Features
As of 2005, the Oregon Garden includes more than twenty specialty gardens and features such as the Bosque, Children's Garden, Conifer Garden (one of the largest collections of dwarf and miniature conifers in the United States), Honor Garden, Hughes Water Garden, Jackson & Perkins Rose Garden, Lewis & Clark Garden, Northwest Garden, Pet Friendly Garden, and Sensory Garden. The water garden is a maze-like area with numerous paths and bridges. A 25-acre (100,000 m2) native Oregon white oak grove includes the 400-year-old, 100-foot (30 m) Signature Oak, which is one of Oregon's Heritage Trees. The garden holds an annual festival each autumn. Also on the grounds is the Teufel Amphitheater which hosts concerts and other events; Sam Bush played in the Amphitheater in 2006.
Gordon House, the only house Frank Lloyd Wright designed in Oregon, is now on the grounds of Oregon Garden. The house, designed in 1957, is one of Wright's Usonian houses, and the only Wright house open to the public in the Pacific Northwest. Completed in 1964, the home was moved from Wilsonville, Oregon, to the garden in 2001.
On each Earth Day since 1999, the Garden hosts a celebration which attracts environmental supporters and organizations with demonstrations, exhibitions, and workshops. Garden admission is free for this event.
Using treated wastewater from the city, the garden is one of only a few installations in the United States that reuses wastewater for a water feature. Even in the summer months, the garden does not draw on drinking water supplies, instead relying entirely on wastewater treatment plant effluent, which additionally irrigates 240 acres (0.97 km2) of farmland. Until recently, such use was prohibited by state law, but the law was revised partly due to this water reclamation project. The garden also provides wetland mitigation for a nearby industrial park to provide waterfowl and amphibian habitat, and offloads Silver Creek from water it would not naturally carry during low-flow months in the summer to address an Oregon Department of Environmental Quality requirement. The wastewater receives final treatment on about 16 acres (65,000 m2) of the Oregon Garden where a series of 25 ponds perform three final filtering functions. The end result is extremely high quality treated water.
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Famous quotes containing the word features:
“It is a tribute to the peculiar horror of contemporary life that it makes the worst features of earlier times—the stupefaction of the masses, the obsessed and driven lives of the bourgeoisie—seem attractive by comparison.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)
“Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child, in whom we trace
The features of the mother’s face,
Her aspect and her attitude.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
“Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)