Pt. Defiance Rose and Rhododendron Gardens

My recent trip to the Pt Defiance Rose Garden yielded a single, raggedy pink rose, but the Iris garden across the street had some awfully showy flowers to compensate for the lack of roses.

Though purple’s not really a favorite color, I did like this Purple and White beauty

purple and white Iris

as well as this gold one.

Yellow Iris

If you’re not already overexposed to the gorgeous rhodies that adorn Tacoma, the most beautiful place to go this time of year is, in my opinion, the Rhododendron Garden where most of the rhodies

Pink Rhododendron

and some of the azaleas have started to bloom, too.

azalea

It’s hard to ever be disappointed in a visit to Pt Defiance park, at least on a weekday when you don’t have to fight traffic. It’s hard to imagine a more relaxing, beautiful two hours than those spent at the park.

2 thoughts on “Pt. Defiance Rose and Rhododendron Gardens”

  1. Loren, have been re-reading your namesake Loren Eiseley after many years, and am so very glad to be doing so…Just came across his essay on “How Flowers Changed the World, and if you haven’t read it in a bit, let me add that to your list! A snippet:

    ”A little while ago—about 100 million years as the geologist estimates time in the history of our four-billion-year-old planet—flowers were not to be found anywhere on the five continents. Wherever one might have looked, from the poles to the equator, one would have seen only the cold dark monotonous green of a world whose plant life possessed no other color.
    Somewhere, just a short time before the close of the Age of reptiles, there occurred a soundless, violent explosion. It lasted millions of years, but it was an explosion, nevertheless. It marked the emergence of the angiosperms—the flowering plants…
    Flowers changed the face of the planet. Without them, the world we know—even man himself—would never have existed.”

    1. Coincidentally, that essay is in the volume I have waiting to be read shortly, The Immense Journey. Maybe that will prod me into moving it up on my reading list.

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