Dancing Oaks Nursery

     Although I said on my last post that I was going river rafting, our trip got canceled due to bad weather.  You would never know it is summer here in the Pacific Northwest.  So, since I was down in the Willamette Valley anyway, I decided to visit Dancing Oaks Nursery.   Dancing Oaks is a wonderful nursery way out in the country, west of Monmouth, Oregon.  To get there you have to drive through the lovely countryside of the Willamette Valley, which is so different from the much more forested land on Bainbridge Island and the Kitsap Penninsula where I live.  It has a much lighter, more open feel to it which I like quite a bit.  We are rather light deprived here on Bainbridge Island.
     Anyway, I have known the owners of Dancing Oaks for quite some time, and have visited their nursery many times.  The display garden there has grown and expanded a lot from the time that I first saw it.  Now it can best be described as an exuberant explosion of color and plants.  I would highly recommend that you visit it if you can.
     Among the plants I purchased at Dancing Oaks were some very nice looking Eryngium alpinums, which I posted about earlier and which are very hard to find.  The selection of plants available at Dancing Oaks is an interesting mix of rarities, many of them from South Africa, and more commonly used perennials, trees and shrubs.  The people at Dancing Oaks have a very good sense for what will look good and thrive in a garden in the Pacific Northwest, whether it is a rarity or a more common plant.  They are the ones who originally alerted me to some of my favorite plants, including Scilla peruviana and Ranunculus baurii. 
     Directions to the nursery are found on their website, along with the hours of operation and mail order plants. The link is here.