April 10, 2016 Bainbridge Island Adventure Pictures

A really nice view from the south end of Bainbridge Island.
The Space Needle is behind a tree just to the left.

 I usually write a narrative essay about our adventures and I might do it this time too. But this post is simply some of the pictures we took. There are a bunch of others I will post later as well.

We went up there to take the weekend off and still call it research into making our Farm what it should be. We went on maybe the nicest weekend. Summery weather and Seattle didn't have reservations, so it was nearly empty. We went to the Bainbridge Garden Center because it looked promising as a model we might use in planning our retail organization (it was wonderful). WE also went to the Bloedell Reserve, a fantastic ten miles of walking trails through botanical gardens complete with a mansion and plenty of places to sit and watch the world go by.

The trip was a wonderful success, here are a few of the interesting things we found. . .

There is at a garden center which was built before the Japanese internment,
which had gone to seed until 1989 when the guy's grand-son re-built and re-opened it.
This grafted pear tree is just one of the gems on the property.
Two pear trees grafted with a pear shaped hole in the trunk.
We happened to arrive when it was in full bloom. 

This is just a photo  notation of a gazebo idea I want to steal.
I'm thinking Adirondack reclining styled chairs.

The Garden Center's coffee shop . . .
Made me rethink the design of mine because I thought a window shop would look cheesy.

They had a ton of good ideas.

This was an old greenhouse they had converted into rainy day seating for the coffee shop.
I would have done it much the same, but this was the only hole I found in their game.
Every other inch of the place was product placement (appearing random, but probably not).

A nice pile of aging baskets stacked up on  a high shelf unit.
It looks a jumble, but everything is easy to find and looking is half the fun.
In the bathroom they had signage advertising a "Potopoluza" . . .
They had similar shelving full of pots you could go fill with plants and dirt.

Ann's favorite product idea. Tibetan prayer flags gone even more commercial.
Each was six by eight and the ideas for good uses are amazing.
Every inch of this place was covered in stuff you could buy.
None of it looked like they were try to sell you anything.

A perfect retail environment
is one where the customer finds things by surprise
and then buys on a whim.

Once of the things which attracted me to this place was the idea that
people ought to come and sit around.
I'm sitting on one of the forty benches spaced out all over the place.
The longer the customers are in the space, the better it is for them, and for the business.

This was on a wall in Port Gamble. These were real retailers up there.
Everything nicely laid out and in very good taste.
But they looked like good retailers. Stuff was surprising, none of it a surprise.

One of the walking paths at the Bloedell Reserve.
Miles of these trails and a surprise at every turn.
The floor is covered in layers of shamrocks, mini-pansies, ferns, and trillium. 

A simply wonderful little fence idea.

The impossible reflecting pond.
No way to do this.
But I will find a way to do something like it.

The entry into the Japanese Gardens at Bloedell Reserve.
Nice use of Mondo grasses.
Wonderful cheap fence.

The Wishing Bench
The had fifty or more benches dotting the paths everywhere.
None of them were clean, none of them dirtied your clothes.
I have always said that if you really want to see something,
you have to sit down and look at it for a while.