Join Pacific Horticulture Society members and friends on a fabulous garden tour to Portland, Oregon July 9 – July 14. Visit nine private gardens featuring creative use of plant materials. The gardens range from a small, exquisite, designer’s city garden, to artist, landscape architect Jeffrey Bale’s mosaics and stonework in his own “heavenly paradise”, featured in many magazines and books, to an urban farm complete with chickens, ducks, bees, vineyard and aquaponic herb garden, to woodland gardens and a quirky garden shown on Canadian television, where “plants and art mingle”.  For more information please contact Sterling Tours – Portland, at 619-299-3010, or log on to www.sterlingtoursltd.com/Portland2011.html. Photo of Portland’s Japanese Gardens from Savvy Style at Bella Figura.