Seven Gardens and Two Nurseries in Six Hours; A Lassie and Outlaw Adventure in Seattle

What a whirlwind of garden fun Saturday was!  Alison, the Bonney Lassie, and I headed up to Seattle for the Northwest Perennial Alliance's first open garden Saturday.  We toured seven gardens and two nurseries in six hours but this post isn't about any of those.  Instead, here are some random shots of gardens  that we saw between the tour gardens.

Ah, rhododendron season is so colorful!

Did some mischievous neighborhood children switch the perimeter trees and foundation shrubs when someone wasn't looking?  

What would you plant here?  I'm thinking that big structural desert plants or maybe some dark purple phormiums  in big industrial pots would be cool.

Nice lawn free garden! Notice that  loquat in the background. 

The  columnar shape of the conifers punctuates this garden nicely!  

The color orange is growing on me. 

You can't see it in this picture but the fig is covered with little fruit!

Lavender can get woody if not pruned annually but  this one was left to become scraggly and  it works well in this setting.

Did someone play with the ejector seat button again?  This outdoor furniture doesn't work well.

 It's all about context I guess because this outdoor furniture works delightfully well!  Maybe the materials have something to do with it too.  These are concrete. (The furniture, not the children.)  I could happily find a place in my garden for them!

Another  lawn free front garden. 

After our final garden tour, I asked if we could stroll up the street to take pictures of this Iris.  This has long been my favorite bearded iris color combination - pure white with purple edges.  Yum!

It was lucky that we took the little side trip as it afforded us this view.  Could that be?  Yes, it's an embothrium coccineum in bloom!

Actually, there were two of them but without going into a stranger's garden, we couldn't get any closer than this.

Other plants here included this old callistemon

and these delicious manzanitas

Walking back to the car, we noticed this bed of iris.  Someone had begun to weed out the grass but both Alison and I thought that it would look really lovely with the iris blooms.

Further down the street was this.  Could someone not understand the Ikea assembly instructions?  Did lightening strike their T.V. antenna?  Part of a satellite fallen from space?  Did an insensitive husband say to his wife one day, "Haven't you hung the laundry out to dry yet?  You've had all day with nothing to do for heaven's sake!"

 Stay tuned for later posts containing the content that the title of this one promised.