As I mentioned in my last post Louie and I spent several hours the other day at the NW Flower and Garden Festival. It’s celebrating its 30th year as America’s largest family-owned garden themed show. It’s truly amazing! There are a number of of demonstration gardens, which are what I’ll be showing you here. But there’s also a huge marketplace with hundreds of vendors selling all manner of garden products, as well as miscellaneous show type stuff. There’s also a large plant market with a number of specialty nurseries who offer miniature conifers, bulbs and tubers, even Japanese maples. I could only handle it for a few hours before sensory overload hit and we had to leave. But I got a lot of good pictures and I want to share them with you here.
All of these gardens were created by dedicated teams of volunteers in just the 72 hours preceding the show! Incredible! Of course none of them would make it outdoors as planted – they’re not meant as literal gardens themselves and their job is to showcase various themes and styles rather than an actual garden design. They move in literally tons of rock, soil, mulch and of course hundreds of plants, ranging from a few inches to 20 feet or more tall. I always get a lot of ideas for my own garden, but of course it’s already so over-planted I don’t really have room for more. But next year I’ll plan ahead better and get some bulbs at least. But then the reason we go is just to enjoy the sights. I hope you do too!
OK, thats about it. It’d be nice if I’d been able to remember each display, but I didn’t have writing materials and it would have been too hard to remember each one anyway. But I hope that just the designs themselves will be satisfying for you, as it was for me. If you have a garden show in your area please do find time to go to it. You’ll be supporting a good cause and be able to see some amazing garden displays and get your own ideas for your garden at home. It’s worth the trip.
Happy Viewing,
Steve
Gardening in Greenwood 