Ballard (Hiram M. Chittenden) Locks
Working ship canal locks with a salmon fish ladder and a botanical garden grown from a gardener's lifelong obsession.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the botanical garden at the Ballard Locks in Seattle follows Carl S. English Junior, who arrived in 1931 as an assistant gardener hired simply to grass over a gravel field for marching drills, and instead spent decades filling the grounds with plants gathered from around the world. It traces how ship captains passing through the locks handed him cuttings and seeds on their way between Puget Sound and Lake Washington, and how a 1948 Harvard expedition to China brought back seed of the dawn redwood, a tree once thought extinct. You'll hear how English insisted the garden be worthy of serious study, with something blooming in every season. Look for the dawn redwoods still growing from that original seed as you walk the grounds.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Washington Park Arboretum
Two-hundred-thirty-acre botanic garden of oaks, maples and camellias along a former horse-racing speedway.
Kubota Garden
Twenty-acre Japanese-style landscape of ponds, maples and red bridges built from drained swampland.
Volunteer Park Conservatory
Victorian glass conservatory of palms, cacti and orchids, some rescued from wildlife-trafficking cases.
Bhy Kracke Park
Terraced hillside park with a switchback trail linking a play area to a hidden skyline viewpoint.
Seattle Japanese Garden
Stroll garden with a pond, granite boulders and a rebuilt ceremonial teahouse for traditional tea rituals.
Beacon Food Forest
Volunteer-planted edible woodland of fruit and nut trees on a former reservoir slope, open for anyone to forage.