Our Nursery

Coldsprings is a family-run nursery born out of a mutual passion for growing good plants and for finding the ideal balance between growing clover and mowing perennials. We have a wide selection of interesting, unusual and reliable perennials interlaced with a few shrubs and trees that we like to promote.

Our Garden

From a great tangle of old Douglas-fir stumps laced together with Himilayan blackberry came this three-plus acres of country garden. It certainly didn't happen overnight. Many years of uncertain usage, including pasturing of horses and sheep, raising of vegetables, fruit, ducks, geese, rabbits, chickens and even peafowl, maintenance by tractor, bulldozer and backhoe, intervened between what it was and what it is now. Is it all over? Of course not -- there are sill 17 acres to go!

The garden area spreads out at the top from tall firs on the edge of a ravine with a stream behind the trees and opens out downhill into grassy areas and many beds, large and small, some wooded and some wide open. It surrounds Coldsprings Nursery but don't blame the nursery manager if you question the garden design - in fact, you may question whether there is a design at all in the strictest sense. There has been such a progression of identities and changes in directions that the style should best be called organic.

Views of the Snoqualmie Valley, of the Cascades and (sometimes) Mt. Rainier enhance the close-ups. From strictly perennial in intent, many of the beds have more recently been encouraged to branch out, so to speak, into more shrubs and trees with multi-season interest. Flat ground is in short supply here, although walking through most of the garden is not difficult. We would be happy to offer you a ride in a golf buggy if hills are a problem. For the very adventurous wanderer, there is a stump house hidden far back in the woods. Just ask us, we'll tell you the way.