Japanese gardens in Seattle

My partner, Brian, and I recently visited Seattle and were quite charmed by the Japanese gardens. Brian took the pictures.

The Seattle Japanese Garden is amazing, though very prim, in my view. A small fee helps cover the costs of the attention to fine detail.

The Yao Garden at the Bellevue Botanical Garden was more restful to me. It is sublime. Admission to Bellevue is free.

The Kubota family has been very generous is their original contribution and subsequent contributions to the Seattle-area garden with the family name. What a wonderful collection of conifers. Admission is free.

 

Wonderful pictures -- something to see in Seattle when we take the ferry over there from Victoria someday soon!

Do you have a closeup or near picture of pruned Japanese maples? Curious to see what the end-result is... Butchart Gardens in Saanich has several, as well, in their Japanese garden, and I will look at them in more detail.

 

Thanks for asking. Here is a closer picture of one of the JMs in the Seattle garden. Note the guy wires holding down the lower limb.

The other picture is from the Kubota garden.

I will look for others, but there are thousands of pictures to scan through.

Is the ferry expensive? We plan on returning next summer and have our fingers crossed that we can get to the UBC garden in Vancouver and to Victoria, too. Of course, we will be limited by time, money and sanity -- none of which I have in ample supply.

 

That's an excellent photo of the maple... very useful! It is such a longterm project, obviously. Fastening down a branch or two with guy-wires is truly a neat idea... I've trained other shrubs that way without thinking, staking them sort of in a particular shape... It appears to me that one must take a branch with a nice spray of leaves at the end and cultivate it, shaping it a bit to be separate from its neighbours... and exposing the branches underneath, to some degree.

I am not sure how costly the ferry is to Seattle from Victoria, I will check as I am interested in it myself. One can go as a foot passenger only, too. There is also a ferry, a smaller one, from the Sidney area [a lovely small town without the urban bustle and impatient drivers] just a bit north of Victoria] to one of the American ports on the islands and maybe mainland too... that should be a nice trip. The gardens in this whole area are truly amazing, what a wonderful place to garden! We are learning about shrubbery and trees we had never even heard of before. We are from Nova Scotia, which has a nice 2-month summer, enjoyable 2-month autumn [Sept.-Oct.] but the rest of the year is so cold-wet-freezing, and unpredictable. I have seen many Americans establishing homes here on the southern Vancouver Island area for one reason or another, either full or part-time, and the two countries seem very close here in the BC-Washington area; we get all the Washington NPR radio stations and they are always mentioning Victoria as among their supporters and listening public...

A few more Japanese Maple pruning-oriented photos would be welcome, you may also send them to me if you prefer by clicking on my name on one of the posts, I have enabled emailing via this UBC gardening forum...

 

Thanks for sharing us those pictures. For bonsai enthusiasts, this could serve as inspiration in shaping their bonsai plants. Thanks!

 

"Seattle Japanese Garden" here would be the one in the Washington Park Arboretum.

 

Yes. Info: http://www.seattle.gov/parks/parkspaces/japanesegarden.htm#directions

The Kubota garden is in South Seattle at Renton Avenue S. and 55th Avenue South.
http://www.kubota.org/directions.htm

For Bellevue info -- http://bellevuebotanical.org/gallery/yao/fmyao.htm

 

Thank you for sharing those photos!

 

Here are some more pix of the Seattle garden, taken in October.

 

Lovely, we appreciated them... am trying to plan for some colour in autumn and various effects of green... the central photo shows that, and they all do...

 

WOW! TRULY AWESOME! Thank you so much for showing all of these. I guess Washington isn't doing too well right now...so I hope everyone's garden is okay as well as their physical beings and spirits. While WA is having their rain problems, we are getting great weather here in Boise. In the 60'sF Monday.

Well, I've got to take some more trips to the northwest, clematis gardens to visit and all the Japanese Gardens you have shown us. I only have visited Portland's.

 

Regarding the request for photos of pruned Japanese maples, here are a couple from some public gardens. The first one is from Butchart (a little dark, sorry), the second from UBC (I can't remember if it was in the Nitobe Garden or around the East Asian Studies building).

-Jim

 

Jim, very beautiful pictures, I wish I were there right now enjoying the shade and sunshine.

Our high today will be 31*F. But the sun is shining!

 

nice photos -- I see we have the canopy effect correct on ours.

 

Butchart doesn't get much respect on this forum, but that maple looks very nice and the setting cool and restful. The UBC maple is awesome.

 

I'm not sure that your statement about Butchart Gardens is correct. For many decades in the NW, Butchart Gardens was THE garden to visit here, & I've not seen any dis-respect here on this forum. I made my first visit there in the mid 60's. Even as a kid, I was most impressed - incredible place.

 

The one part of Butchart Gardens I thought digestible as a kid was the Japanese garden. Was particularly interested in seeing Japanese iris growing in water. The rest of the park looked mostly cartoonish. Later they had someone on staff who spiced up the assortment, I saw some of the results of this on TV a few years ago when a few interesting specimens, some years on in development were shown or could be seen near the featured plantings. Haven't been there in person for a long time, have been there at least once since I was a kid because I remember going and looking at the rose garden - and seeing that pretty much all the ramblers were strongly colored cultivars.

 

I haven't been back there in years either (1979, I think) - perhaps time for a re-visit. Years ago, it seemed you could find billboards, large & small advertising BG along every highway & byway throughout the Northwest.
One thing worth mentioning, if things have not changed dramatically over the years, is that this facility seemed to be part garden / part amusement park, with fireworks & the whole bit.
Here's a link to the image gallery, with a few fine pics of the Japanese Garden:
http://tinyurl.com/2te7eb

 

I found out later that there were fireworks! So we missed them and I think lights on the fountains.

I'm glad you wrote this as I loved the Butchart Gardens. I think I saw them for the first and only time in 1995. I thought is was super! And I had been to Hawaii, Northeastern, USA and Canada as a teenager and young adult, and grew up in the bay area. And I thought the BGardens were beautiful and fun. I plan on going back again as there is so much to see. Victoria was beautiful as well.

And Washington and Oregon is gorgeous too! I love to travel! And now when I live in Boise, ID where if there weren't any civilization, it would be desert! Except for the mountain area and our rivers.

Now the desert is very pretty in spring I must say.

My parents were very good at taking us to many places. They seemed to have forgotten Oregon and Washington though, but now that my brothers live in those states I have finally seen them. The only thing about Washington would be the gray skies. Otherwise I love to visit!

 

Hi Karalyn,
No doubt, we here in the Northwest are lucky with respect to the number of different kinds of plants we can grow, but also the number of outstanding public and private gardens that are available to visit.
Alas, gray skies are indeed the norm, so it sometimes requires an intrepid spirit to fully appreciate all that is here throughout the seasons.

 

WESTERN Washington (and Oregon and BC) are cloudy, the interior portions are semiarid or arid.

 

Yes, I been through the Tri Cities and saw my first water park a long time ago and thought how fun that would be when traveling and perfect for how hot it was.
That would be like our summers here.

My one brother lives in Ashland, OR and it is hot in the summer and he has several acres of white oak and rattlesnakes show up as well. A lot of baby snakes too.
Also, there is a snake that eats the rattlers and doesn't harm humans.

This brother lived in Brookings on a cliff right next to the ocean. It was pretty, but he got tired of the rain and cold in the winter.

Now where he lives he is close to a lot recreation areas and close to Interstate 5 where he has to travel to Silicon Valley for his job. He can do most of his work on the computer.

 

That would be the king snake, I guess.

Brookings is actually mild in the winter as far as it goes, local commercial interests have played this up (The Land of Winter Flowers) and there is a history of it being a retirement mecca. One November I came out of snow in the nearby mountains to be greeted by temperatures in the 50s (F) at Brookings. My overnight site at a trailer park there had an avocado tree planted next to it. If you look at climate zone maps produced by Sunset Publications you will see the same Sunset zone used for San Francisco etc. extended up through Brookings to Gold Beach.

 

Yes, I agree, since I grew up in San Jose, I felt as others that live in SJ that San Francisco is very cold in the winter, usually ten degrees cooler with more rain and wind. My home was close to Los Gatos boundary line and the foothills. Very close to Highway 17 that takes you to Santa Cruz.

I haven't been to Brookings as far I can remember during winter. So I can only take my brother's word for it and also the experience of rain in the summer. I too have gone through snow near Clear Lake and then to find mild temps to Ashland, also snow along the highway going toward Klamath Falls as well, very scenic.

Hey, we camped at a trailer/campground right next to the ocean. I forgot the name but is was a main campsite, might have even said Brookings on it. At that reunion my brother took us to the Indian Trails ? along the cliffs next to the ocean. It was so fun!

Maybe they called it Indian Dunes, not sure, but it was a sunny day and the ocean and skies were blue.

 

Do you mean "prim" as in deviating from a natural look?

Because I've considered Japanese gardens in general to be one of the more "man-made" looking styles of gardening.

I still enjoy visiting though. They are nice looking, and good for ideas. I like that those use a lot of evergreen.