,A trip to Heronswood Nursery

Carl_Bergstrom

Heronswood Nursery (www.heronswood.com) is a spectacular wholesale nursery located on the Olympic peninsula in Washington state. Among other things, Heronswood specializes in rare plants collected on various worldwide expeditions by owner Daniel Hinkley. Once a season they invite the public to visit their nursery and their exquisite gardens - and so yesterday I headed over there. I cleverly brought along my wife and two friends, to take up space in the car and prevent the purchase of [i:0e3b40546a]too many[/i:0e3b40546a] new trees.

Even getting there is fun; to get to Heronswood from Seattle, you take a ferry across part of Puget sound....

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In love with trees

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Carl_Bergstrom

(Yes, that's a mountain, not a cloud, way up there in the sky. Mount Baker, to be precise.)

Heronswood itself is out on little country road, which turns into a rather extended linear parking lot on their open visiting days. But it was a nice day, and even the walk down the road was pretty.

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In love with trees

Carl_Bergstrom

They've got a terrific gardens, spread out over several acres. Their forested shade garden is incredible! I'll post just a couple of pictures, since it's not really bonsai-related.

Here's an Eastern Ladyslipper. What an incredible plant!

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In love with trees

Carl_Bergstrom

They also had a wonderful aquatic portion of the shade garden. A cool idea, because usually water gardens are in direct sun. This picture doesn't even begin to do it justice, but I'll post it anyway. Yes, those are pitcher plants on the little "island."

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In love with trees

Carl_Bergstrom

Throughout the gardens, the plants were all labelled and many - probably most - are quite unusual species or cultivars. The nursery specializes in cultivars with purple or varigated foliage, many of which I'd never seen before.

As great as the gardens were, the part that really got my blood pressure up was the collection of plants for sale. (The nursery publishes a wonderful catalog, complete with detailed descriptions of what must be thousands of plant species - see http://www.heronswood.com/catalog/ ) Most are one or two year old trees in tall 4" or 1-gallon pots.

I picked up several intriguing maple species, including:

[i:d2ef9ea7cd]Acer campbellii[/i:d2ef9ea7cd] from Sichuan, China
[i:d2ef9ea7cd]Acer caudatifolium[/i:d2ef9ea7cd] from 7500' in Taiwan
[i:d2ef9ea7cd]Acer sp. aff. diversilobum[/i:d2ef9ea7cd] from the mountains of Turkey
[i:d2ef9ea7cd]Acer pectinatum ssp. forrestii[/i:d2ef9ea7cd] from 9000' in Sichuan
[i:d2ef9ea7cd]Acer pseudoplatanus `Puget pink'[/i:d2ef9ea7cd]
[i:d2ef9ea7cd]Acer pseudosieboldianum[/i:d2ef9ea7cd] from South Korea
[i:d2ef9ea7cd]Acer sempervirens[/i:d2ef9ea7cd] from the mountains of Turkey
[i:d2ef9ea7cd]Acer tonkinense[/i:d2ef9ea7cd] from China

Detailed descriptions of each can be found at this link.
I haven't posted them here for copyright reasons.

Will any be good for bonsai? I don't know. But it sure will be fun to find out - and if any are, it'll be a really cool discovery. If anyone has worked with any of these species before, I'd love to hear about it.

I also picked up five different Tsuga (hemlock) cultivars of three species I'm still trying to find the "perfect" cultivar with which to recreate the hemlock forests of the Pacific Northwest. If anyone (other than myself, that is) is particularly obsessed with hemlocks I can post the details of those as well.

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And eventually we headed back with a carload of people and a carload of trees. We managed to miss our ferry, which wasn't a bad thing at all because there happen to be this tavern with a little beer garden and a dozen local brews on tap, sitting right there next to the ferry dock. We found a patch of shade for the trees and then sat in the sun, drinking cool glasses of beer, talking, laughing, and watching the next ferry, and the one after that, and the one after that one as well pull away without us.

I put several of the trees into larger pots or boxes last night and this morning. I'll post some pictures at some point, though they're really nothing to look at, yet.

All the best,
Old Mister

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Jay

Wow....thanks for the tour. Maybe I will hide in your trunk next year! Looking forward to the pixs of the new additions.

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A Bonsai student living with his trees at N 44.37 W 77.49...
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ripsgreentree

Old Mr. Crow: I envy you your axcess to this sight. I have added there address to my favorites so I thank you for the link. Alas from past experiance I have found that most of the material that is grown in the north will burn up like gunpowder here in the hot dry summers of fresno, this does not keep me from looking for that hardy maple that will servive here. You can be shure that I will be gambeling on the things that look like good bonsai material.
Thanks Again for the link.........ripsgreentree

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ripsgreentree

It requires an open hand to give and to recieve.

simsorbartin

Taking your wife and 2 friends didn't help you much not too buy too much trees!!!

Shambhala

That place looks awesome, another reason I can add to the list for planning to go to university on the west coast

Are pitcher plants native to that area? I always expected them to be in the Amazon, along with all the other meat-eating plants