The Oregon Garden

We're in Silverton, Oregon.  We stopped for several days at the Paradise Thousand Trails Resort in Silver Creek, Washington planning to make visits to Mt. Ranier and Mt. St. Helen's.  Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate and it rained the entire time we were there.  It was not just light drizzle, it was pouring down, lightning rainstorms.

We could have stayed longer but we are kind of on a schedule since we have reservations for the Balloon Festival in Albuquerque in October.

So, we stopped in Silverton, Oregon on the advice of our friends Bob and Susan from Travel Bug.  Two places we planned to visit were The Oregon Garden and Silver Falls State Park.

Saturday, we went to The Oregon Garden.

There's an interesting story of how these gardens came to be.  As the area grew, the treated waste water from the Silverton water supply was impacting the environment with warmer water,  There was a need to cool the water.  An agreement was reached to partner with the Oregon Nursery Gardener's Foundation to develop the gardens and a wetland system to cool the city's treated waste water.

The Oregon Garden held its grand opening in 2001.

There was a 25 minute tram tour that gave us a great overview of the all of the specialty gardens.

The Conifer Garden has one of the largest collections of dwarf and miniature conifers in the county.

One of the goals of The Oregon Garden is to give homeowners an idea of using plants in their landscaping.

Inside the garden was this tree which had just been struck by lightning on Thursday, the same day we were sitting in all the rain in Washington.

The sign says they plan to keep the tree there to show people what lightning can do.

The Water Garden is complete with a plant covered sea serpent.

This was part of the Pet Friendly Garden which showcases which plants are friendly and which plants are toxic.

The Children's Garden had some of our favorite displays. There was a hobbit house, a miniature train garden, shaped topiaries, and my favorite was the Pots Family. :)

The Silverton Market Garden had many of Oregon's agricultural products growing here.  There were berries, chickens, grapes, and produce as well as ideas for growing gardens.

This was one of my favorites.  You just cut a bag of potting soil open and plant just about anything you want to grow.  I thought that was a pretty unique way of growing plants.

We enjoyed walking though taking pictures of the flowers and then had so many it was hard to pick between them.  Here are a few of our favorites.

 The last picture is a reminder Fall is right around the corner.