The Oregon Garden

The Oregon Garden near Salem is an 80-acre botanical garden featuring plants of the Willamette Valley in central Oregon.  Not only do they have 4 miles of trails through the garden, we saw many beautiful plants, flowers and trees.

I had never seen conifer trees with healthy yellow needles on the ends of the branches.

I know that some of these plants are called hen and chickens but I don't know what all of them are named.

One area featured artistic pruning of the trees.  Look at this branch.

Lovely

The wetland area included flowering lily pads.

These flowers are very fragrant.  I wish I could remember what they are.  I don't have our tree book with us. It doesn't do me any good here when I leave it in Arizona.

These are delicate and pretty.

I like this mass planting of marigolds.

We saw some really interesting sunflower-shaped flowers.

The roses are spectacular in the garden.

Very attractive ground cover.

This was interesting moss.

We saw several nice water falls.

These bell-shaped flowers grow all over Oregon.  Anyone know their name?  The inside of the pink flowers are spotted.

We even saw Tinker Bell in the children's garden.

In Arizona, poppies only bloom in yellow.

We spotted the lock ness monster in one of the wetland pools.

Woolen Mill

We had never been in Salem, Oregon, before, but it is the capital  city, in the center of the state. We had several interesting days there.  The Thomas Kay Woolen Mill/Willamette Heritage Center was an important outing.

The mill was established in 1889.  No longer a working mill, it was a forerunner of Pendleton Woolen Mill.  There we learned not only about weaving wool but also about the history of the Oregon Trail and settlers who came in 1841.

This map shows the trail route.  What a long trip by covered wagon or on horseback.  We were especially interested in this history since we know something about John's ancestors who were born in 1849 in Ohio and later moved to Texas.

This is the former home of the Methodist minister who came on the Oregon Trail.  At one point he housed several Methodist missionaries in rooms on the second floor.

This machine combed the woolen fibers so they could then we cleaned and woven.  The climate in central Oregon is favorable not only to raising fruit trees and other produce, but also to raising sheep.

This is the channel where water that created power for the mill flows back to it's river home.

A bedroom in the parsonage.

The sitting room.

There was a retail shop at the mill that sold yarn.  This selection should be a dream for knitters.

There were also lots of small patches of various colored woolen fabric.

There are sold to artists who want to created pictures like this.