Metropolitan Gardens: Gardening in Cascadia: About This Blog

The main purpose of this blog is to provide information about gardening in Seattle. In addition to garden advice, you will find plant lists & garden designs, information on garden color & garden themes, & articles about my Seattle garden, the Cascadia Garden. This information is also useful to people who garden on the northwest coast, west of the Cascade Mountains, in British Columbia, Washington & Oregon, where growing conditions are similar. The plants mentioned here can be grown in moister parts of USDA Zone 8 & in parts of northern Europe, most notably Britain & Ireland. Many of these plants will grow in colder & drier climates. Here are articles about Seattle parks, others about public gardens & natural areas in the Pacific Northwest & beyond. Some of these will be useful for tourists in Seattle.

Why I Write
January 2011
April 2008

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About My Garden

The Cascadia Garden sits atop Cascadia Ridge in the Mt Baker neighborhood of the city of Seattle. The city of Seattle rests between 2 bodies of water: Puget Sound & Lake Washington. Cascadia Ridge is much closer to Lake Washington than to Puget Sound: a substantial part of the Salish Sea & a very small part of the Pacific Ocean. The Salish Sea is set apart from the Pacific by the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington & Vancouver Island in the province of British Columbia. The dense, wet clouds of the Pacific Ocean travel as far as the Cascade Mountains, near the Salish Sea & not very far from the ocean. East of the Cascades lies the desert of the Columbia Basin. The moist, temperate climate of Seattle extends south to northern California, north to southeastern Alaska. The Pacific Northwest Coast from San Francisco Bay to Cook Inlet shares a flora dominated by evergreen coniferous forest. The central portion, west of the Cascade Mountains, is called Cascadia. The climate is cool & wet from fall to spring, warm & dry in summer. The Olympic Mountains block Seattle from much of the Pacific rainfall. Seattle is drier than the Atlantic coast of North America & northern Europe. It lies near the latitude of Paris & Munich. But it is cooler in summer, warmer in winter. In this tiny piece of the vast world, I grow plants from the Pacific Northwest, California, eastern North America, Europe, Asia, a few from Chile, from New Zealand mostly Hebe, some Callistemon from Australia & not very many South African perennials.