For the past three days I’ve been travelling around the Minneapolis-St. Paul area with 60 other garden bloggers including my sister Massachusetts bloggers Amy Murphy (OF GARDENS) and Rebecca (THE SUSTAINABLE-ENOUGH GARDEN). We’ve seen beautiful plants, stunning design, and some real surprises.
The enormous Prairie Dock leaves we saw in a field at the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden were among the many amazing plants we saw on our tour.
We found red baneberry in the wetland area of the the Wildflower garden, but we saw it in other gardens, as well. It is very poisonous!
Vera’s Garden on a steep, erosion prone back was turned into pollinator’s heaven by volunteers who worked at Vera’s Cafe. The cafe is gone, but the garden remains which keeps the bees, butterflies and other pollinators very happy.
Some times wild looking and sometimes elegant, Vera’s Garden is right in the center of Minneapolis.
Lee and Jerry Shannon have many garden beds in their 2/3 acre including this unusual scree bed. Scree is a term for gravel, so this is not quite a rock garden, but it is not planted in a deep soil bed either.
The Shannon garden includes many pollinator plants like this dill. Buzzing away.
Too little time was available for the Ordway Japanese Garden. We were having fun but we were on a tight schedule. Even the koi seemed to feel the rush. They were leaping about.
I have never seen such a formal and productive vegetable garden as Martin Stern’s Squire House Garden. But still more delight is found along the curving paths.
Looks like asparagus, but how could this climbing, weeping thing be aparagus? I don’t know, but it is! Weeping asparagus at the Squire House Gardens.
This mosaic sculpture of a blackbird was only one of the many mosaic sculptures created by Woutrina DeRaad and arranged throughout her amazing gardens. This garden was the last of the 22 gardens/nurseries we visited during our three day tour and you will be hearing more about them over the next few months.
Garden tours, whether local or in more distant locales always provide food for thought, and new ways to handle old problems. I know that I was particularly inspired by two of the gardens and I’ll fill you in soon.
A wonderful appetizer of photos regarding your trip. I can’t wait to see and hear more about it. You look so happy in this photo. I am glad it all went good.
Lisa – It was an amazing three days. We were so fortunate to see so many different kinds of gardens with good friends.
What good coverage of an amazing three days. Thanks for sharing the photo of us fellow Massachusetts bloggers and for the shout out for http://www.ofgardens.com
Amy – I loved filling those three days with conversations, as well as plants, and the chance to meet you. I will be an avid reader of Of Gardens from now on.
Thanks for sharing these, Pat; looks like you saw some amazing gardens! I had fully intended to go to Minneapolis, one of my favorite Midwest cities, but I had the opportunity to go to D.C. with my daughter last week and just couldn’t pass that up. I missed re-connecting with some old friends and would have loved to meet you in person!
So glad! Look forward to hearing from you.