Soest Display Garden offers a half an acre of ideas

At the dedication earlier this fall of the “Orin and Althea Soest Herbaceous Display Garden” at the UW’s Center for Urban Horticulture, Orin, Althea and Clem Hamilton, right, center director, look over one of the beds that can help gardeners pick out plants to match conditions in their yards.

Urban gardeners wanting herbaceous (non-woody) plants that suit the conditions of their particular yards now have nearly half an acre of ideas to guide them.

The garden area at the Center for Urban Horticulture, the first major grounds development at the center in six years, was dedicated last month as the “Orin and Althea Soest Herbaceous Display Garden.” A gift from the Soests, Sequim residents who lived and worked in Wyoming before their retirement, made it possible to create the garden and will pay the maintenance costs. It demonstrates the greatest range of urban gardening conditions of any herbaceous collection in the United States, according to Clem Hamilton, director of the CUH, a part of the UW’s College of Forest Resources.

The Soest garden will serve UW students, faculty, neighbors and other members of the Puget Sound community, President Richard L. McCormick said during the dedication cermony. “Their gift fosters the University’s mission of public outreach and community involvement.”

Designed by Michaela Groeblacher of Michaela’s Garden Design and installed under the direction of Fred Hoyt of the CUH, the garden includes eight different beds. Each has different combinations of soil, sunny/shady conditions and different plans for watering. One bed, for instance, shows herbaceous plants that would do well in an area that has sandy loam, receives full sun each day and where the property owner doesn’t intend to irrigate the plants once they are established.

More than 280 different herbaceous plants, all donated by Molbak’s Greenhouse and Nursery, are found in the garden. Herbaceous plants include those that grow from bulbs, tubers, corms and rhizomes, as well as rooted plants ranging from grasses to sedums to hostas.

Other elements in the garden include an informal, sloping garden area, benches, stone paths and a fountain in the heart of the garden designed by Richard Hestekind and Associates of Renton.

The dedication of the Soest garden kicked off a year of activities planned in celebration of the 15^th anniversary of the CUH. The next event is the 1998 Perennial Symposium Oct. 31, a day-long event with lunch for $60. For information or to register call 685-8033.

The center is located at 3501 N.E. 41^st Street on the part of campus near the golf driving range and softball fields. The center’s World Wide Web site is at http://weber.u.washington.edu/~urbhort/ ¶

Sandra Hines, News and Information