Seattle - Retail Fun

A lot of the fun of going to Seattle was seeing great gardens and talking to all those wonderful fellow bloggers, but I also wanted to SHOP! Here are a few of my favorite places I was introduced to while visiting Seattle.

I got there early on the first day and met up with Andrea Fox, who suggested we go check out Theo Chocolate. We didn't get a tour of the factory but we got to taste LOTS of chocolate. They are very generous with their samples. My fav was the curry-coconut chocolate bar. It's got so much curry, the inside of the wrapper turns yellow.

Down the street, we got a delicious lunch at Homegrown and did some shopping at bitters co, where I got an amazingly-scented container made out of cinnamon bark that I keep the sugar for my coffee in. They had some really cool cork products too.

Later that night we enjoyed a meal at Oddfellows with Katie Elzer-Peters. It was yummy. Afterwards, I managed to settle on a couple of books from Elliot Bay Books. I could've spent a small fortune in this excellently stocked bookstore. The art section was amazing. And then we topped it all off with some to-die-for ice cream at Molly Moon's. Evenings don't get much better than that.

The night of our first tour day we were wined and dined at Ravenna Gardens, a beautifully done nursery and gift shop. They've got an awesome merchandiser, everything looked wonderful.

I believe they also design the plantings at the mall where the store is located. People, you don't see mall plantings like this everyday. I was blown away. Kudos to the mall management for stepping out of the box and going beyond horrible old mall plantings.

Andrea and I were taken with this gigantic Heuchera. One leaf was larger than both of Andrea's hands!

Next up is Dragonfly Farms Nursery on Bainbridge Island, who hosted our last-evening party. I hate to put them at the end of the post. I feel like they deserve a post of their own. The nursery is certainly worth the trip alone out to the island. They have great plants. I found one plant that I had been looking for for years. And the demonstration gardens! Oh my goodness! Well, have a look for yourself:

Somebody please tell me what this plant is!

I unfortunately had to leave early to catch a plane. It was torture having to run through this nursery quickly and not get to investigate every little detail! I'm so glad I got to visit though and I can't wait to get back!

Seattle - Back at it

Oh, hello. Remember me? Life just got a little crazy there for a bit and I couldn't seem to get a post up for awhile. I feel bad not finishing off my series of posts on the Garden Blogger's Fling in Seattle this summer. So I will continue with those and see if I can get back up to speed. So now I'm going to show you the gardens of Lorene Edwards Forkner, Kate Farley and the Seattle Chinese Gardens.

First stop of the day: Lorene Edwards Forkner's garden, author of Handmade Garden Projects so of course her garden was packed with cleverly reused items along with beautiful plantings.

Also included was a very cute airstream trailer garden retreat.

Next we were on to Kate Farley's garden. The beyond saturated corner of the garden got the most attention.

I kind of preferred the quieter corners where one could discover little hidden details.

I love that stumps and snags were left for birds to enjoy.

The garden shed/greenhouse was the coolest. Perfectly aged and rustic.

The collections of stones and construction remnants were beautifully put together.

By the time we got to the last garden, I don't know if I was feeling sick from the heat or just wasn't inspired by the garden. I've always had a hard time enjoying the sanitary whiteness of chinese gardens. Here are the best vignettes I could come up with for the Seattle Chinese Gardens. The architecture has beautiful details but it was just too hot to enjoy all that reflective white hardscape.

I love how they cleverly screened the water catchment with bamboo.

There were a few nice scenes outside of the Chinese Garden too.