Gardens, Books, and More, Oh My!

I'm here in Portland, Oregon attending the 60th annual Garden Writers Symposium. I love that my job lets me do things like this. It's an awesome conference with great people. One of my favorite parts of the conference is the garden tours. Yesterday afternoon, we spent touring private gardens and a retail nursery. While I didn't get to see as many as I would have liked. (Kim took all of these pictures. She's in charge of the camera while we're here since she's the better photographer.)

My favorite private garden was Bloomtown. It was a great little house that was jam packed with different garden settings. She'd also turned her driveway into a kitchen garden with raised beds. It was really cool.



This garden gate was an old window door. I fell in love with it and made Kim take a picture of it.



My other favorite stop was Garden Fever. It's an urban specialty retail garden center and it was so cool! It had a great gift shop area and the nursery plants were displayed really nicely. It's right in the middle of a neighborhood. I wish we had something similar in Florida. Kim took a picture of me in the garden center. Obviously, I was cold.


Last night, we did a little exploring of Portland. We ate at a local Brewery, hit REI, and then stopped at Powell's bookstore which Portland is famous for. One thing that really impresses me about Portland is there public transportation. It's amazing how well it runs. Luckily, Kim and Erin kept track of where we were at because I was really tired and I can't read maps. I hope to post more pictures later today or tomorrow morning, so be on the lookout.