Rare Plant Research 2; The Place

From the Rare Plant Research "About Us" page come these words:

"Burl Mostul founded Rare Plant Research, a specialty nursery, in 1987.  In the early years the nursery focused on plant research, collector plants and varieties new to science.  About ten years ago the nursery shifted focus to garden plants and now Burl travels the world looking for new plants as well as developing new hybrids for Northwest gardeners."

The nursery where we saw all the cool plants in yesterday's post is behind us and the driveway, house, and vineyard are before us.

"Rare Plant Research is open to the public only one or two weekends a year and [this] thas become an event attracting 1,000 or more people.  In 2008 Burl and his wife built a stone chateau modeled after a 12th century Romanesque church, surrounded by ponds and gardens featuring many rare and unusual tropical and temperate plants.  The most recent addition is a bromeliad garden filled with boulders, olive trees and landscape bromeliads."

The vintage Jaguar is on loan for the nursery open but it looks great with the house!

I beg your forgiveness for including so many pictures of this place but there were visual treats at every turn.  It was difficult to narrow this down from the many images I took.  Isn't digital photography fun?

 So, we're in the soggy pacific northwest, right?

 This is a place made for entertaining!  The gardens are available for rent for special occasions.  

I'm thinking an early evening wedding here, reception happening as dusk descended, would be very special!

The steps are wide enough to accommodate chairs.  String quartet in the gazebo?

I'd love to come back and see this combination once the Tradescantia fills in.  Stunning!

A comfortable place to relax.  I could get used to sipping my morning coffee here.  How about you?

I understand that this interior solarium has just been added. 

Note the Musa 'Ai Ai' I'm picturing that door going to a bedroom.  How amazing would it be to awaken and see the Pacific Northwest out one window and the tropics out of another?

 A little wine makes any garden visit more interesting.  This space, a wine tasting room,  is perfect for lots of people but I'd be tempted to have more space for plants.  Who am I kidding?  There's no space for people in my garden.  It works well for a curmudgeon who likes plants more than people most of the time.

 Every 12th century church needs a moat, right? 

 Loree noticed the tree on the right.  It's an Aesculus hipposcastanum 'Laciniata'  which I just got at Hortlandia earlier this year.  You may recall it from this post.

 This specimen must be quite old as I've heard that they are extremely slow growers. 

More eye candy.

This moat doesn't look deep and wide enough to drown would-be intruders. I'm imagining that modern laws don't allow for the drainage of sewage into moats anymore.  Our noses are grateful.

The dense evergreen background makes one quite aware that we're in the PNW!

Another of the ponds. 

A garden shed. 

 Those silly Romans left debris everywhere.  I guess there weren't laws about littering a few centuries ago.

Hope you enjoyed our visit and plan to see it for yourself!  

Exciting news  from RPR's website - "We are having a special one day open garden and nursery plant sale, June 21st from 11am to 4pm.  Join us for lunch with caterer Dave Clark's tasty creations, wine tasting with Villa Catalana Cellars in the garden conservatory tasting room.  Tour the gardens and enjoy a glass of pinot noir.

Rare Plant Research Annual Open House

Rare Plant Research is a wholesale grower of unusual plants that opens it's doors to the public one weekend a year.  I'd purchased their plants from local nurseries for years before visiting myself and now try to make it to the open every spring.   To see many previous posts from RPR, look here.  You can also search my blog by typing Rare Plant Research (or any other term you might be interested in) in the white box with the magnifying glass in the upper left hand corner of the screen.   Once again this year, I met my pal Loree (yes, THE Loree Bohl of Sunset Magazine Fame.) in her equally famous garden from which we set out to Rare Plant Research together.   Loree warned me that the garden was a mess so I didn't ask about taking pictures but his lady doesn't know from mess - her garden looked fabulous as always.  Here's a bit of what we saw.

Lots of tiny agaves.

Some more stressed than others. 

Only in the Pacific Northwest...Our native sword fern finding its way into potted agaves. 

Trachycarpus wagnerianus for a ridiculously low price had me wondering where I could squeeze in another 

This NFS variegated pineapple made me glad that I purchased one here several years ago. 

Speaking of bromeliads...

The hot and bright conditions in these greenhouses really bring out the vibrant colors of these beauties. 

I would want more bromeliads if I didn't already have so many from a number of years of attending this sale.

Citrus trees are lots of fun to see but My garden is out of space. 

 Cussonia looking quite happy.  I wonder if they'll have these for sale in the future?

Fucrea gigantia is such a stunning thing.  Mine is struggling along in the greenhouse.  Wouldn't it be divine to live in a climate where these could happily grow in the ground?

Musa zebrina 

Look at the size of those velvety leaves .  That's the head of a shopper included for scale. 

Agave geminiflora.

Colorful succulents. 

Aloe dorotheae

Carnivorous and colorful Sarracenias aka  Pitcher Plants.

NoID NFS coolness. 

 Well, isn't that different?   

Now for some of what my pal, Alison, calls  fat bottomed girls (Caudiciform plants) 

Calabanus hookeri looked so fabulous  at RPR.  

It jumped into Loree's new plantmobile along with a few other things.  To be fair, some of these are Loree's.  (well, one box)  Someone has no control.

We opted not to visit the house, gardens, and vineyard this year.  It's beautiful but another nursery and lunch were calling.