Hollinshead Community Park
1235 NE Jones Road
(Back entrance: NE Edgewood St. & NE Ulysses Dr.)
Good for: dogs who love grass and lazy owners who love to garden.
This park is about 2 miles from my house. It’s more of a traditional dog park, with a couple of acres of rolling grass, and trees. It isn’t completely fenced, but as long as your dog isn’t a “runner,” you can park yourself in one spot and almost see the entire park from where you stand…
But the best part about Hollinshead isn’t dog-related—it’s the community garden!
If you’re an avid gardener, you really should stop by, especially if you’re new to Central Oregon, and worried about the short growing season—you’ll be inspired, I promise.
The community garden is ringed with examples of local plants (presumably installed by smarty-pants OSU students) in various groupings (annuals, perennials, grasses, etc.) and each plant has a sign, like this one:
From the Annuals section:
From the Grasses section:
So pretty! I want to go back and take notes. Props to OSU on a job well done.
Betty loves grass so she was pretty psyched to have so much green space. There were a few other dogs but none of them wanted to play, so it wasn’t as much exercise for her (or me) as the other more hike-oriented parks.
Oh and don’t miss the gussied-up two-story barn on the grounds — it’s now a special event venue. Pretty nice… And there is a tiny homestead house too that has been restored and converted into a museum:
Overall Hollinshead is a lovely little park, and a decent dog park (and absolutely mind-blowing by LA standards — it’s like 5 times the size of the Venice dog park I used to frequent). It’s especially perfect if you have a grass-obsessed pup if you like growing stuff, and if you don’t feel like a dog hike.