The Bloedel Reserve is a forest garden on

Bainbridge Island, Washington Bainbridge Island is a city and island in Kitsap County, Washington. It is located in Puget Sound. The population was 23,025 at the 2010 census and an estimated 25,298 in 2019, making Bainbridge Island the second largest city in Kitsap County. ...

, United States. It was created by Virginia and Prentice Bloedel, the vice-chairman of the lumber company MacMillan Bloedel Limited, under the influence of the conservation movement and Asian philosophy. The couple wished to 'capture the essence of the

Japanese garden are traditional gardens whose designs are accompanied by Japanese aesthetics and philosophical ideas, avoid artificial ornamentation, and highlight the natural landscape. Plants and worn, aged materials are generally used by Japanese garden desig ...

—the qualities of naturalness, subtlety, reverence, tranquility—and construct a Western expression of it'. Although the Reserve includes a traditional Japanese garden, the Bloedels' approach for the rest of the property stands in contrast to that of 'Japanese gardens' which achieve their effects through the use of ornament. The Bloedel Reserve has both natural and highly landscaped lakes, immaculate lawns, woods, a

stone garden A rock garden, also known as a rockery and formerly as a rockwork, is a garden, or more often a part of a garden, with a landscaping framework of rocks, stones, and gravel, with planting appropriate to this setting. Usually these are small A ...

(formerly the swimming pool where poet Theodore Roethke drowned in 1963), a

moss Mosses are small, non-vascular flowerless plants in the taxonomic division Bryophyta (, ) '' sensu stricto''. Bryophyta (''sensu lato'', Schimp. 1879) may also refer to the parent group bryophytes, which comprise liverworts, mosses, and hor ...

garden, a

rhododendron ''Rhododendron'' (; from Ancient Greek ''rhódon'' "rose" and ''déndron'' "tree") is a very large genus of about 1,024 species of woody plants in the heath family (Ericaceae). They can be either evergreen or deciduous. Most species are nati ...

glen, and a reflection garden designed with the assistance of landscape architects

Richard Haag Richard Haag (October 23, 1923 – May 9, 2018) was an American landscape architect. He worked on Gas Works Park in Seattle, Washington and on the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island. Furthermore, he founded the Landscape Architecture Program ...

, Thomas Church, Kazimir Wall, and Danielle Stern. The Bloedels' French Chateau-style home, including many original furnishings, is preserved as a visitor center. The Reserve opened to the public in 1988 as a family run foundation and registered as a 501(c)3 public charity in 2010. It is open year-round.

See also