The Greener Guide to Seeing Portland More Sustainably

The best weekend mornings start with brunch at Harlow, a homey vegetarian restaurant. Pull up a mismatched chair at one of its upcycled wooden tables and tuck into the tofu scramble, vegan biscuits with gravy, home-made granola, or comforting bowl food. There’s also a large fresh juice menu, perfect for savoring while you watch the artsy types in Hawthorne pop in and out of thrift shops from the window.

In a building dating back to 1909, with a lobby papered in silver and houndstooth wallpaper, this hotel exudes refined glamour. Rooms feature billowy drapes and leather headboards, as well as sweet-smelling, ecofriendly BeeKind toiletries. Other green initiatives include energy-efficient lifts, beehives on the roof and donating leftovers from the restaurant to local charities.

Within the greenery of Washington Park, this quirky museum and education center is a 20,000sqft (1,858sqm) homage to trees and their management. Inside, you’ll find a 5m-year-old petrified tree stump, totem poles, exposed root tunnels and a series of videos showing how people around the world manage their local forests sustainably. It also hosts regular lectures about what the timber industry might look like in the future.

The little black dress of the Portland hotel scene, this classic hotel never goes out of style. Expect chandeliers, wood paneling, doormen dressed in sleek teal-and-goldenrod uniforms, and coffee from Water Avenue Coffee Company in every room. The hotel subsidizes transport passes for the staff, encouraging them to leave their cars at home, and as a guest, you’ll have access to a fleet of bicycles.

When former Japanese ambassador Nobuo Matsunaga visited this garden, he described it as “the most authentic and beautiful Japanese garden in the world outside Japan” – a description that really sums it up. These 12 tranquil acres (5ha) of Washington Park are filled with ferns, fountains and Japanese maples that appear to blaze come fall – an ideal setting for a few hours of thinking or journaling time.

This riverside hotel has the feel of a luxury mountain lodge thanks to burlap wallpaper and wood-burning stoves in bigger rooms. However, fun touches, such as tiger-stripe lapels on robes and regular craft-beer-themed events, stop things from feeling stuffy. Kimpton was the first hotel brand to achieve Green Key sustainability ratings across its entire portfolio, too.

If Mother Nature had bathroom cabinets, chances are they would be full of Blendily creams, soaps and herbal remedies. Every product is made by hand in the shop, using plants grown in the organic Blendily gardens or foraged in the Pacific Northwest forests. With products for your face, hair and body, consider it a one-stop shop for a green glow-up.

Soak up the bright lights of Portland from the top floor of an environmentally pioneering LEED Platinum building while sipping a sensational selection of natural wines. This wine bar and restaurant is practically an ecosystem, drawing water from an 8,000-year-old aquifer under the building and harvesting many vegetables from a 3,000sqft (279ha) rooftop garden. Menus change almost daily but are always fresh, flavorful and beautifully presented.