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Shirley and Charles' Garden |
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Shirley and Charles' Garden |
 To my mind the amazing thing about Shirley and Charles' Herrick's front garden in Portland, Oregon is that it is so similar in planting and layout to the front gardens of bungalows in England. One can see the same proudly maintained lawn, the same carefully clipped shrubs, the same borders of perennials and half-hardy annuals. I can understand Bud Abbot, over on Vancouver Island, continuing to garden English style because he was born and raised in England but Charles Herrick's ancestors left England in the seventeenth century. However Shirley gave me a clue to the similarity when she said Charles found roses a nuisance in their wet, moldy climate, and used them sparingly |
One of the plants Shirley and Charles are proud of in their back garden is this hebe.Shirley says
"We had our backyard re-landscaped and were supposed
to get Hebe Patty's Purple, but there was a last minute substitute and
this is gorgeous. When my husband tried to track down that actual
variety, he learned that a local nursery propagated these, so there's
no name yet. They are so much fuller and colorful that the normal
Hebe's we have in front of our house."
Charles and Shirley came to this site via their interest in the Herrick pages, a by-product of the Story of Black Annis and King Richard's Bed Gallery