Investing in the Pacific Northwest’s Garden Heritage

Touring the bold tapestry of gardens in the Pacific Northwest reveals a landscape replete with sites of cultural, historic, and natural significance. To help preserve gardens in the Pacific Northwest, we established The Garden Conservancy Northwest Network (GCNN), a member-based association of gardens, parks, and horticultural organizations. The Conservancy provides the GCNN with educational and development support as a tool of preservation. This type of support empowers gardens to leverage their role as valuable heritage and cultural resources within their communities and represents a crucial area of opportunity for preservation.

In November, The Garden Conservancy’s Preservation Team traveled to Lakewood, Washington to host the first GCNN in-person event in over 2.5 years! Held at Lakewold Gardens, the program was well-attended by GCNN members, including Lake Wilderness Arboretum and Highline SeaTac Botanical Garden, two of this year’s Gardens Futures Grants recipients funded by The Garden Conservancy. The focus of this program was volunteerism. Volunteerism has changed quite a bit in the last several years and many gardens are struggling to reignite and re-engage volunteers. For these organizations the contributions of volunteers go a long way in helping them achieve their goals.

The full-day workshop provided garden leaders, with both established volunteer programs and those seeking to develop new ones, the opportunity to learn from experts and colleagues about best practices for creating impactful volunteer programs. The event highlighted volunteer recruitment, engagement, and retention methods and included an informative panel discussion with current GCNN members of Bellevue Botanical Garden, Dunn Gardens, PowellsWood Garden, and Yakima Area Arboretum. GCNN members in attendance brought passion and enthusiasm that made for a lively, energetic day and underscored the importance of The Conservancy’s work in the Pacific Northwest.

We also had the opportunity to stroll the garden grounds and woodland on an informative tour led by Lakewold’s lead horticulturalist, Kristine Dillinger. Our walk was marked by the region’s quintessentially cool, wet, and moody fall weather, which showcased the garden’s serenity within a grand landscape. Lakewold Gardens is an early-20th-century country retreat estate and garden that opened to the public in 1989. The garden’s design was influenced by the Olmsted brothers and later by leading American landscape architect Thomas Church, who was a frequent visitor to Lakewold. Their design fingerprints are still visible today. The historic landscape of Lakewold represents just one of the many important cultural and heritage gardens in the Pacific Northwest.

The Conservancy will reconvene in person with GCNN members next spring for another workshop. In between our trips to the West Coast, the Preservation Department hosts virtual “coffee hours” to connect with members about their current events, successes, challenges, and opportunities, including finding new avenues for collaboration with The Garden Conservancy. For more information, visit northwestgardens.org.