We have reached January and are looking increasingly bleak as the snow melts from the winter winds. Even avid gardeners get stuck indoors for long periods of time.
This means we have to look for other entertainment. Luckily, that change was a quick trip to Seattle and this year's Northwest Flower and Garden Festival. This year's show will take place February 14-18 at the Seattle Convention Center.
Just attending the ceremony, smelling the fresh flowers and listening to the birds singing (even if the birdsong was recorded) lifted my spirits. This year's theme is "I Love Spring" and the show will feature more than 20 display gardens, more than 115 educational workshops and thousands of plants, tools, seeds and gardening art. Show Gardens is full of ideas that you can take home and implement in your own garden. I'm always looking for unusual and hardy plants to try in my garden, even if they have to be near the living room window until planting.
This year's show gardens were designed by some of the Pacific Northwest's most innovative garden designers who have poured their heart and soul into creating stunning garden designs. Created from over 30,000 planted plants and flowers that bloomed on the exhibition floor in less than 72 hours, this stunning temporary work of art presents so many ideas that you can incorporate into your outdoor space, regardless of its size. This year's garden features a relaxation area, evening play area, romance room, firewood art gallery, edible plant concepts, and plenty of nature and Pacific Northwest lifestyle.
My favorite memories of creating the garden on the show were those 72 hours. In 2004, members of the Garden Writers Association planted a vegetable garden at an event where vegetable gardens were making a comeback. We started with a stack of pallets distributed by a display tractor. We add a layer of soil and then plant vegetables grown by some of our members who have greenhouses. A small greenhouse with plants and lighting was added. The garden's front wall was constructed from straw bales grown by Nichols Nursery in Albany, Oregon, and transported on Ed Hume Seeds trucks returning to Seattle from an early spring seed delivery. We work 12 hours a day and get dirty. But all these efforts were not in vain: we were able to win the People's Prize.
In addition to gardening demonstrations and shopping opportunities, the event also includes five-day workshops with leading garden designers, plant experts and garden storytellers. This year's workshop will feature Jesse Bloom, an award-winning author and eco-landscape architect specializing in regenerative landscape design and permaculture; Amy Campion, wildlife gardener and author of Gardening in the Pacific Northwest: A Complete Guide for Homeowners; Co-author and Dan Hinckley, world-renowned botanical researcher, author of The Explorer's Garden and other books, and revitalization director of Heronswood Gardens.
For show information and tickets, visit the Northwest Flower and Garden Festival website: www.gardenshow.com.
