). Oh, and one huge nutria.
Always a fun Portland destination, especially this time of year when many of the plants are in bloom.
My favorite season at the Leach is springtime, when the first flowers appear and everything is deep, bright green…
Not the kind of overly manicured botanical garden that takes itself too seriously…
One of East Portland’s best spots without a doubt is Leach Botanical Garden. Full of ever-changing greenery, particularly from across the Pacific Northwest, you can find it on SE Claybourne Street, just a little off SE Foster Road and north of Mount Scott.
Smack in the middle of the delightful town of Silverton sits the Oregon Garden. It’s about 80 acres of beautiful trees and flowers of more varieties than I can count…
Not only was it pouring rain in the dead of winter, but more importantly about two thirds of the place were closed for a massive renovation project…
A funky little mining town along state highway 60, easy to ignore as you drive into the beautiful Superstition Mountains and Tonto National Forest. But it’s worth a stop, particularly for the Boyce Thompson Arboretum…
A hidden oasis of more than 15 acres in the rows of residential grid deep in east Portland…
Exciting blooms and berries from a seemingly endless array of plants...
There are so many interesting plants there, and the whole estate (of about 17 acres) is serene and gorgeous...
In November 2015, I worked with Travel Tacoma to promote tourism to the area, and this is my first blog post about that trip. Where to start? Well, as no visit to that area of Washington is complete without a quick stop at least at the W. W. Seymour Botanical Conservatory in Wright Park, let's start there.
