Garden Home neighborhood is officially in unincorporated Washington County. It is snuggled up between Portland, Beaverton and Tigard, with a Tigard zip code, Beaverton Schools (mostly), and Portland address. It is close to Multnomah Village and all it’s shops, restaurants and cafes! Plus Garden home area itself has some good restaurants and cafes! The houses are a combination of eras, from the early 1900s up until now! The Fanno Creek Trail winds through Garden Home neighborhood, making it an awesome place for people who like to ride bikes or walk on trails.
Many of the little streets have huge lots, some with half an acre or more. Some of the little streets still have septic systems, because the neighborhood wants to keep itself rural, and they vote down all the sewer initiatives! I love Garden Home. It is a little bit of the rural in Portland, you feel like you are out in the forest, but you can walk to cafes, restaurants, and stores if you want to. Garden Home has it’s own Rec Center with pool, and all kinds of classes! The Fanno Creek Trail runs right to it!
What I love about Garden Home is that it feels like you are really out, away from the city, the lots are big, many of the houses are really cute historic homes, there are trails everywhere, yet you can walk or bike to cafes, restaurants, shops and more! To me, it is the perfect combination of urban and rural. It has it’s own Rec Center, with pool, exercise gym and classes, plus the Fanno Creek Trail runs right to it. It has an awesome Thriftway community grocery store, Starbucks, a pub, and other restaurants right there. And Multnomah Village is just down Garden Home Road to 45th and across Multnomah Blvd. Multnomah Village is amazing. It is the kind of neighborhood business area that you find in inner SE or inner NE, like Beaumont, or Hawthorne, or Sellwood, with cute trendy shops that are fun to explore.
I also like the fact that it is really close to Tigard and Beaverton. You can find any store you could ever want within 10 minutes of your house, from Costco, to Cash and Carry, to Winco, 2 New Seasons, Whole Foods, and so many grocery stores you could never go to them all.
So Garden Home is in Portland, yet it is also bordering on the suburbs. You get the best of both worlds!
Parks in Garden Home Neighborhood
Garden Home Neighborhood is the birthplace of The Fanno Creek Trail. The Fanno Creek trail‘s history is included below under History. This trail is my very favorite part of SW Portland, Tigard and Beaverton, and it is why I bought my house! I live just 1 block from it. It goes for miles and miles, through wetlands that are protected in the middle of urban areas, and you can mostly ride it from Tualatin all the way out through Beaverton, Tigard and to Portland! It is like a serene, peaceful haven in the middle of the city!
Fanno Creek Trail is peaceful and serene through urban areas
There are numerous parks, restaurants, cafes, shops, and other community services. I ride my bike on it all the time, and can do lots of my errands on my bike! I ride with my kids and grandchildren on it, they learned to ride their bikes on it, and all of us live within a couple of blocks to the trail entrances! It is 15 miles long right now, they are adding to it all the time, there are lots of subtrails that lead off from it, and it connects to business districts all along the way! To me it is the reason I love SW Portland so much! I don’t think there are many trail systems like this in a metro area! I am forever grateful to the people who fought to keep it, back in the 60s, and the people who continue to take care of it now!
Fanno Creek Trail goes from Tualatin to Portland
Fanno Creek Trail is amazing!
History of Garden Home Neighborhood
Here is what Garden Home looked like in the early 1900s
Garden home neighborhood post office was established in 1882. In the early 1900s, when the Oregon Electric Railway was built, this area was recognized as a community, and had Whitford for it’s station name. The train started in downtown Portland, went through Garden Home, and then all the way out to Forest Grove and was called the OER line! This RR helped the outer areas west of Portland grow, because people could take the train into downtown.
Garden Home early residents, children from the early 1900s
The Portland Golf club opened in 1913, largely because of the train. Numerous riding academies were set up too, all oriented to the Fanno Creek Trail. When the train stopped running in the 1940s, Fanno Creek trail became The Bridal Path, and was touted as Hooves, Tires, Feet! In the late 1960s, it was made into a permanent trail, and plans to build roads criss-crossing it were defeated! I go on the Fanno Creek Trail numerous times a week, and will be forever grateful for their fight to keep it! Fanno Farmhouse, which is not quite in Garden Home neighborhood, but close, was built in 1859, and the family lived in it until 1879. It is included on the Garden Home Historic Website, so I am including it here. Fanno Farmhouse is now a preschool, that my little grandaughter, Hazel, is going to attend next year! It is right along one of the branches of the Fanno Creek Trail.
Other Important Links
The MAX and buses make public transportation really good!
Schools In Portland- people are permitted to send their children to whatever school they want within the Portland School District, as long as there is room. If the school is important to you, it is probably a good idea to check and see which school your neighborhood is assigned to- because it seems logical that the best schools will have a waiting list- and if you live there, you will be at the top! Find your school attendance area or a school site and view the boundary area using School Locator Page for: Portland Public Schools..
Read how to use the interactive map by clicking on the (Information) icon (circle with an i in the center).
School Report Cards for schools and districts in Oregon. Select (Portland SD 1J) In the District Selection Heading to view individual schools within the Portland Public School District.
You can find all kinds of All kinds of information about crime, maps, etc, Portlandmaps.com even exactly what happened where, if you just put in an address in Portland. There are lots of other things you can learn there- like census information, maps, school info, parks, environmental issues, permits on houses, nuisance complaints and taxes.
