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This view shows Bee Park in Talent, Oregon.
From Mail Tribune:
The Talent Garden Club unveiled a pollinator park that covers an underwhelming 374 square inches (2413 square-centimeters) — outcompeting Portland’s longtime claim to the smallest park in the world, with its 452-square-inch (2916 square-centimeter) Mill Ends Park.
“Back in December, the Talent Public Arts Committee discussed the potential of having the smallest park. They knew that Portland had the smallest park in the world,” said Gerlinde Smith, chair of the Talent Bee City subcommittee and treasurer of the Talent Garden Club.
“This was presented to me by our mayor and her wife. ‘What do you think; could we do something like this?’ Without even thinking about it, I said of course,” Smith said at Thursday’s ribbon-cutting.
Smith started with a 2-foot circle cut out of cardboard. Her first thought was honoring Talent’s distinction as the second Bee City in the United States by drawing a hexagon in the circle.
“Think honeycomb; think bees. And, of course, we shaved off some 78 square inches (503 square centimeters) from the Portland park,” Smith said.
Smith handed the cardboard hexagon to Jim Thompson, former chair of the Talent Bee City subcommittee, an artist who took on the challenge of visualizing the park.
At the center of the park is a dwarf hybrid mock orange, towering slightly over a miniature wrought-iron fence surrounding the tiny hexagon. Smith regretfully admitted the plant isn’t native, but it is a flowering plant of the proper size for the wee park.
Surrounding it are native plants: yellow eyed grass, monardella, pussytoes and lewisia. All were grown without pesticides or additives, which could be lethal to the 620 species of bees native to Oregon.
Talent Maker City donated materials and space for the group as they worked long hours over three days to create the mosaics.
Smith said the park is the only biodynamic park in the world. Bio-dynamics, described by Smith as exceeding organic standards, is a holistic form of organic gardening, including water-conserving compost and spiritual practices. Talent’s pollinator garden has been meditated over for 30 minutes a day.
Mill Ends Park in Portland was recognized by the Guinness Book of World records in 1971 as the world’s smallest, though the park originally was created by a newspaper columnist in 1948.
The city of Talent is applying for the Guinness record, but Smith said it’s a long process.
Personal note: A few months after this panorama, the park was vandalized on October 1, 2022 w/ the plants removed. A similar problem has been occurring at the Mills End Park in Portland. Maybe the park is too small it is a tripping hazard. The day this panorama was taken, it was a sweltering 114*F (45.5*C) out.
From: https://www.mailtribune.com/top-stories/2022/06/30/talent-unveils-tiniest-park-on-earth/
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The United States is one of the most diverse countries on earth, jam packed full of amazing sights from St. Patrick's cathedral in New York to Mount Hollywood California.The Northeast region is where it all started. Thirteen British colonies fought the American Revolution from here and won their independence in the first successful colonial rebellion in history. Take a look at these rolling hills carpeted with foliage along the Hudson river here, north of New York City.The American south is known for its polite people and slow pace of life. Probably they move slowly because it's so hot. Southerners tend not to trust people from "up north" because they talk too fast. Here's a cemetery in Georgia where you can find graves of soldiers from the Civil War.The West Coast is sort of like another country that exists to make the east coast jealous. California is full of nothing but grizzly old miners digging for gold, a few gangster rappers, and then actors. That is to say, the West Coast functions as the imagination of the US, like a weird little brother who teases everybody then gets famous for making freaky art.The central part of the country is flat farmland all the way over to the Rocky Mountains. Up in the northwest corner you can find creative people in places like Portland and Seattle, along with awesome snowboarding and good beer. Text by Steve Smith.
