Friday, July 25, 2014

Oregon Gardens

DSCN0664While 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.

DSCN0671They 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 CafĂ© or is donated to area families.

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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.

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