NPA Border Renovation

The Northwest Perennial Alliance (NPA) created the Perennial Border at the Bellevue Botanical Garden (BBG) in partnership with City of Bellevue Parks & Community Services in 1991.   It has been a beautiful and dynamic feature at the BBG ever since.  

In 2007, the NPA was seeking ways to update and revitalize the Border plant collections, support the City of Bellevue’s Environmental Stewardship Initiative by removing invasive ornamentals, and reduce the cost of Border maintenance.   At the same time, the BBG was beginning its Master Plan Update, a component of which addresses how future garden development might provide opportunities to better integrate the Border with the rest of the Garden.   We recognized that the time was ripe for a collaborative effort to make some changes in the Border, with very clearly defined objectives.

Our primary objectives are to keep the Border healthy and beautiful, with year-round interest, and to encourage its function as a learning resource for the horticulture community and BBG visitors.

We are working to achieve the following design objectives:

  • Improve accessibility to the plants via paths and/or stairs.
  • Encourage observation and enjoyment through added seating.
  • Reduce maintenance for NPA volunteers.
  • Eliminate the slippery grass slope between the Main Border and the Shade Border.
  • Consider size and shape of Border beds to better accommodate maintenance activities.
  • Explore placement of interpretive tools.
  • Integrate the Border with the great lawn, and open views to the proposed Wetland Sun Terrace Garden to the west.
  • Create graceful lawn shaping and edging.
  • Consider the view of the Border from the elevation of the proposed Garden Mount.
  • Edit the West Border to achieve significantly reduced maintenance, while continuing to visually integrate it with the Main Border.

We encourage you to visit the Garden often to watch our progress. You will find regular project updates on this web site and at  www.bellevuebotanical.org.

Summer  2008
All gardeners must evaluate the amount of time and money they are able to devote to maintaining their gardens. One of the renovation objectives is to reduce the overall maintenance demands of the Border, which is maintained by NPA volunteers. Withey-Price, project designers, have done a great job planning “maintenance intensity zones” throughout the Border, where more highly maintained areas will be balanced by less demanding collections elsewhere.

One of our most challenging tasks has been evaluating the existing collection. In standing by the commitment to less-demanding plants, tough choices have been made about what will be granted a place in the Border. The renovated Border will showcase plants that fulfill the commitment to well-behaved collections with year-round interest that have earned their place among the best perennials for our region.

Volunteers are working hard to lift and protect valuable plants for replanting into the Border. Some of these have become intermingled with more aggressive plants. Steps that are being taken to eliminate aggressive plants include digging valuable collections, washing their roots to rid them of all traces of aggressive roots and shoots, and potting them up for replanting this fall.      

Here is a sampling of plants found to be too aggressive for the level of maintenance desired for the newly renovated Border. Glenn Withey fondly calls these “plants we love, in other people’s gardens.”

Acanthus, Bamboo, Geraniums (free seeders) Phygelius, Allium moly, Dicentra (running forms), Lysimachia, Phytolacca, Arum italicum, Dracocephalum, Oxalis, Ranunculus ficaria, Astrantia, Euphorbia, Persicaria, Rumex

Here is a small sampling of genera that will remain in the perennial Border living collection:

Aconitum, Epimedium, Hepatica, Polygonatum, Aster (clumping forms) Erythronium, Hosta, Primula, Bergenia, Hacquetia, Jeffersonia, Rodgersia, Camassia, Hakonechloa, Lilium, Sedum, Corydalis, Helleborus, Paeonia, Trillium

Bellevue Botanical Garden Genus II volunteers and staff are committed to accessioning, tagging, and mapping the collections as they are planted to ensure that accurate, up-to-date information is maintained for internal curation purposes, for sharing with garden visitors, and for presentation to a global audience via the Bellevue Botanical Garden Society's Searchable Online Database. Click here to search the database.

If you’d like to volunteer to work in the NPA Borders, click here.