What’s Better Than A Garden Party? Eight Garden Parties

Forest Grove Opens Their Yards For Friends Of History

The most important part of a garden tour, or yard walk, is avoid comparing every stop to your yard.

Yes, you’ve done incredible yard work and you’re proud as a pick axe the way it turned out, the same pick axe you broke your water line with.

Whether you did the work, or hired it out, found someone who shared your vision, a garden yard walk isn’t about you and your yard. If it was, your address would be on the itinerary.

But it’s not, so relax. That’s what I did on Garden Party Sunday.

I can hear the questions before you even ask: “Why would you do that on a perfectly fine day?”

And, “Whose idea was this?”

First of all, it’s normal for men to go on tour. We were four men and three women strong and everyone fit in one car. To answer the question of ‘can seven adults really fit into a Toyota Highlander?’

Yes they can. It’s called Car Yoga. Squeeze in and hold a pose. I knew my seat since I was driving, and happy to say this was a flexible group.

If it were just me and my pals instead of the Sunday crew, we would have said we were going on a garden tour and done something else. I had a tradition going for a few years where ‘Christmas shopping with the guys’ included bar hopping and shopping.

To say nothing of Santa Con.

Sunday we took the party with us from a ten o’clock brunch at the Grand Lodge, then out on the town and back five hours later.

Five hours and not a complaint from any of the seven potential sources. Who would complain going to one garden party after another with a team of landscape architects?

It was my good luck that three of the group knew what’s what in visual as well as planting aesthetics. Now and then it seemed like an undercover operation on strangers’ property when they pulled back the curtain on how a garden grows.

Besides being a motivated group to uncover new ideas, we also had a birthday girl. Sharing her day with us before her real party felt like a real connection to add to the terrain.

Since the event was sponsored by Friends of History, and a historic house was on the garden list, I started thinking about history. I often do that.

Before I break out my history credentials and bore readers half to death, history degree with twenty years of historical museum experience, I’ll show you the house:

The Smith House has a built date of 1854 and feels like it’s still going strong.

It reminded me of the Bybee Howell House on Sauvie Island that we museum people used to open for the season and shut down afterward. Back then it was all about inventory and condition reports from the collection manager, me, to the curatorial team.

The idea of historical preservation came up more than once Sunday. Why?

There we were, a small group in their fifties and sixties walking the streets of small town America; wide streets with curbs were bordered by well kept houses. There was a certain feeling of tranquility on such a beautiful day.

So, what if a granting agency worked to expose more people to the peace and quiet of small town life based on education. Imagine young people used to the industrial hum of the city walking a small town street to a place like the Smith House to learn about building, design, and materials?

For anyone with experience making something out of nothing, you know the magic. I once milled oak stickers used to space loads on rail cars and built a four poster bed with mortise and tenon joinery. Got it all connected and finished and threw a mattress on it and jumped in.

The whole thing collapsed and I turned it into foot stools, but the experience was contagious. I’m not the only one infected, either. Just look at any three dimensional art piece. More than once I’ve seen something and asked myself, “Why?”

If training in construction and design and materials was presented in a way cool enough for the young, and base it on historic preservation in a small town, the sky becomes the limit.

Building one thing leads to building more things. Think of the Christmas and birthday present possibilities, not that anyone who doesn’t build would care, or even notice the difference between something made or something bought.

The point is that some people get it. They. Get. It.

The Sunday garden party got it good. They were believers. We didn’t sing the song, but I heard it anyway.

Which song? You know which song.

Hit it, Ricky.