Portland’s Japanese Garden

I’m fond of a foggy morning with foghorns sounding in the distance, but we had nearly two weeks of solid fog here, whole days living in the clouds. Luckily, Leslie had made plans to visit Mary in Portland, which has been basking in sunshine while we were fogged in. Since we didn’t have definite plans, we agreed it was a good time to visit Portland’s famous Japanese Garden. As it turned out, it wasn’t just a good time; it was a perfect time.

We were greeted by this beautiful Japanese maple at the garden entrance,

Japanese maple

and didn’t have to walk very far before we were greeted by several photographers all trying to capture this view.

Japanese Garden

I’m not sure it’s possible, but if I were by myself I’d be tempted to bring a tripod and shoot HDR in an attempt to capture as much of the color as possible.

The birder in me couldn’t resist this shot, though the scene was backlit and it took a while to draw out some of the background colors without losing all the detail in the cranes.

Crane Statues

Fall color was definitely the highlight of this visit, but I still love the Japanese Sand and Stone garden, no matter what the season.

 Japanese Sand and Stone garden

Sometimes, though, you can have the best of both worlds

Flat Garden

as here in the Flat Garden.

I suspect if I lived in one of the nearby apartments I might never read another book, especially if Larry Tyrrell was playing his flute in the background as he was during one of our visits.

3 thoughts on “Portland’s Japanese Garden”

  1. I wrote for a while on garden design and these calm and beautiful gardens are the hardest to create. Not so much the cloud shapes and brilliant acers, but the zen rock gardens with their raked ‘rivers’ or ‘oceans’ of gravel or sand are all about proportion and perspective.

    Lovely images.

Comments are closed.