Oregon Gardens

While Gary was off traveling somewhere by himself (more to come on that in a future blog post), I used the opportunity to clean the inside of the motor home including a much needed carpet/rug cleaning. I took a break from cleaning and visited the Oregon Gardens located in Silverton. The Garden sits on the site of a former horse ranch and covers 80 acres. The site was selected to include the development of a wetland system to recycle the city’s treated wastewater. The water travels at up to 700 gallons per minute, through a series of ponds, creating a habitat for wildlife and plants.

They have over 20 different gardens some of which include the Wetlands, a Conifer Garden, a Children’s Garden, a Rose Garden, a tropical greenhouse, an Oak grove, and a medicinal garden. They have a large Christmas Tree garden – of which Oregon boasts they sell the most Christmas Trees in the U.S. Being from Michigan, I might argue that claim. They also have a Market garden that features 147 agricultural products grown in Oregon some of which include: berries, grapes, grass seed, hops, pumpkins, apples and quince. The produce from the Garden is used in their Café or is donated to area families.

They host many events throughout the year including weddings, car shows, and movies in the park. In 2007, they opened the Oregon Garden Resort which is a small “community” of 131 vacation cottages. Also located on the property is a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house, the only one in Oregon. Since reservations are required to tour the house, I only walked around to glimpse it.  Although it was a nice diversion from cleaning, it was perhaps not as impressive as some of the free gardens that we have visited including Niagara Gardens in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.