This is right across from the Visitor's Center.
This area still has the original character and a lot of very showy rhododendrons
in a lot of bright colors.
A good variety of of small to medium to
large plants, and blues and other colors.
It's a great backdrop to take photos.
The lower woodland pond there is a very serene place.
It's placid and it's surrounded by flowering plants this time of year and has a lot of our Japanese Maples.
There's a magnificent Golden Oak that really has bright yellow foliage.
In fact, when I fly in a lot of times,
you can kind of pick out that tree from the air.
Yeah, a lot of nice beds of lower azaleas and
then this very bright Oak that people always
comment on.
Azalea Way has a really interesting history. Before this was Seattle's fourth Park in 1900,
it was logged twice and that was the original skid
road that they used to get the logs out for milling.
It was kind of this open, fairly muddy spot at that time,
following the contours of the land.
And then after that it was a harness racing track,
in the early days of the park.
So you'd take your horse out, there was a horse barn
down kind of here where the Japanese garden is now.
That was used for horse riding back then.
The Olmsteds and other planners saw that early mark in the landscape and thought
let's develop this, it's already a nicely open area in the middle of the cutover forest,
so let's accentuate what we have.
So they brought in a whole bunch of loads of manure and other things
to make the soil little richer,
widened it out a little bit.
and kept that as the central feature,
thought it could be something that people could really enjoy.
The rhododendron hybrid garden showcases the work that local
breeders of azaleas and rhododendrons have done
over the last 60-70-80 years and we're one of the best places
in the world to grow rhododendrons.
It's really a showcase of all the different colors and
forms and shapes that have been added to this amazing
floriferous genus over the last 80 years.
It's a really concentrated dose of different types of plants.
You'll see unusual forms and colors there.
Up the hill to the east side of Azalea Way there,
we have many of the species rhododendrons and
and many of those have been in the ground for 70 or 80 years,
and so they've gotten pretty big,
and you'll see these more tree-like forms and a
lot of those have pretty big flower clusters too.
And that's where we get a lot of our
hybrids that have been developed from these naturally-occuring species
in the wild.
Taking colors or sizes of the blooms and brought them
into a smaller plant or a little different color.
But that's where you're going to see some really older
or sizable specimens
if you have time to wander off to the sides.
You see a lot of lawn expanse, but in the background it's kind of in this low valley.
You'll get cherries blossoming behind and larger flowering trees and then
bigger species of rhododendrons, more of the large shrubs.
This is a great spot. People come up
to the pond and look at the turtles and
you'll see a heron, animals using the pond, and it's kind
of the biggest sheet of water we have,
and so there's a nice set of several benches and
then a newly-developed garden there that has a big stone bench
That kind of overlooks the pond and then above the hill
there's our lookout gazebo which was from the depression-era
1930s when the Olmsteds designed to park and
that gazebo looks out over Azalea Way to
the north.
But it's also a landmark looking south along Azalea Way.