Category Archives: annual flowers

Changes are afoot at Gaiety Hollow

21 Thursday Sep 2017

Posted by in annual flowers, Flower Garden, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Summer, Tours, Uncategorized, Vintage Photos

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This weekend are the last tours of the 2017 season. We have a garden tour at Deepwood Museum & Gardens at 9am. It is followed by a tour of the gardens at Gaiety Hollow at 10:30am. This is your last opportunity to see the Flower Garden at Gaiety Hollow before big changes take place!

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Come Monday morning, I will be in the garden digging (almost) everything up. The annuals will go to the great compost pile in the sky and the perennials and roses will find new homes with our volunteers. By Wednesday, the Flower Garden will look like a blank slate.

Wednesday evening, we are welcoming a crew of youth from the LDS church in south Salem. They will pull up the bricks from the paths in the Flower Garden, clean them, and stack them. I am so grateful to have their offer of help!

The following week, our contractor will come in with his crew and work will commence on the rehabilitation of the brick pathways. If you have been to Gaiety Hollow this season, you know that the paths are uneven, water pools in various sections, and the edging brick is spawling in places or leaning right and left.

September in the Flower Garden

When you come back to the gardens next spring, this will no longer be the case! We cannot wait to have the paths fixed so that they look as they did when Edith and Elizabeth gardened at Gaiety Hollow. The bricks will be clean, the path lines sharp and crisp, the pedestal at the center of the garden reconstructed, and grass will be reintroduced in two sections (including the path to the Pergola).

Cat and pedestal
Edith, 1968

It is a very exciting time for the Lord & Schryver Conservancy. Many thanks to our grant partners, the Oregon Cultural Trust and the State Historic Preservation Office, to our donors, and to our volunteers, for making this project possible.

One Last Open House

08 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by in annual flowers, Flower Garden, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, House, Lord & Schryver, Open Garden, Summer

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I had a meeting at the house this morning so I snuck in the back gate a little early to see the garden…gorgeous even on an overcast and smoky morning…the last open house of the season is coming up this Sunday the 10th, $5 each for adults…545 Mission Street starting at 10:00 a.m….you won’t be sorry.  The zinnias are beautiful and so is everything else!  Come walk through for a summer memory.

August anticipation

16 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by in annual flowers, Flower Garden, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Open Garden, Summer, Uncategorized

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August is a month of activity at Gaiety Hollow. A month of welcoming visitors and a month of preparations and anticipation for major projects.

On the 5th, we welcomed our neighbors in Gaiety Hill to an evening in the garden. A highlight of the event was Chinese lanterns collected by by volunteer Valerie McIntosh hung throughout the garden. We hope to do more evening events in the future.

August 11th was the first Englewood Forest Festival. Englewood Park has strong ties to Lord & Schryver. Elizabeth Lord served on the first parks commission in 1936. She was instrumental in the design of the park and advocated for the preservation of the Oregon white oak stand which remains today. Ruth Roberts, a long-time volunteer with the Lord & Schryver Conservancy and perhaps our resident L&S historian, was interviewed on Willamette Wakeup on KMUZ. You can listen to the interview by following this link. Click on the “play” button for August 10th 8am show. Unfortunately, you have to listen to news before the interview comes up, but Ruth is well worth the wait! Many thanks to Ruth for giving such an articulate and insightful interview.

This past weekend was an Open Garden and this coming Saturday, to capitalize on eclipse viewers, we are open to the public again from 10:30-1:30pm.

We are also deep into the planning stages of major projects that will begin to take place next month. In late September, after the gardens have closed to the public for the season, work will begin on the repair of the brick walks through the parterre Flower Garden. The bricks will be taken up, sorted and cleaned, the path edges re-aligned and the grade raised, and then the bricks will be re-installed. Today, Joy Sears from the State Historic Preservation Office stopped by to help us choose replacement bricks. This is a very exciting project and will vastly enhance the look and feel of the Flower Garden.


Also later this season, we are improving the drainage in the West Allee. You might remember seeing the West Allee blocked off to visitors last winter and into this spring. If you stepped into the Allee, you were met by standing water and mud. We hope that putting in a drain and wells will solve this problem and improve the visitor experience.

If you haven’t been to Gaiety Hollow yet this season, don’t delay! We are open August 19, September 10 and 23rd. Check the website for more information.

Summer in blazing glory

01 Tuesday Aug 2017

Posted by in annual flowers, Drying Garden, Flower Garden, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Open Garden, Summer

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I don’t think I’ve ever experienced temperatures over 102 degrees. It’s not something I had on my “bucket list”. The Gaiety Hollow gardens seem to be taking it well, thanks to drip irrigation and some early morning sprinklers in the Flower Garden. Although we humans are wilting in the mid-day heat, the annual displays keep growing and filling the borders with color.

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Elizabeth and Edith’s grape vine is loaded with clusters of fruit this season. The hanging bunches of grapes give a distinctly southern European feel to the Pergola seating area. One has to wonder if they chose the grape after being inspired by gardens in France and Spain.

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The late summer flowers are beginning to show off. Elizabeth and Edith loved phlox for their old fashioned charm and lovely scent. A few stems cut and brought inside perfume and entire room.

phlox

Dahlias, Verbena, jasmine tobacco, snapdragons, petunias, zinnias, and a rogue Queen Anne’s lace that I didn’t have the heart to pull, are filling up the garden with buckets of flowers. The honey scent of alyssum wafts through the Drying Garden.

Dahlia
Verbena bonariensis
Petunias, ageratum, zinnias
Queen Anne’s lace

We are planning to have the Gaiety Hollow gardens open for visitors the Saturday before the Eclipse. We hope to introduce Lord & Schryver’s garden and legacy to new guests while they are whiling away time in Salem before the Big Event. If you have friends or family in town, please bring them to the garden!

Eclipse Open Garden

 

Summer in the garden

05 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by in annual flowers, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Open Garden, Restoration, Summer, Uncategorized

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It’s hard to believe that it is already July!

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Nicotiana alata

This coming weekend, we are excited to welcome Salem Sketchers to the Gaiety Hollow for a morning of sketching the gardens. Artists will leave some of their Gaiety Hollow inspired work for us to display during our Open Garden. Please join us from 1-4pm, Sunday, July 9th.

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We are excited to announce that the Lord & Schryver Conservancy received a large grant from Oregon Heritage that will partially fund the rehabilitation of the brick pathways in the Flower Garden at Gaiety Hollow. The Conservancy was one of just 16 projects to receive funding this year. The brick paths will be repaired this fall after the gardens have closed for the season. This project will allow us to re-use the old bricks and restore the original look and feel of the Flower Garden.

Many thanks to our board chair, Bobbie Dolp, for her hard work in procuring the grant and to the citizens of Oregon for making this program possible.

Garden Time!

06 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by in annual flowers, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Open Garden, Summer

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This morning, Bobbie and I had the pleasure of being interviewed by William from Garden Time, a television show based out of the Portland region. We should be on this Saturday! You can see his photos from this morning on his Facebook page.

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It is wonderful to have more people taking notice of the Conservancy and what we are doing to rehabilitate that gardens at Gaiety Hollow and open them to the public.

The gardens are changing every day. Lilies are in bud. Roses are blooming. The alyssum fills the air with its honey fragrance. You can almost watch the zinnias and petunias grow. Canterbury bells–one of Elizabeth’s favorite plants for summer–are blooming white, pink, or blue, along the Flower Walk.

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(Please note that this is a slideshow and better viewed by watching on the blog website rather than in an email.)

Come join us on Sunday afternoon for our June Open Garden. 1-4pm. Enjoy the gardens at your own pace and feel free to ask questions of our volunteers stationed throughout the garden. All are welcome.