Portland Classical Chinese Gardens

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The Portland Classical Chinese Garden  Also referred to as the Garden of Awakening Orchids. 

The Portland Classical Chinese Gardens location was donated by Northwest Natural. The land was originally used as a parking lot , in 1999 the groundbreaking ceremony was held and the dream of making a Suzhou-style garden began. In September 2000, it was completed.

All of the plants in the Gardens are indigenous to China but were grown in the United States.

There are 5 Elements in a Chinese Garden, Stone, Water, Plants, Architecture and Literature. These 5 Elements are used in the Portland Chinese Gardens in order to balance nature with humanity.

The Gardens take up one city block in Portlands Chinatown, making this the largest Classical Chinese Garden outside of China. 

One can easily spend  hours  strolling through the  gardens and enjoying chrysanthemum tea in the authentic tea house. 

There is a small gift shop adjacent to the ticket counter for souvenirs, books and trinkets.  Admission is $8.50- for Adults and Seniors and Students are $7.50.  The  Gardens are open daily 10am-5pm November -March and 9am-6pm April – October.

February 11, 2009 by Greg ·

Mt. Tabor Park

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Portland’s Mt Tabor was named after another Mt Tabor, which sits six miles east of Nazareth in Israel. Our Mt Tabor makes Portland one of only two cities in the continental U.S. to have an extinct volcano within its boundaries; the other city is Bend, Oregon. The volcanic features of Mt Tabor became known in 1912, years after it became a public park. The volcanic cinders discovered in the park were later utilized in surfacing the park’s roads.

At the top of the park is a bronze statue of Harvey W. Scott, editor of The Oregonian newspaper from 1865-1872 and from 1877 until his death in 1910. A gift to the city by Scott’s widow, Margaret, and family, it was sculpted by Gutzon Borglum in the early 1930s while at work on his monumental sculpture of four American presidents on Mt Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Cast by the Kunst Foundry in New York, it was unveiled in June 1933 with great ceremony.

 

January 31, 2009 by Greg ·

Waterfront Park

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The idea for this park came at the turn of the century when the 1903 Olmsted Report pointed out the need not only for parks within the city, but for a greenway scheme for the riverbanks in order to ensure their preservation for future generations. The 1912 Bennett Plan again showed a need for more parks and river greenways, but instead of reorienting itself to the river, the city’s focus was pulled further inland.
In the late 1920s, the seawall was built along the Willamette’s west bank for the protection of downtown from the annual floods. The seawall not only cut off the water from the people, but the people from the water as well. The construction of Harbor Drive along the west bank in the 1940s continued the trend of isolating the public from the river.

With the opening of the Eastbank Freeway (Marquam Bridge, I-5), Harbor Drive became less important to the traffic flow of the city. Governor Tom McCall created the Harbor Drive Task Force in 1968 in order to study proposals for creating a public open space in its place. In 1974, Harbor Drive was torn up and construction of a waterfront park began. It was completed and dedicated in 1978, gaining instant popularity. In 1984, the park was renamed Governor Tom McCall Waterfront Park.

January 30, 2009 by Greg ·