Garden Visit: Mill Ends Park, The World’s Smallest Park

Ok, so technically this is considered a park and not a garden. But really, it’s still a tiny garden. This is the first of what I hope will be a series of posts on garden visits. I’m a fan of visiting gardens because I love to see what other people do with their landscape. Plus, it gives me ideas for my own garden. I can’t say that Mill Ends Park really falls into that category, though. It’s just gosh-darn funny.

As mentioned before, Brian and I took a two week vacation in July to Oregon. We haven’t done a “real” vacation since 2000, so it was a big deal for us. The reason for the trip was to celebrate Brian’s impending 40th birthday. Since he’s a homebrewer and an official beer judge in his free time, it only made sense to take a trip to Oregon where they have more brewpubs than any other state. But you can’t drink beer all day, every day, for two weeks straight (or can you????), so we fit in other fun things. I had read about Mill Ends Park in Portland and just had to see it.

Mill Ends Park is in the Guinness Book of Records as being the world’s smallest park. It is a circular plot that is no more than 2 feet in circumference. It is literally in the middle of the street. According to Wikipedia, it was intended to be a light pole. But the light pole never appeared and weeds grew. A journalist who worked nearby named Dick Fagan decided to plant flowers there. He made up a funny little story about a leprechaun granting him one wish and his wish was for his own park. The result was Mill Ends Park. To read more about Mill Ends, check out Wikipedia. It’s so silly, but it’s the silly things in life that make it fun.

When we visited Mill Ends Park there really wasn’t much interesting planted other than some Black Mondo Grass, a pine tree and some white annuals, along with some weeds. But it was still fun to see. Check it out...

Mill Ends park seen from across the street.

Mill Ends Park close up and personal.