Bellevue Botanical Garden Walkthrough | Japanese Maples and Conifers in the Landscape | MrMaple.com

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Hey y’all and welcome to the Mr Maple show I’m Tim hey guys I am that Matt guy at Mr Maple and welcome to the Belleview Botanical Garden the BW Botanical Garden is 53 Acres of cultivated Gardens in Belleview Washington lots of conifers and some cool Japanese maples and other

Cool trees all around this Garden hey guys we went here with the North American Maple Society so if you like this kind of thing definitely sign up to be a member of the North American Maple Society you’ll meet some great people and just have a lot of fun now we we

Love taking you on these tours when ever possible there’s some great conifers some Maples and just an overall great experience here this is in Washington state now Bob pchum had donated many of these conifers here so there’s definitely some cool trees in this Garden I mean as I was going around

Through here I walked around for a little bit with Robert finchum he’s right there on the left and uh such an amazing Conifer expert he got some cool books out there we did shot some top fives with him as well and this Garden is outstanding especially this Rock

Garden right here there’s so many cool conifers in this Garden yeah stay tuned for two different top fives on conifers with author Bob finchum I think you guys will enjoy that one it’s got It’s got uh some really good takes on there and we got him right here in this Garden so we

Could talk to him about some of his all-time favorites love any time you get that’s kind of Hardscape you got this rock Hardscape and rocks and conifers and Maples they just go together especially when you get this kind of layout you know when when you set a

Garden up in this kind of format with this rock work there’s really no bad places to plant trees and I like how this is what you walk into soon as you walk in the Botanical Garden you know they’ve got a cool Plant collection soon

As you walk in and this is what you see yeah it kind of sets the show a little bit you’re like this this is what’s up soon as you walk in you’re kind of in this little almost like an auditorium it almost feels like somewhere you could

Sit and watch a like a like an outdoor play or something it has that kind of aesthetic to it but the play is the plants right the play The Action the drama is all those conifers and plants and it kind of you know guides you through these little paths as you get

Into the rest of the garden and it just kind of sets the tone for everything you’re going to see yeah there’s some cool cedris cool Pines and a lot of neat sprues and some that are dwarfs and some good midsize uh conifers all across this uh this was

Actually more of a contorted cedrus Theodora here I mean there’s so many cool plants in this Garden as you’re walking around uh it was definitely a delight to go around and try to identify all the plants as you walk up uh some of them I had no clue since I walked up and

It was some cool plants you see for the first time here we’ve got a uh pinus Carston’s there sometimes called Carson’s winter gold give some of that bright yellow color during those uh fall to winter and that yellow just continues to brighten up throughout those winter months yeah there’s some we’s Waldo

Going on here too you just saw Talon buckolz and his wife walk by like I said Bob finchum so the whole Maple Society was here so you may see some characters in the background that you may recognize from other things Tim and I were just having a blast running around checking

Out this Garden you know Shawn and Corbin came with us on this trip so they’re doing some camera work but they’re also just kind of going around checking out these conifers checking out the maples in the garden and just everything it had to offer now we were

Here on kind of a kind of an overcast little bit dreary day which can be kind of the perfect setup you know especially in the Pacific Northwest to come out and view some Gardens you kind of get a little bit more overcast everything tends to Glow just

Perfectly now we were visiting here with the North American branch of the maple society and you can go to North American maples society.org at North America uh North American Maple study.org and become a member today uh they’ve got some cool meetings they’ve got a quarterly it’s a great way to find other

People who love Maples uh such a fun group of people and you always go while you’re with those cool people to go visit cool plants now we don’t get anything for that Tim are both former presidents but I will tell you I was a little pleased when Bill told me that

Tim and I had signed up over 20 people last year so I think we’re the reigning Champions on getting you guys to join I think we signed up close to 20 people in 2023 so definitely check it out guys in 2024 it’s a great organization to be a part of

And uh you get to go to cool things now it’s awesome if you do and you don’t travel with them but go go to the meetings that’s the best part you get to meet people my favorite part of the meetings are half the time you know hanging out at the restaurant riding on

The bus hanging out with just cool people I spent a lot of time talking to meim aot when we were riding over here and just get to know him better it’s a fun group of people and you you’ll really enjoy the camaraderie you get with people that uh you know plant Geeks

Like you are so great group of people and uh you know you got great food great plants and great people it’s hard to beat that for a weekend I think coming up on the right there’s a hortsman silverlock on the right uh that’s actually one of the tanima no Yuki in

The garden and everywhere you look there’s just so many cool conifers and then there’s Maples mixed in with that and that’s the thing I appreciate about this Garden is it has a good mixture of a lot of different plants and the more you walk around these Pathways you see a

Lot of fun plants all around actually a nice little restaurant coffee shop in there I I dipped in there and got an energy drink and some coffee I didn’t film this but there’s a frog yeah whoever filmed this was sucking up to Tim putting the frogs in

There even I liked how the the drains even turned into an artwork here like the the grooves in the sidewalk there were cut to kind of drain into that specific Little Pond so much going on here so much uh attention to detail and when you get that going on it really

Just brings the whole garden up now this is part of the Asian Garden that we walked in into has a little bit more of a Japanese style aesthetic uh so there’s a part of a tea garden and there’s some uh different Japanese maples in this area we were a little early in this

Garden for perfect fall color I think if we’ had got here about 3 weeks later we could hit some of the prime colors but really gives you that Japan aesthetic like you feel like you’ve been to a garden in Japan all the old trees all the mature trees starting to Change and that red dragon had such a good structure right there I mean you could see SE that had been there for quite a while grew in that spot for quite a while and those branches the way they just twisted and curved you could really tell the age on that lace Leaf

There’s a lot of other great plants in here there’s a lot of textures that are brought about from aelas uh ferns Rod dendrons that are kind of mixed into this garden and you know I love when a garden fills itself up you you leave less room for weeds you leave better you

Know overall Garden space when you kind of fill things in like you’ve painted a full picture then I love how peaceful and relaxing the Waterworks always are and Japanese gardens I mean if you have a Japanese garden you have to have some of that water sound going on it’s such

An essential part of the relaxation it’s such an essential part of being in the garden is hearing that water movement yeah I think just being able to experience that aspect of the garden it just adds so much to it the water is a key component in Japanese gardening and

If you’re building your own garden in your yard think about adding a waterfall or some water features that can really draw people into your garden and experience that in that unique way really nice Acer Tri Forum here on the left there’s some older Acer gums in

This garden now one thing I think about when I think about this Garden is how well the paths are laid out we’re going to be building kind of a bigger Arboretum style place to put a lot of our stock plants in and I really get inspiration from places like this

Because it makes me want to build the pathway first like this pathway really epically leads you through this Garden like you can’t miss aspects of this Garden when you stay on the path and it creates all that movement it takes you around places and it’s such an important

Part of it you know a good walkway and a good pathway are almost like the the first steps to building a garden like this and then I think next probably be the hardscaping and then your water features mhm and then lots of Japanese maples right more than they even have

Here we’ll be adding a lot now incredible Gardens here there’s some older plants there’s some species in this Garden uh just so many different interesting things going on um that they really you know have a perfect climate for a lot of these plants too here’s an

Older more mature snake bark and I love when snake barks get some caliper to them you can really appreciate the bark cuz it almost gets pulpy like I believe this was a big white tigress yeah this was a really large uh snake bark maple I had some really nice white striping on

The bark itself my first trip to Belleview botanical garden with the maple S I was allowed to collect some seed on this on this tree I mean it is a it is a really showy specimen with that white bark you normally get some nice striations on snake barks anyways but

This one is especially showy I love when you get mature ones like you get some age to a snake bark like people enjoy them in smaller sizes but I mean you really have just so much more Splendor to them when they get that that larger caliper the the bark just has another

Almost a like it doesn’t look real looks like you have to go up and touch it like it’s got that puffy pulpiness to it you just kind of have to go up and put your hand on a big snake bark and feel you know they’re a little waxy they’re just

Different that just feels like something completely otherworldly And I actually believe this might have been a uh cailum japonicum yeah I was thinking the same thing I remember walking through this area and smelling those now interesting thing about the catur trees it’s a genetic trait so I was talking to Dr Richard Olson at the

National arum one time and there’s a certain percentage of people who don’t smell cat Sy trees in the fall so some people will completely not smell it for most people you know s to follow them are going to kind of smell a sweet soft cotton candy like smell as they’re going

Sugar yeah it’s it’s a very pleasant smell it’s not overwhelming but it’s it’s a nice smell if if but some people can’t smell it at all so genetically some people just completely walk up into that and and it’s just completely normal smelling so this is an Acer Acer Grisham

X hybrid and I believe this is actually cinnamon flake oh cool yeah you rarely see those this kind of size that’s a big One in the fall this will get really nice reddish oranges to it cinnamon flake gets a little bit more orange to it than Acer gum and that is a high hybrid with the N the niik maple Acer noiko and Acer Grisham love the three flower Maples they they really just do something

Interesting um you know we’ve offered triflorum and grum and then wax Mani here at Mr Maple so many of the uh the hybrids I’d like to get some more involved in that and definitely be offering more rare types of your you know Acer grum style bark plants but as you walk around this

Garden there’s so many different trees that Captivate you as you go around on the left here that’s actually just a Cersei you’ve got a red but over there just showing some fall color uh I mean there’s so many cool plants around this garden and the more you go around this

Garden you can appreciate each of the individual plants but the collection as a whole uh it’s a very well laid out Garden that uses collections of plants but has also provided lots of walking pass for the people that may just you know want to stroll through the park

They did a great job of planting these mixed borders too that kind of give you uh you know a little bit to see over into the trees so it’s not just a complete Forest you actually have a lot going on you know those grasses that were behind us the hostas the hostes

Were kind of done this time of the year but a lot of these plants you know they just provide texture and color for the rest of the garden and they make it so that you’re not looking you know just directly into a wall of trees I was

Confused is this a hobbit house yeah in the ground I don’t know we’ll have to we’ll have to dig in there and check like what in the world is there a path here to this little house that has a tiny door that I could clearly never fit

In the groundhogs are getting fancy up here in Washington state but this Garden not only has your typical Pathways but it also has lots of little rooms that you can walk off and enjoy and have a little private Moment In the Garden by yourself that’s one of my favorite

Aspects of Chinese gardening uh I’d like to get out to some different Chinese gardens and talk about that some more but I think really good Gardens they have different rooms to them so you can walk into different places and you kind of get different emotions different feelings different looks to each little

Room and I love when Gardens are kind of partitioned off a little bit like that big Dawn Redwood right here beautiful plant I like to just sit down in a garden like this too I’ll walk off on my own a little bit find me a nice bench

Where nobody’s visiting and just kind of soak it all in listen to The Sounds we’re starting to get a little bit of rainfall while we’re in this Garden not much but it just kind of added to the Ambiance it wasn’t wasn’t super rainy but it was overcast and

Foggy made for a very relaxing time and this is one of those Pathways off the main trail and you start to go up through here and enjoy this little Ambiance of this little room these little different rooms in the garden themselves uh I believe you know you

Start to see some more Japanese maples around in this part and even some some Japanese storio over to your to our right I mean there are cool plants all around this Garden but it’s every single aspect of this tree is used in the garden and so it’s it’s not like there’s

A collection of just a collection of trees they really thought this out really well I would say staria pseudo Chamilia underused in American Japanese Gardens they’re native plant in Japan they’re giving you bark interest they’re giving you flowering interest they’re giving you fall color it’s hard to beat

What staria provide in the landscape and I think if you’re creating you know more of a Japanese style Garden you should definitely think about incorporating some staria pseudo Chamilia they really do everything they’re kind of a super plant this must be someone else’s video not the video I recorded up here because

As I walked around that corner there was a girl and a guy making out on that bench so this clearly was not interrupt him Tim they like got up and like walked away I was like oh I was like that’s going to be interesting on video sorry

The next part of this video will be censored uh but this room’s got a lot of different uh this Garden’s got a lot of different rooms and a lot of different places where you can just enjoy this unique Garden I mean everywhere you turn it’s different I mean here as you’re

Walking up you’re seeing lots of Evergreens you’re seeing a lot of things that make you think of the Pacific Northwest when a second ago we were in a Japanese garden right and so it everything’s got its own different themes but it flows into that you don’t know that you’re in a different room

Until you’re in that room yeah excellent use of some natives here really giving that high Canopy I think had we been about 3 weeks later we’ have got perfect fall color can’t ever really exactly plan fall color it’s one of those things where nature just kind of decides when they want to change you can enjoy it as much as you want but

It’s always two to three weeks kind of different each year it feels like and here we’re checking out another snake bark I mean you see the snake bark and the striations on the spark I mean this even this one here you can really appreciate how it really looks like

Snake skin I love that that that is that is one of my favorite things when they get big you saw them touching it you have to go up and touch it it’s just so weird such unique plant when it gets like that now another thing I love about

Snake barks I love how the flowers or excuse me the seeds of Samaras hang down in tassels so you kind of get that tassle flower effect to them yeah it’s like a chain yeah it’s like a little wind chime almost like it just gives it something ornamental about the seed

That’s so unique to snake Parks now seeds on trees can be vary from year to year some years you may have a huge amount of seed other years you may not it’s kind of like the fruit industry though I mean some years you’ve got a big apple crop and some years you don’t

We’re here in hon County North Carolina where there’s a lot of apples in our area and they’re always talking about how’s the Apple crop doing and it sort of coincides with the Japanese maple seeds uh you often see that you know often years when they are having a good

Crop there we may have a good crop of seeds as well going back up in this Tea Garden a little bit uh just a beautiful area a lot of shade going on up here I believe this is actually maybe called the Yao Garden here I mean this is getting into

What more of what they would think is a traditional Japanese garden here at the bellev Botanical Garden some goofy guy over here filming on the Right How about all the stone man they had so much great Stone placed in there whenever you can get stone in your garden like that I mean they just don’t make enough stone for for Gardens and rock and Moss I mean you get that all together you have such a such a starting

Place for just a foundation for your plants everything’s going to look great next to Stone and you can tell that it’s been there for quite a while as the Moss is growing on it I don’t know if they planted the moss on top of that but if

They did they did a fantastic job I mean when you add that moss on top of the stone it just gives an aged appearance and just adds to that that feel of that Japanese garden hey they’re talking about water in the garden on the side we were talking about

That earlier how important that is in the garden I mean it really is such a key component uh it adds so much in the garden itself it’s one spot one thing that people often forget is adding the water in the garden so it’s cool that

They even put a sign out there trying to educate the public and that’s often what we’re looking at Gardens is they’re not only collections they’re not only ways that people can go out there and enjoy but it’s educating people on what they can grow in their area a lot of locals

Will be using this garden and again right there they’re educating people and saying hey look at water as a key Component Man I just love the pathways I I love I makes me want to create more Pathways like as I think about ways I want to lay out my own Arboretum eventually and maybe one day we can have kind of a Mr Maple World here where you can tour

Through some of our stocks we’ve got some land near here Tim and I are laying out and it’s got a lot of elevation changes but the thing I envy are all the paths I look at a garden like this and I think you got to have ways to get to the

Cool plants and it’s very well out like there’s so many different things you can get to and then offshoots from that to go and explore I think that’s that’s really one of the keys to a great Arboretum uh you know how how the the flow is you can kind of get through

Everything but you can find these extra little areas to get lost in one thing that I thought was interesting is how they use this Boardwalk I mean the boardwalk raises you up a little bit allows you to get into a wetter spot in the garden where a Dawn Redwood could

Live um and you’re able to appreciate those wetter spots in the garden just by raising you up a little bit so you can actually get out there and appreciate this I mean otherwise you’d be walking along the pathway and you couldn’t get in the garden like you

Could with that Boardwalk yeah a lot of great roded dendrons a lot of great zelas in this Garden all kind of textured with some Conifer so there’s a lot of different season interest here I believe that’s Mahonia may even be soft caress is the name of that one

And the Mahonia just add that unique texture in the garden I hope youall enjoy these Garden strolls we take you on they’re kind of shot Mystery Science Theater style sometimes we’ll be in a garden and it’s very loud with the maple Society so we’ll kind of get some footage then

Bring you back by there’s sea himself that’s our guy that does all our podcast right there Sean and Corbin were particularly fun to take on this trip we we had a blast going uh from we we originally stayed a couple days at Talon buckolz uh you know the buckolz nursery

Went and visit there and shot some content then we went up to Seattle for the maple society meeting then we traveled all the way up into Canada and spent a couple days in Canada so it was really like three trips in one go check out the Vlog Corbin and sea have been

Doing they’ve been kind of giving you behind the scenes view of everything it’s kind of fun to see it from a different perspective Tim and I are kind of background characters in those videos so you can kind of see it from their eyes a little bit we had a blast just

Traveling going to so many different things you know you forget you saw so many things at once you go back through and you see something like this you realize how beautiful it was at the time and you’re like wow we we just did so

Many things on this trip it was it was a a blitz of awesome and here we’ve got a Storia on the right but then Japanese maples all around this water feature and as you start to look around the water here all of the Japanese maples jut out

Over the water I mean that’s just reminiscent of what Matt and I saw in Japan when we aadan took us out in the wild was seeing japy Maples growing out aimed out over the river and that’s essentially what they recreated here in the Gardens at bellw Botanical Garden

Yeah one of the best photos I ever took was at the Kyoto Botanical Garden of the fall color reflecting in the pond of the Japanese maples in like perfect fall color it just looks so cool um you know it works to a te it almost works every single time

Too I would say that between the maples and the fall color reflecting in the pond remember catching the golden Pavilion oh in Japan reflecting over the pond that was pretty awesome too better to go back and do some shoots there so here you see all this Moss is

Growing on Japanese maples now people talk about Lykan a lot people are always concerned about Lykan and moss on their trees typically only happens in areas where you have really good air quality so it doesn’t really mean that your plant is having an issue you’ll see

Amazing plants in Japan with a lot of lyan or moss on them you’re always going to get that in the Pacific Northwest and here in the mountains of Western North Carolina and honestly a lot in Japan so you’re going to see lyen and moss on older trees with in areas with great air

Quality it has to do with more of the environmental condition than it has to do with the tree itself I mean you can pretty much grow moss on almost anything right lots of great layers here to this Garden I mean a good Garden has a lot of

Movement and land you know this all wasn’t one flat piece of land you got so much going on different things to explore look around a lot of different overlooks as you walk around through here really just adds to the overall landscape I still think my favorite part

Of this Garden though is that Conifer entrance that’s hard to beat that it’s such shocking all up front I think it really adds something I I kind of like this part of the garden cuz there’s so many Japanese maples and things were starting to get fall color uh some of

The trees when we first walked down the left there were some blood good Styles those are already went to fall color there uh a lot of pruning on that check this check this Green Lace Leaf out lot of shaping they’re getting in there and opening that tree up a little bit really

Accentuating that trunk style not hard to do you just take out conflicting branches we’re going to make a video this winter on pruning lace Leaf Japanese maples and you can see this one they’ve really just taken out the conflicting branches it’s not that difficult to create this look a lot of

People look at that and get intimidated and say I can never do that really you’re just taking out the things that conflict and and accentuating the tree’s natural shape the shape the tree wants to create you often see these uh concrete uh structures of Japanese lanterns out

There in the garden uh it just adds that extra essence of the Japanese garden when you do that I mean it’s just one of those it’s another type of hardscaping to think about when you’re putting out a garden so many old mature Japanese maples in this Garden too and they

Really just reach for the skies they give you so many different aspects there uh you know it’s a multi-layered garden you have your your big big trees the maples are kind of a little bit understory but they’re also providing you know that filtered light that mid-level interest in the garden and and

Then you’ve got the ground level garden and there’s so much going on here when you layer a garden that way it really provides so much Beauty at each Level we hope you’ve enjoyed this tour here of the Bell viw Botanical Garden you know Tim and I and Sean and Corbin we had a blast going around just checking stuff out you know a lot of times we just threw it on mute so we could go around and enjoy all the

Gardens ourselves and then talk about it later so we want to get on here and hop on here and add some audio to this and kind of just explain what we were enjoying but this is a great kind of example of what you can expect if you

Visit the BBY Botanical Garden in the early season of the fall uh we were actually doing this uh pretty much at the end of October so we were just right before Peak fall colors some things are sneaking in like this big Maple right here check out that shot of the Fall

Colors on all the different plants you get the water feature in that shot too I mean you’reall going to love this place take care God bless and have a great day