Garden Tour

Tour eight wonderful, private gardens in Tigard and Tualatin. Be dazzled by flowers, be tempted by edibles and delight in fragrance. Meander through a foliage-rich, yet pet-friendly garden. Marvel at a diminutive, plant-packed hillside garden. Replenish the spirit in a leafy retreat. Draw inspiration and knowledge from our garden hosts, tour volunteers, and Oregon State University Extension Master Gardener volunteers. Rain or shine. GARDEN TOUR TICKET REQUIRED

Enjoy information about the beautiful gardens in our 2009 Garden Tour below.  A sneak preview of the 2010 gardens will be coming soon.

Take a tour of two gardens featured on KPTV Good Day Oregon.

Purchase Garden Tour tickets for $20 each.

Gardens Wanted for 2011 Tour

If you know of a garden that is too lovely to keep secret, including your own, please tell us about it! Gardens should lie within or close to the 97223, 97224, or 97062 zip code areas. Chosen a year in advance, gardens are selected to ensure representation across the school district, showcase a variety of garden features, and represent gardeners of all ages and skill levels. For more information please contact Paul Taylor at 503-679-3086 or PaulTaylorOCNP@aol.com.

Southern Charmer

This garden’s sun-drenched, rolling hills planted with Southeastern U.S. natives, including tupelo, sassafras, crape myrtle and bald cypress, hark to the homeowners’ Louisiana roots. The generous wrap-around veranda and a cobblestone patio conjure up hazy, summer days sipping sweet tea. Roses, lavender, spirea, daylilies and ornamental grasses spill from nearby beds and planters. Boulders from the family’s Eastern Oregon ranch and a cattle skull share space with drought-tolerant plants in the gravel garden near the veranda. Open meadows and mowed paths provide habitat for the western bluebird and link the main gardens to the slightly wilder border beds, where colorful-foliaged ‘Diablo’ ninebark and smoke bush mix with Northwest natives such as western red cedar and nootka rose.

This garden was designed by Phil Thornburg and Miriam Bock of Winterbloom, Inc, in collaboration with Judith Hutchinson Design, and was featured in The Times June ’08.

A Prescott Bluebird Recovery Project representative and Miriam Bock will be on hand the day of the tour.

Special presentations of 10-Minute University™, an OSU Extension Service Master Gardener program that provides free classes on gardening.

Northwest Asian Fusion

The goal: To create peaceful and interesting garden vignettes rich with texture, color and movement throughout the seasons that can be enjoyed from the garden and the home. The result: Guided by garden designer Paul Taylor, the homeowners transformed their garden with an expanded plant palette and Asian structures. A Shoji-inspired screen graces the front courtyard. A bench beneath a magnificent gingko tree provides a place to meditate and contemplate the wonderfully textured plants, including Japanese fatsia, weeping Alaska cedar, heavenly bamboo, purple smoke bush, and evergreen huckleberry. A circular stone path weaves through garden beds, through two arbors and past a unique louvered fence. The private back garden, complete with a hot tub, gazebo and another Shoji-inspired screen, provides respite among roses, hostas, evergreen azaleas, rhododendrons, a weeping Japanese maple and ornamental grasses.

Paul Taylor, OCNP Garden Design & Consultation in Tigard will be on site during the tour.

Bella Madrona

A trip to Italy almost three decades ago sparked the homeowner’s creativity, beginning an incredible garden journey that continues even today. This five-acre, art-filled collector’s haven tantalizingly reveals its riches, layer by layer, from its entrance with its formal-with-a-twist terrace gardens to the natural meadow surrounding the pond at the bottom of the property. In between, paths wind through beds filled with an incredible array of plants too numerous to list here. Evergreen spires and wooden arches wrap their way down the hillside, smaller sentinels to the garden’s namesake madrona trees. Little wonder that Kym Pokorny of The Oregonian raves, “one of the most significant gardens in the Northwest, Bella Madrona ranks in my Top 3 favorites.”

Featured in homes + gardens northwest June/July 2008. Kym Pokorny will be on hand the day of the tour. Inspired Pink Martini’s song "The Gardens of Sampson and Beasley."

Shadow Play

Towering cedars, firs and shore pines preside over this garden, turning the sun’s rays into flickering light shows. Japanese and vine maples, azaleas, lily-of-the-valley shrub and ferns fill shady front-garden pockets. Sun-loving roses, ‘Diamond Heights’ California lilac and New Zealand flax add color and fragrance to the tiered rock-wall gardens, built in 2006 to tame the front slope. Clematis vines drape over an arbor, announcing the entrance to the back garden where hydrangeas, hostas, salvias, roses, fuchsias, bee balms and coral bells romp. A stream tumbles down the gentle slope, over a waterfall and into a small pond near the patio. Nestled among the 280+ varieties of plants are garden art, birdhouses and bird feeders. More than 35 species of birds call this garden home, adding another layer of delight to this garden.

Woodland Wonderland

Foliage textures and colors mingle with woodland flowers to light up this hillside garden beneath majestic Douglas firs. Native plants, including sword and deer ferns, inside-out flower, vine maple and umbrella plant, companionably share space with variegated Solomon’s seal, chartreuse-splashed hostas, fuchsias, Epimedium, Japanese forest grass, hydrangeas, ‘Rainbow’ drooping Leucothoe, Japanese maples and a Japanese stewartia. Birdhouses, garden art and a quaint woodshed complete the ensemble. Gravel paths crisscross the garden beds, leading to a wooden footbridge over the stream, which meanders through the garden before spilling into a pond. The crown jewel is the new, custom-designed greenhouse trimmed with cedar shingles, salvaged windows and a blue door, and built where their son used to play basketball. Two Adirondack chairs and a bench offer serene views into the back garden from the patio and deck.

Never-ending Story

If the secret to the art of garden design is never to reveal the whole garden in one glance, these homeowners have mastered the art and then some. From the curb to the back fence, one garden room after another reveals its distinctive style. But all share a common thread: form, color and texture are given free play. Round pebbles rub up against sharp-edged basalt. Softly needled and slender, a weeping Sequoia stands sentinel near a squat, stiffly branched Colorado blue spruce. Hebes’ silvery mounds surround the red spears of New Zealand flax. But it’s not all about visual pleasure. Flowing ornamental grasses tickle and caress passers-by. Star jasmine, rosemary and lavender perfume the air. Water ripples in ponds and down a waterfall. The newest garden room holds Italian grapevines whose fruit is destined for winemaking.