Discovery Garden

Greetings all. Meili here with another adventure. This week my human and I visited Discovery Garden. This is a small botanical garden in Roseburg, Oregon that is part of the horticultural school of Oregon State University.

Even though it wasn't a big garden, it was a fun place to visit. They have a Japanese garden, a children's garden, an herb garden, a rock garden, a butterfly garden, a perennial garden, and a blooming garden. 

We started in the Japanese Garden.

 

It had a lovely weeping evergreen.

So very pretty. It had lichen growing on it that contrasted with the bark so well.

There was also a stone bird bath,

 

but the birds here must already be clean, because I didn't see any at the bird bath. And I looked.

 

Oh, I looked.

There were these lovely Japanese letters, but my human couldn't tell me what they said. They still made for lovely garden art.

Plus they had a pretty little Japanese bridge. Fun to cross.

Next to the Japanese Garden is the Children's Garden.

 

This had a tunnel, some stone animals to climb on,

and a sand box. My human wouldn't let me go in the sand box. What? Does she think I'm an animal or something? I don't know what she was afraid of. Really. I don't. 

There was a tree in the children's area whose limbs twisted around.

 

They looked a lot like a python hanging in a tree. It was pretty interesting. 

There was also a little free library in the children's area with children's books.

Now that is COOL!

There was a container garden showing different ways to grow plants. They showed how many different things could be made into plant containers. They had some made from truck brake drums.

But my favorite was the rock garden. They had a stone wall,

                 stone steps,

 

           rock beds with low growing plants,

 

           and a dry stone creek bed.

 

Many of the plants were blooming. Nice.

I loved climbing on the rocks. You know us cats. We love to get higher up. It gives us a better view. Climbing the rocks was fun.

The butterfly garden wasn't in full bloom yet (it's still a little early in the year) but it did have some beautiful hyacinths.

 

Plus a bird bath

(again, no birds to be found) a sun dial,

 

     a bird house

 

       and even a resident gnome.

Being early spring, the gardens did have lots of beautiful flowers. Here are some of them.

.

There were a few plants I especially liked. One was the Euphorbias, commonly known as spurges. There were several different kinds. It had such interesting flowers. They were green. GREEN FLOWERS! Most plants have green stems with different colored flowers (white, pink, yellow, purple, etc.) but these had red stems with green flowers.

This one had a white/reddish flower. So unique. 

I like that they were different. Different is cool.

There is also a pavilion you can use to have lunch,

plus lots of trees around the garden. Across the parking lot, there is a victory garden were they grow lots of vegetables. 

Our day at the gardens was fun. We met some lovely people, in particular a couple of young girls who love cats. Of course they thought I was special and just petted me and petted me. I must say, I love the attention. A good day. A very good day.

Well, that's it for this week. Until next time, may love and laughter light your days and warm your hearth and home. And as always, keep wandering my friends. Keep wandering.