More raves for the gardens of Puget Sound

What else did I like in the Pacific Northwest other than hydrangeas? Not sure anyone here has been holding their breath about it. Let’s be honest: Nobody wants to hear other people’s travel stories. Next thing you know, I might be inviting you to my slide presentation.

And really great trips are the ones people really don’t want to hear about. It just sounds like bragging. The more you rave, the more your audience’s eyes glaze over.

Nonetheless. This Garden Fling, which happened July 18-21, was a raver. It’s one of a series of garden-related trips I have taken since 2008, when the garden bloggers’ get-togethers were born.

The idea was simple: garden bloggers who – back then, anyway – had been reading each other for a few years would physically meet each other, many for the first time. 

And it is that part of it, the interaction with people who care about the same things you do, is the most important. I won’t say more important than the gardens, but definitely equally important.

Unlike garden-related conferences, which I used to attend once in a while, but don’t anymore, the Flings do not have speakers, workshops or panel discussions. We just get on buses, visit gardens, eat and talk. Sometimes the rides between locations can be lengthy; it’s a good chance to exchange news and views with seatmates.

I learned about army wife training, the value of portrait mode, the industrial history of Puget Sound and the other trips people had planned for the year. Interestingly, we didn’t talk about our own gardens that much..

I noticed that increasingly, many were leaving their fancy SLR cameras at home, simply relying on whatever their phones could capture. 

And there was a lot to capture. As we wandered around the gardens – there usually aren’t any formal tours – people were more in a daze than usual. Either the spaces were superbly well-chosen by organizers with high-level connections or they demonstrated that it’s just easier to create a stupendous garden in the Pacific Northwest. It was probably a combo. We were in awe. 

The weekend did have one big interruption. On Sunday, the word came that President Biden had ended his run for reelection. I had to break away from our tour of Heronswood (above), the botanical garden that was once a mail-order plant nursery famously cofounded by Daniel Hinkley, whose garden, Windcliff, we were to see later that day.

I sat down on a rock and wrote part of an editorial that the newspaper I work for would need to run within a few hours.

After that, we proceeded to Windcliff (above) and a neighboring home, both located on Puget Sound with classic views toward downtown Seattle, Bainbridge Island and Mount Rainier. Those views and maybe a few planters would have been enough for either of these properties, but at Windcliff, we’re talking about Dan Hinkley. The neighboring house is owned by Sam and Karen Brindley (their view at top), who garden was designed by architect Robert Jones and designer Shayne Chandler, who was there to answer our questions. As was Hinkley (below), at his garden.

But I can fairly say that there were a few other gardens over the weekend that could easily compete with these.

And that was that for the trip. Sadly, my memories were completely overshadowed by my struggle to get home, having been caught up in the global tech outage and having flown Delta. As Marianne was so right to point out, the horrors of airline travel have made flying to see beautiful gardens – or do anything else – a much-dreaded ordeal. Cascading delays and cancellations kept me in various airports and waiting areas a full 30 hours past my expected arrival in Buffalo. 

At least I have the pictures.