Meet the Board tours have been a mainstay of the NHS summer for many years. Private gardens showcase the passion and dedication of their creators, often including unusual quirks of interests.
Capturing this fervor and the distinctive visions of several Washington and Oregon gardens is The Spirited Garden: Creative Private Retreats. Photographed by Doreen L. Wynja, and written with Lorene Edwards Forkner, this is one of the most engaging private garden tour books I’ve seen.
The photographs are stunning as you would expect. But they also tell stories. This can be a gardener peeking through foliage, another resting in a hammock while playing with a frisky cat, or the borrowed landscape of a meadow, distant forest, and lone hiker on a two-page, full bleed spread.
The text, both as an introduction to each chapter, and as caption to the photographs, was the real surprise. Wynja and Forkner create a lively discourse with their subjects, teasing out little snippets of story that make you want to know the gardeners, not just their gardens.
For long-time NHS members, some of these gardeners will be familiar. Most poignant is the chapter about the late Pat Riehl, former president of NHS, who with her husband Walt established a stumpery and fern garden on Vashon Island. Gillian Mathews also has a long history with the NHS, and her cozy garden makes you want to stop in for tea – or maybe a glass of wine.
Ann Amato’s exuberant garden blurs the distinction between indoors and out with over five hundred houseplants, many spending their summers outside. There is vibrant plant energy in almost every space from kitchen to bathroom to basement. At the time of this writing (early August 2025), I’m looking forward to her upcoming NHS webinar on hardy begonias.
Wynja’s selection of this and other overflowing gardens is understandable after seeing her own home in the final chapter. Having a “need for visual stimulation,” she collects foliage plants (only a few with flowers), many pots (some intended for that purpose, while others not), and the many, many tools of the gardener. As described in one caption, this is “cramscaping!”
Reviewed by: Brian Thompson on August 12, 2025
Published in Garden Notes: Northwest Horticultural Society, Fall 2025