The Garden of Karen and Larry Decker

 

 

In July, right after visiting the Northwest Perennial Alliance open gardens of Tia Scarce, Trang Tu,  and Sondra Shira, Alison and I had the pleasure of visiting the garden of Karen and Larry Decker.  The description in the tour book says that it's a half acre property but perhaps because of the clever planting schemes and division of the garden, it seemed much larger to me.

 Getting out of the car on the side of the road and seeing this burst of color, we knew we were in for a treat.

 

The front garden, full of gorgeous perennial blooms, screams welcome!

The garden is full of great looking seating areas like this one but looking at how well kept the garden is, I wonder if the Deckers actually get to do much sitting and enjoying.   (Little side note here.  It was at this point in my posting process that google plus, formerly picasa removed the edit feature from their site.  No cropping, no fixing the glare, no doing fun processing on some pictures.  I spent way too long trying to figure out how to reconfigure the tool bar and thinking that I'd done something to mess things up before I noticed that others were making comments about this change on a google plus user group site.  If you're a google plus/ picasa user, have you noticed this?)

More in the front garden.  The  hydrangeas on the right are truly an amazing electric blue color.  Sorry that the son got them.  Alison seems to be enjoying the garden.

The urn stand looks like an upside down bird bath base.  I think it's a perfect pairing and shows that you shouldn't be too hasty to throw things away!

Clever incorporation of maple foliage with some shady characters. 

We've come around the side of the house and are walking toward the back of the property and now looking at the back of the house through great beds full of  happy blooms and interesting textures.

The paths lead visitors through a floral wonderland. 

 

 Sorry that this isn't cropped but Google plus isn't allowing that sort of thing right now. But I'm not bitter...  The china plates in inserted in the chair backs are gorgeous!

I'll be quiet and let you enjoy the garden.

Sweet.

 So many restful destinations and lovely views to contemplate.  I could live in this garden!

Hooray!  A greenhouse. 

 Double hooray - a greenhouse that's being used!

Is it strange that this was one of my favorite things (there were many) in the garden? Can we all relate?

We had a delightful time sitting on this beautiful deck chatting with the gardeners.  Mr. Decker built all of the outbuildings, decks, trellises, bridges, etc. himself.  Meeting other passionate gardeners is  a wonderful part of these tours and I always enjoy getting to know the people whose versions of Eden we've just toured.

There's nothing like having big beautiful trees as a backdrop!

 We both really enjoyed this garden.  Because the winter was so mild this year, the fuchsias in hanging baskets were just left hanging in place and they've come back beautifully.  In colder winters, they would be taken into the unheated garage. There were a LOT of fuchsia baskets hanging around the back deck.  I love them all from the tiniest-flowered species fuchsia to the huge double gaudy varieties.    Maybe I was a humming bird in a former life.  Say, did you know that the berries that fuchsias produce are edible?

 

 

 Having to leave such a beautiful place and nice people made us feel a little blue but we had one more garden to visit that day and there was quite a special surprise waiting for us there. 

 

Happy labor day to those of you in the U.S.