Christmas at Shore Acres

People who think of formal gardens as prim and proper should visit the garden at Shore Acres Park during the Christmas season, when this grande dame on the southern Oregon coast is bedecked with over 200, 000 multicolored lights.

The garden was created for Louis and Cassie Simpson in 1915 when they decided to live full time in the house which they had built as a retreat in 1906. The house looked out over the Pacific Ocean and the garden was carved out of the forest behind the house.

When the Simpsons decided to live year-round at Shore Acres, they added onto the house, transforming it into the showplace of the southern Oregon coast. The most impressive addition was the "Roman Bath Room", which featured a twenty-six by fifty-two foot swimming pool, which could be filled with heated salt or fresh water. This house burned down in 1921 and the house that replaced it was torn down in 1948. The little house in the photographs was a gardener's house,

If you look at the map of this garden, you will see that the plan is quite formal, with two principal walks. At the point where these walks cross there is a fountain; this is represented on the map by a small square.

The walk which runs from one side of the map to the other was the walk to the mansion and is terminated by the gardener's house which is shown in the photographs. The center path which runs the bottom of the map to the oval lilypond is now the garden's main walk. The garden's entry is at the bottom of the map. The area surrounding the lilypond has always been called the oriental garden and the bronze herons which stand in the water are Shore Acre's most famous feature.

The placing of an oriental garden next to a formal garden was typical of the eclectic approach which was fashionable in the early twentieth century. Eclectic gardens weren't always as successful as the design at Shore Acres; this is mainly because the lilypond is a slightly irregular oval. If the pond was a copy of a typical Japanese garden, it would contrast too strongly with the formal area.

While the lilypond functions very well as a destination that the main walk leads to, it is only during the Christmas season that it really functions as a focal point., when the trees and shrubs which surround the pond are filled with thousands of Christmas lights and the trees which terminate the main walk are uplit by a spotlight; and the reflections of the lights in the dark mirror of the pond create an effect similar to abstract paintings.

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