Urban Landscape, Native Landscape: Carl Linnaeus Tribute and Healing Garden

Helenium autumnale (Common Sneezeweed)

Mespilus germanica (Medlar) These photos were taken in June 2016.

The Carl Linnaeus Tribute and Healing Garden can be found on the grounds of Swedish Medical Center First Hill Campus at the corner of Broadway Avenue & Cherry Street in Seattle. This is particularly appropriate because Carl Linnaeus was Swedish. Here there are a fairly wide number of plants, some of medicinal value, each listed by their common names & the botanical Latin names that Linnaeus gave them during his lifetime (1707-78). Linnaeus published Species Plantarum, the work that was the starting point of modern botanical nomenclature, in 1753. The garden is small & pleasant, certainly worth a visit, if you are on First Hill, or at nearby Seattle University. Swedish Medical Center has also created a vivid tropical garden here at the entrance to its campus on Broadway. The Seattle Public Utilities Green Gardening Program has used these gardens as a case study for Transitioning to Sustainable Landscape Practices.

About This Blog

This blog began in 2008 as Metropolitan Gardens to provide information on gardening in Seattle & places like it. Click on Gardening in Cascadia. The blog expanded to include Parks P-Patches Public Gardens in the US, Canada & Europe. Then Nature was added. (The difference between nature & gardens is intent. Nature happens. Gardens are planned.) Many recent posts are not about Seattle, or even Cascadia. They are Urban Landscape: streetscape & architecture. Cascadia is the region including the Cascade Mountains of Washington & Oregon. If you want to contact the blogger, leave a message in comments. Comments are moderated & private messages will not be posted.

Our Land & Climate

The city of Seattle rests between 2 bodies of water: Puget Sound & Lake Washington. Puget Sound is a substantial part of the Salish Sea & a very small part of the Pacific Ocean. The Salish Sea is set apart from the Pacific by the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington & Vancouver Island in the province of British Columbia. The dense, wet clouds of the Pacific Ocean travel as far as the Cascade Mountains, near the Salish Sea & not very far from the ocean. East of the Cascades lies the desert of the Columbia Basin. The moist, temperate climate of Seattle extends south to northern California & north to southeastern Alaska. The Pacific Northwest Coast from San Francisco Bay to Cook Inlet shares a flora dominated by evergreen coniferous forest. The central portion, west of the Cascade Mountains, is called Cascadia. The climate is cool & wet from fall to spring, warm & dry in summer. The Olympic Mountains block Seattle from much of the Pacific rainfall. Seattle is drier than the Atlantic coast of North America & northern Europe, cooler in summer & warmer in winter. It lies near the latitude of Paris & Quebec City.