A stroll through Leach Botanical Garden

Last week our local weather people started throwing around warnings that the BIG WET was about to start; "just two more dry days"... "this is the last dry day before." They love to get all alarmist, it's not like there aren't dry days in this week's forecast. Still, I am not one to waste an opportunity to be outdoors while the weather is good, so I decided to visit Leach Botanical Garden in SE Portland.

The containers by the entrance were all sorts of fun.

And the gravel sitting area just inside the entrance looked like something pulled from a big fancy Botanical Garden, not a garden near a kinda sketchy neighborhood in SE Portland.

My last visit to this garden was in 2022, that was after the big redo and I wasn't completely onboard with the changes (pre redo visits that I wrote about were in 2015 and 2010). This time the changes felt better, probably both becasue they'd had time to mature and I wasn't seeing them for the first time.

The first section that you walk through is the pollinator garden. While it's not my thing per se, I still enjoyed it. It's wonderful to be completely emersed in plants.

There are a few stylized art benches in the garden, the addition of pumpkins made it all feel grounded in the season.

Normally I wouldn't have given a second thought to the tall conifers that surround this garden, but after the 2024 Fling up in the Puget Sound area and hearing people from other parts of the country in awe over our tall conifers, well, now I notice them.

They call that building the Arbor, but really I was more interested in the tree fern. It was labeled as Balantidium antarcticum, but better known as Dicksonia antarctica.

There was more pollinator garden to investigate before walking through the "Arbor"...

Some sort of Persicaria I believe.

I couldn't find a label for this random stem, but appreciated it's color.

The "Arbor" from it's backside.

Another Dicksonia antarctica.

And a Wollemia nobilis...

I stood on my tip toes to get a shot of the cones.

Looking through the covered "Arbor" and out at the fireside terrace with its fire pit and stone benches.

There were containers on the far side of the benches, the plantings interesting.

Astrolepis sinuata

What a darling mushroom.

The elevated tree walk loops around, beginning and ending at the fireside terrace.

Of course I walked the loop and enjoyed looking down on another walkway and a border of Tetrapanax papyrifer.

The Leach home visible from the tree walk. The garden is on land that Lila and John Leach owned for years, their home built in 1936 (more on the history of the garden here).

In a bit we'll be down on that narrow path behind the house, where I'll complain once again about how under planted the excellent rock garden is.

Walking through the wild part of the garden...

And now down by that rock garden. Why aren't there more interesting plants in there!?

I did find one lonely agave, there used to be a dozen or so.

Down on the lower level now, the home and the rock garden both visible.

I adore this wall and fountain.

There's another lower level below the home, it borders Johnson Creek, that's where I am now. The yellow leaves belong to Haiesia monticola 'Rosea' and the apricot leaves were labeled as Oxydendrum arboreum, although the shape seems slightly off from what I would expect from that plant.

The same trees from a different vantage point.

Nice mass planting of Woodwardia unigemmata.

A sign put out by the garden staff? Or perhaps an anonymous fan of the mollusks... 

The home and gift-shop from the opposite side of the earlier photo. Time to climb those stairs up, up, up to the top level where I started this journey.

Along the way I had to stop and appreciate the Arctostaphylos manzanita ssp. laevigata. This manzanita and I go way back, it's one of the first I admired here in Portland.

Maybe Salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue'? I'm not much of a salvia gal, but I love those dark calyx.

Anemone ‘Honorine Jobert’

I'm back up at the pollinator garden level now, and don't remember these dried seed heads from my earlier walk through.

Oh and what's this? Yep, an off limits staff-only area. Okay time to leave before I'm stopped for questioning.

To receive alerts of new danger garden posts by email, subscribe here. Please note: these are sent from a third party, their annoying ads are beyond my control. 

All material © 2009-2025 by Loree L Bohl. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.