Seattle’s Miller Garden: a photo gallery

June 28th, 2009

Here's the view from Betty Miller's house on a picture-perfect Saturday in June

Looking out the windows of the house that Betty Miller lived in until her death, I admired a perfectly-framed view of The Elisabeth C. Miller Botanic Garden, located in Seattle’s elite gated community, The Highlands.

Her garden, now a private, nonprofit botanical garden, is a sparkling palette of green-gold, lime, dark green and silvery-blue. Impressions: Touches of burgundy Japanese Maples appear, peeking through the multilayered branches of a mostly green woodland understory. Lichens and moss create irregular patterns on grey bark. Gentle mounds. Draping foliage. A shadowplay of bright and dark. Alluring. Inviting.

I spent all day indoors, at a Pacific Horticultural Foundation board meeting (thank goodness for “lunch break”) and I will be back tomorrow morning for yet another half-day of meetings. It’s a good group and we are excited about some of our new projects and plans for the essential publication for gardeners in the West.

If you want to take advantage of a special Pacific Horticulture magazine 5-for-the-price-of-4 issues subscription rate, let me know and I’ll send you a coupon ($28/year).

Work. It's "work," people. My fellow board members gathered outdoors before being dragged to the conference table

If you like the photos you see here, you can actually see this garden for yourself. There are two ways to tour the Miller Garden. First of all, call for a tour appointment. Tours are limited, due to the fact that the property is in a residential community. They also fill up fast (check the web site for details about early-in-the-year-registrations).

You also have the opportunity to take a class at the Miller Garden, offered through the Northwest Horticultural Society, ongoing education series. Check out their web site for details.

In preparation, enjoy this visual tour of Seattle in June. I’ll be posting photos of my travels here in the PNW (at the Miller Garden and in other awesome gardens) all week.

The Miller Garden is the quintessential Seattle garden. It is cared for by some very talented horticulturists, including my friends Greg Graves and Richie Steffen, along with many regular volunteers. I have wonderful memories of coming here to work on Northwest Horticultural Society projects with former director Richard Hartlage (who was president of NHS when I was editor of Garden Notes) and with his successor Carolyn Jones, who is a good friend and garden gal-pal. The Miller Garden is at the heart of the plant-obsessed Seattle gardening community. You’ll see why below.

Enjoy these awesome photos from today’s tour:

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 28th, 2009 at 12:10 am and is filed under Creativity, Gardening, Landscape Design, Plants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.