Secret Gardens in the San Juan Islands

As you drive around the island, you may not think many islanders are into gardening. To the contrary, due to the abundance of wildlife, gardens here tend to be hidden from plain sight. Many take advantage of the topography, views, and trees or simply have an abundance of potted plants on the deck.

A visit to a garden can be a journey. The garden embraces you as you arrive and quickly transports you from the everyday world into a whole new dimension. Your senses are immersed in the experience – light changes, vistas open and close, and you become aware of sounds, colors, and textures all designed to engage and delight.

When designing a home garden, many feel it is essential to relate the house to its surroundings. People tend to spend much of their time indoors and keep this in mind when designing a garden, bringing the garden into the house with compelling views through the windows.

For some, the words art and gardening never mesh. To them, art is something found in a museum, a theater or a concert hall. Art outdoors might be a sculpture park, where the plantings are merely a background. For serious gardeners, art is an everyday experience. Their artistic vision sees beauty in the plants – they create a garden experience where scent, sight, color, sound, and texture combine to make a three-dimensional symphony that continually grows and changes.

Gardens should be spaces that invite gathering, entertaining, and relaxing. Gardens are for living.