Heronswood: A Tale of Two Woodlands

02:05 Part 1 Recap
04:13 Giant Himalayan Lily
07:59 Woodland Vines
11:55 Paris
13:14 Magnolias
15:48 Purchase by the Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe
18:28 The S'Klallam Connection Garden
21:14 Western Red Cedar
25:59 Totem Return to the Earth
26:17 A Gathering Space

Recorded June 7th, 2025

Hi Garden Lovers! Today, Heronswood Assistant Director Rizanino 'Riz' Reyes takes us through two woodland gardens. The first is the iconic Woodland Garden, the original experimentation beds for Heronswood creator Dan Hinkley. This is where he would travel to exotic parts of the world, find really cool plants that he thought ought to be in horticultural circulation, bring them back and plant them out to see how well they fared in our PNW climate. This garden consists of so many beautiful specimens and spectacular plants that I've never before seen, and will never forget!

The second is the S'Klallam Connection Garden. The Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe is the new (as of 12 years ago) owner of Heronswood. Besides doing a marvelous job maintaining the original gardens of Heronswood, they are adding their own flavor to the gardens. And nowhere is that more apparent than the S'Klallam Connection Garden, where you can go and learn about plants that have cultural significance to the tribe, as well as experience what the region looked like plant-wise before colonizers came and added their own flora to the greater landscape.

In the last video I kinda-sorta told you that this installment would feature 4 gardens, but there was just too much good stuff to edit out! So I ended up saving the Traveler's Garden and the Renaissance Garden for Part 3.

Please check out this awesome book written by Riz and illustrated by Sara Boccaccini Meadows, Grow: A Family Guide to Plants and How to Grow Them. This book contains some of the most common and useful plants, interesting tidbits about them, and how to best grow them. It's an absolutely beautiful, educational, and enlightening book for the whole family.

And Plant Families: A Guide for Gardeners and Botanists. Ross Bayton is the director of Heronswood. Turns out there is a way to make learning botany fun, and Ross has figured it out and packs it into this book!

Buy them through the link here and I get a kick-back, to help support this work of making garden tour videos!

(Also, if it looks like we are jumping around to random parts of the garden a bit, it's because we are. We walked through the garden a few times so it was already a bit convoluted, and then to make matters worse I moved some stuff around to help the story arc - I know it's a little confusing. Sorry about that!)