Fugatives & Refugees

Nature But Better: Gardens Not to Miss

From the annual Rose Festival parade to the International Rose Test Gardens—where Katherine Dunn wandered, inventing the concept for Geek Love— Portland is a city of gardens. Some are lumps of nature trapped in town, like Elk Rock Island. Others, like the Maize and the flower-covered parade floats, are very man-made. Most fall somewhere in between.

City Parks, the Largest and Smallest

Portland boasts both the largest and the smallest park in the world. The largest forested municipal park is five-thousand-acre Forest Park. With more than sixty miles of trails, it connects to five other parks and wildlife sanctuaries. Forest Park runs from NW Twenty-ninth Avenue and Upshur Street at the east end to Newberry Road at the west end.

The smallest park is Mill End Park, also called "Leprechaun Park," in the traffic island at SW Front Avenue and Taylor Street. About the size of a big dinner plate, the park is surrounded by six lanes of heavy traffic.

Classical Chinese Gardens

At NW Third Avenue and Everett Street, enclosing a city block, this is a maze of walled garden rooms, lakes, and pavilions. This Ming Dynasty garden includes more than five hundred tons of rock shipped from China, as well as mature trees donated from throughout the Portland area. Phone: 503-228-8131.

Columbia Gorge Gardens

The first of these three gardens is an old Italian-style villa and gardens planted deep in the Columbia Gorge. Take Interstate 84 east to exit 28. At the stop sign turn left onto the Old Columbia Gorge Scenic Highway. At 48100 turn right, through the gates of the Sisters of the Eucharist Convent, an order of Franciscan nuns who live in the sprawling estate of an old timber baron. The sisters are friendly, but behave yourself.

Landscaped in the 1920s, the gardens of the Columbia Gorge Hotel include bridges and duck ponds, a 208-foot waterfall, and incredible clifftop views. Take Interstate 84 to exit 62 and turn left at the stop sign. Cross back over the freeway, toward the river, and turn left again.

Be warned: The gardens of Maryhill Museum feature peacocks because those birds kill the rattlesnakes that crawl in from the surrounding desert. Before the museum, the natural spring on this basalt cliff made it a sacred camping spot since prehistoric times. To find Maryhill Museum, take Interstate 84 east to exit 104. Turn left and cross over the Columbia River. Then follow the museum signs.

Berry Botanical Gardens

The gardens founder, Rae Selling Berry, traveled the world to gather rare rhododendrons and primroses for her six-acre garden. When she died, developers planned to plow it all under until a group of Rae's friends stepped in to preserve this repository for rare native plants and plant seed at 11505 SW Summerville Road. Phone: 503-636-4114.

Bishop's Close at Elk Rock

This thirteen-acre estate has been the property of the local Episcopal diocese since 1958. Designed by John Olmsted, the son of Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted, it was built to look like a Scottish baronial manor on the cliffs above the Willamette River and was completed in 1914. It's at 11800 SW Military Lane.

Elk Rock Island

Elk Rock Island is possibly the most beautiful place in Portland—and easily the hardest to find. Take SE McLoughlin Boulevard south from Portland, through Milwaukie. Just past the light at Oregon Street, you'll see signs for River Road. Take the River Road exit and go straight a few blocks until the street (SE Twenty-second Avenue) T's into Sparrow Street. Turn right on Sparrow Street and park as soon as possible. Parking near the park entrance is almost nonexistent. Walk to the end of Sparrow, crossing under the low railroad trestle. Look for the dirt path near the elk rock island sign. Take the path through the woods and marsh, and it will lead you out to the island in most weather. During the worst high water, the river cuts around both sides of the island, making it inaccessible to anything but boats.

The island itself is a castle of basalt rising in the Willamette River and topped with an acre of dark, mossy forest. Across the main channel of the Willamette River, you can see the posh homes of Dunthorpe. The faint rush of traffic you might hear is Macadam Avenue on the cliff high over the river.

The Grotto

Using dynamite, Servite priests blasted this hole in the basalt side of Rocky Butte, where Mass has been celebrated outdoors since July 16, 1925. At NE Sandy Boulevard and Eighty-fifth Avenue, the sixty acres of gardens and shrines are wrapped in colored lights every December for the Festival of Lights. An outdoor elevator takes you up a cliff to the Priory, where the Servites live.

On the secluded road that connects the Priory to Eighty-second Avenue, look for the small cemetery reserved for grotto priests. Burnt black candles and other grisly leftovers prove this spot is still popular with Satan worshipers.

Japanese Gardens

Designed in 1963, this is one of the oldest Japanese-style gardens in the United States. It includes five traditional themed areas—including a sand garden and water gardens—plus a teahouse and pavilion, and hosts festivals and events almost every month. It's at 611 SW Kingston Avenue. Phone: 503-223-4070. Or check out wwwjapanesegarden.com.

Joy Creek Gardens

A combination nursery, art gallery, and school for landscaping and gardening, Joy Creek also has free homemade chocolate chip cookies—and the area's largest and best privately owned show gardens. They're at 20300 NW Watson Road, in Scappoose. Take Highway 30 west, about 18 miles from downtown Portland. Phone: 503-543-7474. For information about rare plants, free classes, and special events, check out www.joycreek.com.

The Maize

Wait until dark and use flashlights to explore this enormous labyrinth of corn at the Pumpkin Patch, 16511 NW Gillihan Road on Sauvie Island. Take Highway 30 west to the Sauvie Island Bridge.

Recycled Gardens

This is the closest we have to a humane society for plants. Here are shopping bags full of rescued sword ferns. Boxes of salvaged ribbon grass. Pots of iris and miner's lettuce.

Blueberries. Photinia. Honeysuckle. And many plants are huge mature trees or bushes that need a new home.

Here at 6995 NW Cornelius Pass Road, in Hillsboro (phone: 503-757-7502), Recycled Gardens is a fundraising division of Pets Over-Population Prevention Advocates (POPPA). All proceeds go to pay for vouchers people can use to defray the cost of spaying or neutering stray or adopted animals. The director of the gardens, Keni Cyr-Rumble, says about 75 percent of the plants, building materials, and planting products are recycled, reused, or donated. No pesticides are used. Fertilizer comes from the Humane Society's rabbit warren and the barn's resident bats.

Here, every plant has a story behind it. Keni says, "There was a fellow out on Plainview Road who wanted everything out of his yard so he could put in a Japanese-style garden. We took truckload after truckload out of there." Describing how they salvaged trees and plants from an 1860 homestead about to become a strip mall, she says, "We were out there digging while the bulldozers circled us."

Four times each year POPPA opens a gallery in the old barn, offering art, jewelry, and housewares made by local artists who donate 40 percent of sales to the nursery's cause. Twice a year they have a rummage sale. In the fall, after the surrounding filbert orchard is harvested, volunteers glean the remaining nuts and sell them. Volunteers also build the birdhouses and garden furniture. They raise the bonsai trees and teach courses in animal behavior and crafts.

Recycled Gardens is open May through October, Thursday through Sunday. During the off-season they're open Saturdays only. Of course your dogs are welcome, so long as they don't mess with Betsey, the friendly, one-eyed resident dog.

Rooftop Sculpture Garden

At the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse, SW Third Avenue and Main Street, take the elevators to the ninth floor and walk the length of the floor to the glass alcove on the south end. Outside that door is a garden and gallery of sculpture, called "Law of Nature," by Tom Otterness. The walls are carved with quotes about justice and conscience by writers from Mark Twain to Maya Angelou.