On Friday, Saturday and Sunday June 19th and 20th and 21st (longest days of the year!) you are welcome visit my garden in Seattle's Montlake neighborhood. Over the years on various occasions I open my garden for touring. (This June it is also part of Montlake's free garden tour.)
Visitors can touch and sniff my many aromatic plants, view my
books, and buy copies if desired. I am present to chat, sign books, and act the gracious host. The hours this time are noon until 6:00 p.m. It is in the afternoon only because certain fragrant flowers only release their scents then.
The garden is of southwest exposure on a steep hillside. It is decidedly not wheelchair accesible; it has 52 steps.
Trees abound,
native and otherwise. You can see how challenging it is to grow sun-loving plants in much shade. Recycled materials are used often. For example, from the house I've re-used lath to make
compost bins, structural lumber for borders and supports, and
concrete foundation chunks to make steps. There is a Trex wood-polymer lumber deck. Bamboo canes are used for vine growth and staking, or are cut short and sharp to dissuade cats from using beds as places to defecate. Recycled bicycle inner tubes are used as plant ties. A chimney I knocked down has become brick plant bed bordering, along with "native" stones sifted from the soil.
Some native trees and shrubs include a dominating white pine (under which socializing occurs), red cedar, Douglas fir, dogwood, hazel, tall and low Oregon grape, mock orange, and salal. Other than trees and shrubs that were there to begin with, I have acquired and planted mostly
fragrant and
edible plants, in an ecclectic fashion. It is informal, organic, and charming. There is no
lawn. If you love formality and straight lines you may hate this garden. It will also look strange and unnatural because numerous plants will be
labeled --there are so many unfamiliar and rare kinds that labels are needed for visitors.
There are more than 500 annuals, perennials, vegetables, herbs, vines, flowers, trees, shrubs, and intentional cultivated weeds -- all together. I do not segregate by category. If you come, please do NOT pull weeds. What you may be sure is a weed may be a plant that I am growing for a specific reason. Some of you know that for 23 years I maintained the Weed Garden at Seattle Tilth's urban Agriculture center. For the Tilth newsletter I wrote 100 Weed-of-the-Month articles.
For more information, including directions, please see my website's June Calendar link:
http://www.arthurleej.com/opengarden7.html Arthur Lee Jacobson
