Paxton Gate’s Garden Section Is Not to Be Overlooked

Paxton Gate (multiple locations, paxtongate.com) embodies the city’s “Keep Portland Weird” motto with its eccentric offerings.

Entering one of its two Portland locations feels like all eyes are on you—because they are. The stores are famous among Portlanders for their taxidermic displays, including a two-headed calf, a bobcat, giraffe bones, a cape buffalo, and other exotic creatures rarely found in someone’s living room.

But hidden behind the displays that adorn the walls prominently, seeming to act as security over collections of fluorescent butterflies, lies a garden section.

Earth-tone pots line the bottom shelves, while lush greenery breathes life into the space. Among the hanging plants and variegated monsteras, cacti adorned with prickly needles, and large leaf shapes resembling hearts, you’ll find insect-eating plants like Venus flytraps and pitcher plants. The space is shared with drawers and glass cases of colorful rocks, bones, fossils and local artists’ work.

Originally founded in San Francisco in 1992 by two landscapers as an eccentric gardening store inspired by the natural world, Paxton Gate expanded in 2010 with two independently owned locations in Portland, showcasing even more peculiar aspects of nature.

If big animal heads are not your thing, Paxton Gate has some “normal” alternatives for you.

“We have a huge selection of crystals and a large variety of fossils from all over the world,” stores and operations manager Elise Lark tells WW, listing an inventory of alternative home decorations like labradorite stands, a fossilized cave bear skull, and megalodon teeth.

For Lark, meteorite specimens are among her favorites.

Dabble in the world of carnivorous plants and antique-inspired plant misters, or maybe snag something totally unexpected like ostrich leg lamps. Explore vintage mushroom posters, or dive into the stash of stationery, jewelry and T-shirts, and framed insects that scream personality.

Paxton Gate is more than a scene out of Night at the Museum; it’s a store of curiosities for the home and for the person, far more than you’ll find at your run-of-the-mill garden section at Home Depot.

See the rest of Willamette Week’s Best of Portland 2024 here!