Seattle Garden Bloggers' Fling: Ravenna Gardens

What's a Garden Blogger's Fling? It's when over 70 garden bloggers from across the US, Canada and the UK come together to meet each other face-to-face, to network, nosh, and tour, photograph and write about oodles of gardens, private and public, over a long weekend in a special city. This year's Fling was in Seattle, WA and was coordinated by Lorene Edwards Forkner, Debra Prinzing, Marty Wingate and Mary Ann Newcomer, and I was privileged to attend. 

At the end of the first day of the Seattle Fling, after seeing the Birrell garden, the Tucker garden, Dunn Gardens AND the Soest Display Garden at the Center for Urban Horticulture (CUH) at the University of Washington Botanic Gardens, what's a garden blogger to do? Collapse on one's hotel bed with a cool washcloth over her forehead after closing the room-darkening shades? No, ma'am, instead she saunters over to Ravenna Gardens for a chillin' event called "Wine, Cheese, Shopping & SWAG." Yes, indeedy, you may count me in on that! Ravenna Gardens is located in University Village, an outdoor shopping mecca directly next door to the official Fling hotel, the Silver Cloud Inn. Thanks to our hostesses with the mostest, there was wine, and there was cheese, there was swag (more about that later), and there was shopping--oh, the shopping.  

 

Ravenna Gardens is an outdoor lifestyle and garden shop offering plants, furniture, linens, lighting, pottery, cards, books, and numerous garden- and nature-related knick-knacks and doo-dads, all so colorfully and artfully arranged, it makes you want to scoop it all up and take it home. Seriously. 

For example, this picnic bench and its sunny yellow accessories would look perfect on my patio.

  

Or how about a sweet bamboo chair and a little wooden table adorned with French-influenced accessories for the boudoir? Tres jolie!  

Or this adorable rustic potting bench? Of course, it just wouldn't look the same without allllll the accessories.

 

Gasp! Terrariums! Oh, so cute!

  

Turquoise and yellow-green together? Swoon! This patio set and its accessories looks like a frosty dish of rainbow sherbet, yum.

  

I almost -- almost -- bought the little pink pottery birds on this display, before deciding they wouldn't look quite right without the purple accessories. Willpower! The cute and precious displays were nearly too much to bear.

There was an entire display of Tillandsia and glass holders (to the right in this photo), and on the other end of the store, an enormous display of tiny succulents.  

Ravenna Gardens has quite the knack for retail display. Even standard terracotta pots look all purty and special on display here.  

 

Surrounding the store were gobs of sheds, benches, trees, patio sets, shrubs, vines,  

 

and dahlias the size of dinner plates.  

 If I'd had $2800 just laying around, I would have had this garden chair shipped to Austin with the flick of an Amex. Maybe Jack could build me one.  

And what was in the swag bag? Two pairs of garden gloves (one from Fields & Lane, one from Mudglove, a HUGE box of seeds (all new varieties!) from Botanical Interests, a water bottle from Bailey Nurseries, a set of Colorblends playing cards and a catalog, a tiny sedum in a dollhouse-sized terracotta pot from TwoGreenThumbs.com, and two live plants from Skagit Gardens.

Words and photos © 2009-2011 Caroline Homer for "The Shovel-Ready Garden". Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.