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Sunday, I traveled with two friends and my sister to a Metro Gardens of Natural Delights tour in Tualatin and Lake Oswego. Several times we had to backtrack due to my crummy navigational skills in this unfamiliar area, but it was a fun and rewarding tour, with discoveries waiting at each of the four stops.
I liked the way the blue pots and bright greens of the foliage above contrasted with the purple color in this front entry grouping.
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This first garden was nicely annotated with little white tiles giving many of the plant names. Isn't this saxifraga great with its serated edges?
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I discovered brunnera, and was captivated. I'll have to wait to plant some though, until our clearcut develops some more shade.
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A lovely zen-looking fountain. Even choked with some little water plant it was so appealing on this hot afternoon.
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The lazy woman does plant notes: how thoughtful of the host gardener to leave the tags for us.
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This is Oregon Tilth's Organic Education Center at the historic Luscher Farm. An interesting way to ripen tomatoes: they had pruned off every lateral branch, leaving just a center stalk with its tomatoes, held up by these cool spiral wire supports. Standard cage supports were being used on other tomatoes, too.
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They had lots of fun scarecrows, and lots of chickens too! The farm is open from dawn to dusk so I'll definitely visit again.
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A cooling, dripping waterfall with some nice floating plants that looked like salad mache, but must be some other thing entirely. This was at the third garden along with....
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...gnomes!
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A big, old fatsia japonica to give the two in my garden something to aspire to.
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Bee balm: now I see what all the fuss is about!
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Last stop on the Metro tour: a lovely shaded garden overlooking Oswego Lake. This one had very formal plantings, including a parterre and sizeable shrubs as well as large trees, but not the sort of thing that photographed very well.
The Gang of Four was pretty played out by this time: I thought Sally and I would have to pry Laura and Karin out of the comfy swing when the witching hour of 4 p.m. came!