Statsny Sculpture Gardens

Okay, Okay, I know I said this blog was for local gardens/ gar­den­ing but it’s Jan­u­ary and there is not a lot to see right now!  And so, for your view­ing plea­sure, we’ll post a few from OTHER places!

I had the great gar­den­ing plea­sure of spend­ing 18 months as an “Ore­gon­ian”.  That green, happy place where nearly ALL plants grow.  It was not uncom­mon to dis­cover an unex­pected gar­den to visit while trav­el­ing on the back­roads through the Willamette Val­ley– which is pre­cisely how I dis­cov­ered Stansny Gar­dens. It lit­er­ally appeared out of nowhere off the side of a high­way while we were trav­el­ing to McMinville.  Of course we had to stop!

The gar­dens were designed by Takuma Tono, the same man who designed the world-famous Port­land Japan­ese Gar­den and installed back in the 1970′s.  The pur­pose of the gar­dens is to show­case the beau­ti­ful stone pots and con­tain­ers hand crafted by the garden’s orig­i­nal owner, Czechoslovakian-born George Stat­sny.

The gar­dens and busi­ness are now owned and man­aged by Joe and Cristi Mason-Rivera who have endeav­ored to con­tinue George’s vision and tra­di­tion of fine craftsmanship.The pieces they ARE lovely works of art! How­ever, to my gardener’s eye, the finest sculp­tures on the prop­erty are the liv­ing ones.

I believe that use of inter­est­ing conifers is one of the most impor­tant aspects to cre­at­ing a gor­geous four-season gar­den– and gen­er­ally the most over­looked by ama­teurs and pros alike.  Stat­sny Gar­dens proves that a com­bi­na­tion of conifers, Japan­ese maples and a few, select plants yields a gar­den with visual diver­sity that is greater than the sum of its plants.

If you are ever LUCKY enough to find your­self headed to the Ore­gon Coast via the Salmon River High­way (route 18), Stat­sny Gar­dens is a won­der­ful spot to stop and enjoy works of art in many forms– and per­haps even bring some home!

Note:  All the conifers shown here ARE hardy along the Wasatch Front (not the Wasatch back– most are Zone 6) if prop­erly planted/sited.  The Weep­ing Sequoia needs a shel­tered posi­tion but can do quite well.  The Blue Atlas Cedar is hardy as well but almost always planted in loca­tions where it will not have suf­fi­cient room to spread out in its pre­ferred unpre­dictable fash­ion.  Cedars should not be grown in our foothills and any­where that deer are a prob­lem unless you’re will­ing to live with some dam­age.  Plant­ing one is like ring­ing the din­ner bell for deer! This win­ter we’ve had two dif­fer­ent arc­tic cold snaps which have been very hard on both of the above conifers if they are in exposed posi­tions.  Hope­fully they will rebound!

Posted by Cynthia

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