The Garden’s first Japanese irises bask in the warm weather:
Krys Roth
There are three main types of Japanese irises—kakitsubata, hana shobu, and wild ayame. Those planted at the Portland Japanese Garden are hana shobu 花菖蒲 (Iris ensata var. ensata), a larger, late-blooming flower preferring wet stream banks. This type is also cultivated at the famous iris beds of Meiji Shrine in Tokyo.
Krys Roth
This year, the Wisteria sinensis sports a leaner, cleaner look due to a recent reconstruction of the Wisteria Arbor, or fuji dana 藤棚. Our gardeners judiciously pared back the heavy overgrowth before twining branches around a sturdier wooden lattice structure.
This bank of white azaleas was designed to evoke a mountain waterfall, cascading over boulders into the upper pond of the Strolling Pond Garden.
Cedric Wiens
What a happy coincidence that the Garden’s prime flowering season arrives just in time for Mother’s Day! A visit to the Garden this week promises lingering magnolia and cherry blossoms, delicate pieris and enkianthus, budding dogwood, rhododendrons, and vibrant azaleas:
Many of the garden’s small-leaved azalea plants are pruned into neat, globular shapes. This technique—credited to the Zen Buddhist monks of medieval Japan—is called karikomi 刈り込み, also meaning, “haircut.”
Next to the rustic well in the outer Tea Garden, this maple glows pink in the spring sunshine:
The Japanese Enkianthus perulatus, with flowers hanging like miniature paper lanterns:
