Olympic Coast Garden, a photoblog
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www.SequimRarePlants.com/blog/

   We live in a small house in the older part of downtown Sequim (pronounced "skwim") in Washington State. Susan and I have lived here for thirty years. What a wonderful place this northwestern corner of our state truly is. All of it is not nearly as wet and rainy as most people have been led to believe. Although part of it is quite wet, our town actually receives less rainfall of almost any place on the West Coast north of San Diego - but don't tell anyone!

    Anyhow, we have three places where we garden in and around our town. The largest of these, and the one we have owned the longest is on acreage about five miles outside of our town. The photo on the right shows part of it. Some of the plants that are grown for our mail-order nursery are grown there in the ground, lined out in variously sized beds. We also have a large vegetable garden and keep hens, both for fun and for the eggs they provide. I don't think you can name any animal for your garden that is more satisfying than a hen, unless it is a hen with chicks.

   The second place where we garden is a vacant, fenced lot in the center of town where we have a small display garden along a sidewalk for the enjoyment of pedestrians. Its design changes every few years to both give us a chance to replenish the soil and to also try new plants, so today it doesn't look anything like this photo taken in 2005. But however it looks, it is attractive and interesting to any gardener. And within the fenced area we grow a few of the plants for the mail-order nursery in pots on benches. In summer the six-foot tall fence is covered in an assortment of vines to give the enclosed area some privacy. So we think of it as our secret garden.

   The third of our gardens is also in town, where we grow most of our mail-order plants. With a couple of good sized greenhouses, it is across from the old high school. A small part of it is shown in the third picture here. There is less space to grow plants in the ground than in the other two locations. The majority of plants are grown in containers, both small pots for the mail-order plants and much larger, ceramic pots of container gardens. Because there are so many fun plants from which to choose, these container gardens are replanted yearly to try different combinations.