Polly Dyer – Seattle • Entered by Penelope Peterson on June 22, 2024
Tour of the Japanese Garden at the Seattle Arboretum
June 13, 2024 – June 13, 2024
Participants and Hours
| Pre Planning hours | 2.25 |
| Post Admin hours | |
| Activity Hours | 3 |
| Participants | 1 |
| Total Hours | 5.25 |
Key Issue: Doesn’t apply
Activity Type: Education & Outreach (tabling, films & lectures, regional B-walks/works)
Key Partners: Polly Dyer Seattle Broads with the Arboretum Foundation
Short Description of Activity
Eight Polly Dyer Seattle Broads met with one of their own members, Alice Cunningham, for a tour of the Seattle Japanese Garden at the Arboretum. Alice volunteers as a docent at the Japanese Garden. Alice told the Broads how this garden was created as a “stroll garden” to experience as one walks along. The designers also created the winding path through the garden such that when the stroller looks back, he or she can’t see where (s)he came from. All the plants and flowers in the garden are native to Japan. Some of the most striking are the gingko trees, sometime called, “living fossils.” In Ginkgo: The Tree that Time Forgot (2013), Peter Crane “sets out to tell ginkgo’s evolutionary and cultural life story.” As he states, “there is no other tree with a prehistory so deeply intertwined with that of our planet.” Ginkgo biloba is a “living fossil” — “a botanical oddity, a single species with no close living relatives.”
Reflection/Evaluation
Although the Japanese Garden is not a “wilderness,” it provides a living venue for meditation and contemplation similar to what one can experience in hiking the wilderness. This was something we came to realize as we walked in the Seattle Japanese Garden. I think that all the Broads who attended learned some new things about the history, purpose, and design of Japanese gardens and the flowers and plants in these gardens. Moreover, Alice is one of the newer and shyer members of our Broadband. This tour gave Alice a chance to “shine” and to share with us her wisdom and passion for Japanese Gardens.
Photos/Uploads
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Photo Captions
1. Polly Dyer Seattle Broad and docent, Alice Cunningham (on the right), gives Margaret Rands and other Seattle Broads a tour of the Japanese Garden at the Seattle Arboretum.
2. Docent and Seattle Broad, Alice Cunningham, describes the history and purpose for creating this “river” as part of Seattle’s Japanese Garden.
3. Polly Dyer Seattle Broads tour the Seattle Japanese Garden with fellow Broad and docent, Alice Cunningham. Although the Japanese Garden is not “wilderness,” it is designed to provide a place for contemplation and meditation similar to what one might experience in the wilderness.