Linda Skyler, Bainbridge Island, WA

“What inspires me to share my garden are the visitors themselves. I enjoy chatting with them about plants and sharing thoughts and ideas about their own gardens and possibilities from things I have in mine.”

Linda became our Open Days regional ambassador in the horticultural mecca of Bainbridge Island, WA, in 2009 and has opened her own garden for Open Days every year since, with the exception of one year. Surrounded by waves of cedar pickets and an iron gate made by Linda, her third-of-an-acre site sits at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac. Her garden has been a work in progress for more than thirty years and is nestled among tall firs, vine maples, rhododendrons, azaleas, Viburnum, and magnolias. Each pathway leads to a different garden room, in which there are endless groupings of Hosta, Helleborus, Hebes, barberries, Spirea, Farfugium, Euphorbia, and more than 100 varieties of ferns—this gardener’s passion.