Tuesday, 23 September 2008
The Eugene After Tours: Round Robin Tour
Marcella and Glenn Moore's Garden
Today's outing not only provided busloads of garden writers with a neighborhood walking tour of University Street gardens in Eugene, Oregon, it loaded us up for a round robin tour of three more gardens, before finishing up at Ernie and Marietta O'Byrne's Northwest Garden Nursery. Three buses, three gardens - nice synchronicity, don't you agree? Each bus starts at a different garden, then visits the other two before heading off for an Oregon wine and beer tasting at the O'Byrnes.
This, the garden of Marcella and Glenn Moore, was where the bus I was on started the loop. Short drive, unload in a gravelly parking lot, then hot foot it across a street and into an absolutely charming garden. Nothing was here because it was trendy, or new, or in the pages of some book. What ever was growing, what ever was decorative, was here because Marcella found it beautiful or amusing or fun.
A statue of Chanticleer has something to crow about.
He resides in a charming garden.
Water is featured in several fountains.
This boy is shedding some paint
but water runs limpid and clear from the panpipes.
Another fountain serves as a water bowl. Clever pooch
to have found a bench for his stance to a source of fresh water.
English ivy is a thug and a pain and the bane of many
Oregon gardens, and also the countryside. It swarms up trees
and strangles them, blotting away light from their crowns. People
go out on search and destroy missions, chopping and hacking away
at near wrist-thick stems. I just love the way Marcella has used
this corset of ivy that was peeled away from a tree trunk
as support for a rose bush.
A lantern illuminates, not with light, but with playfulness.
Support for another rose bush, and beacon of playfulness.
A most elegant little water feature in the garden -
a Moorish style rill in Marcella Moore's garden. A pun? Perhaps.
But peaceful nonetheless. This garden, you see, is on a street corner.
And one of the roads is heavily trafficked and noisy. High hedges and
bubbling fountains, marvellous roses and wonderful plants create
an oasis of serenity that is home gardening at its best.
