GCNN Gardens
Through this website you will discover some of the Pacific Northwest’s most beautiful and unique gardens and regional horticultural organizations. Click on the garden links below to connect directly to a garden’s website. website. Use the "Map" feature for directions to the garden you would like to visit, or to determine the best travel route between gardens.
Albers Vista Gardens is an oasis comprised of more than a thousand different botanical delights, aesthetically arranged on 4.2 acres of a southwest facing hillside overlooking the Port Washington Narrows and the Olympic Mountains. It serves as a horticulture learning center for educating the public on the creation and maintaining sustainable landscapes.
The Bellevue Botanical Garden displays the best plants and gardening practices for beautiful, healthy Northwest Gardens. The garden is free and open year-round, daily from dawn to dusk. Discover the joys of Northwest gardening as you stroll 53 acres of display gardens and native woodlands. Please call 425.452.2750 for more information.
Bloedel Reserve is an internationally renowned public garden and forest preserve. The reserve's 150 acres are a unique blend of natural woodlands and beautifully landscaped gardens, including a Japanese Garden, a Moss Garden, a Reflection Pool, and the founders' former estate home.
In 1960, Emmott and Ione Chase began to create their 4.5 acre garden, featuring a panoramic view of Mt. Rainier, a meadow, and a forest carpeted with wildflowers. From the entrance garden designed by Rex Zumwalt, and inspired by Japanese gardens, paths meander through mixed shrub beds, a groundcover meadow, and shady fern border. The garden is now again a private garden with new owners.
Cottage Lake Gardens is a beautiful two-acre lakeside botanical garden with an extensive collection of rare and unusual plants, including a world-class trillium collection with more than 2,500 trilliums encompassing all 50+ of the world’s trillium species, a spring ephemeral wildflower. The garden is open to the public during its spring Trillium Tea Talk & Tours.
Dunn Gardens is a historic site designed by Olmsted and developed between 1915 and 1920. Plants range from diminutive trilliums to Douglas firs towering more than 150 feet. A Great Lawn, sweeping vistas, ponds, and woodland walks, all respecting the genius of the place, make the Dunn a peaceful garden to visit in any season.
The Miller Garden, created by Pendleton and Elisabeth C. Miller starting in 1948, is a three-acre garden with an exceptional collection of woody and herbaceous plants. Its missiion is to acquire, steward, and disseminate new and unusual plants; to exhibit plants in sensitively arranged plantings that enable the qualities of the plants to be artfully displayed and the entire property to reflect high standards of design and maintenance, and to demonstrate by example environmentally responsible horticulture.
Gaiety Hollow was the home garden and studio of Elizabeth Lord and Edith Schryver, the first all-female landscape architecture firm in the Pacific Northwest. It is now a public garden owned and managed by the Lord & Schryver Conservancy is to preserve and interpret the legacy of Lord and Schryver to promote a greater understanding of their contribution to regional landscape architecture.
The Hardy Plant Society of Oregon sponsors workshops, lectures, study weekends, classes, publications, book sales, plant and garden art sales, trips and tours. It organizes member gatherings and encourages member networking, supports worthwhile community gardening projects through grants, sponsor plant and seed sales or exchanges, and encourages the preservation of special gardens of botanical, horticultural, or historic interest.
The Highline Botanical Garden Foundation was incorporated in 1999 to preserve a 40+-year-old private English cottage garden located in the shadow of the third runway of SeaTac International Airport. Since then, the Elda Behm Paradise Garden has been enhanced with four species gardens of iris, fuchsias, roses, and daylilies and another heritage garden—a miniature mountain and pond Japanese garden—was rescued from the third runway. To date, five of the eleven acres have been developed.
The Kruckeberg Botanic Garden is an unique Puget Sound woodland garden with a blend of Pacific Northwest native plants and unusual exotics in a naturalistic, wooded setting. The garden was built over 50 years by Dr. Arthur Kruckeberg and his wife, Mareen, in the four acres surrounding their house. Now owned by the City of Shoreline and managed in collaboration with the Kruckeberg Botanic Garden Foundation, the garden and the onsite MsK Rare and Native Plant Nursery are open to the public Friday through Sunday year-round.
Lakewold Gardens offers landscape architecture by Thomas Church surrounded by rare and native plants, State Champion trees, astunning statuarym and Lakewold's Georgian-style mansion and historic architecture, a Washington State and National historic landmark. The ten acres offer visitors an opportunity to step back in time to an elegant past or enjoy a relaxing moment to contemplate the future.
Lan Su Chinese Garden is one of Portland's greatest treasures. Much more than just a beautiful botanical garden, Lan Su is a creative wonder—a powerfully inspiring experience based on two-thousand-year-old Chinese traditions that meld art, architecture, design, and nature in perfect harmony.
Leach Botanical Garden opened to the public in 1983 as a partnership between Leach Garden Friends and Portland Parks and Recreation. The core of the landmark garden is the estate of John and Lilla Leach, botanical explorers who, in the 1930s, built the Manor House and began the garden with its more than 2,000 plant species.
Meerkerk Gardens is an internationally recognized garden featuring species and hybrid rhododendrons, companion plants, and trees. It is a premier garden for display, education, and research, with a core of ten landscaped acres surrounded by 43 acres of native woodland habitat. Meerkerk is an independent organization, managed by the Meerkerk Rhododendron Garden nonprofit organization and open to the public.
Milner Gardens is a one-of-a kind woodland estate and gardens nestled in the peace that only an old-growth forest can provide, a community oasis that rejuvenates the soul. Visitors can take time to relax over a pot of tea and hot scones in the historic house.
Originally owned by U.S. Senator George Turner (1850-1932) and his wife, this beautifully restored historic garden is an exquisite example of the Arts and Crafts landscape design style. The 2.9-acre garden is located in the Marycliff-Cliff Park National Register Historic District and retains the original stone features constructed in 1889.
Opened in 1913, Peninsula Park Rose Garden is Portland’s first public rose garden, often described as a hidden gem. A formal French garden, it features level pathways, a graceful fountain, and a historic bandstand—all perfect complements to the splendor of more than 6,000 roses.
Through careful attention to the soil conditions and water movement, PowellsWood, located above Redondo Beach within 30 minutes of Seattle, provides the visitor with a beautiful pleasure garden grounded in an ethic of stewardship of the land. The garden includes three acres with seven lush garden rooms rich with color and texture.
Considered the largest public collection of species rhododendrons in the world, the Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden aims to inspire and educate visitors about the amazing botanical world. Visitors enjoy 22 acres of woodland gardens including alpine, pond, Victorian fern stumpery, and blue poppy meadow gardens plus the Rutherford Conservatory, garden gift shop, and nursery.
The Rogerson Clematis Collection Botanical Garden is a 1.5-acre display garden that showcases North America's most complete collection of the genus Clematis, with more than 1,600 clematis plants, including 90 of the 300 clematis species. Clematis and companion plants are displayed in a variety of settings around a historic farmhouse at Lake Oswego's Luscher Farm.
The Spring Courtyard and Pine and Plum Pavilion are the first structures in the Seattle Chinese Garden, a Sichuan-style garden, the only one of its kind outside of China. Built by master artisans from China, the garden features the essential elements of traditional architecture, stone, water, and plants native to China. In the garden, visitors can explore a vision of the harmonious integration of nature and culture.
Soos Creek Botanical Garden was developed to be a stroll garden inspired by English and Japanese gardens. Highlights of this mature 22-acre garden are two opposing mixed borders extending more than 400 feet, kalmias, rhododendrons, roses, peonies, fuchsias, and plants native to the Pacific Northwest.
Five acres of gardens in West Seattle, the arboretum at South Seattle Community College provides students with hands-on learning, year-round. Open every day, it's also a sustainably managed urban retreat that extends the city's wildlife habitat. "The Arb"" is a best-kept secret in West Seattle.
Nestled on a hillside in the center of a major city, with a stunning view of Lake Union, this garden is a moment of green and natural calm in an otherwise hectic urban environment. Accessed via the bordering pedestrian staircase, this woodland gem is laced with meandering paths and year-round flowers.
The Volunteer Park Conservatory, completed in 1912 by the City of Seattle, has five glasshouses featuring bromeliads, ferns, cacti, seasonal display plants, and an extensive orchid collection. The Friends of the Conservatory operates the on-site gift shop and supports programs and events.
Established in 1967, the Yakima Area Arboretum is Central Washington's premier plant museum. It features over 1,000 labeled specimens on 46 acres managed as collections, display gardens, and natural areas. The arboretum seeks to inspire people of all age to discover and connect with nature through a diverse collection of Inland Northwest plants.