Seattle Show Chases Away Winter Blahs
Garden shows, especially when they brighten the middle of winter, can be invigorating and inspiring. You can see interesting plants and landscaping ideas, talk with other gardeners and listen to experts all in one place, sometimes under one roof.
Even distant regional horticultural shows are worth visiting. I just returned from the spectacular Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle, a little over two hours away by jet and doable in a day.
Held every February, the Northwest show is the largest on the West Coast, with about 100,000 people attending the five-day event. It completely fills the inside of Seattle’s five-acre convention center.
As at most shows, the display gardens are the highlight, but surrounding these were about 1,500 booths with information and products for sale, most aimed at the Northwest gardener. Even here, there were things that might interest a traveling Southern Californian, from English garden antiques to clematis small enough to fit in the overhead compartment on the flight home.
Judging the 35 display gardens that filled the central exhibition area was difficult, because all were spectacular. Fortunately, there were a lot of awards to be given out, with many being quite specific, such as best use of natives or the best use of forced plants.
Almost all the flowers had been “forced” in greenhouses to bloom early, and that alone is quite a sight and accomplishment.
*
For instance, the display garden done by the Washington Park Arboretum was bursting with deciduous azaleas in full flower. These azaleas--which won’t grow here--come in delightful sherbet colors. They gently sloped toward a central path lined with crocus and violets inter-planted with small grasses and the ever-present Northwest moss. It was a very inviting picture, difficult not to step into, and it was awarded a medal.
Most of the display gardens aren’t designed to be walked into but are arranged as if on a stage, dramatically lit from above in a high-ceilinged, darkened hall.
Indoors, the displays and visitors are safe from capricious winter weather. Garden shows like this are timed to arrive before spring, to enthuse near-dormant gardeners growing tired of the long winter.
As it happened, Seattle was enjoying a respite from this winter’s rains, and the days were cold but startlingly clear and sunny. Outside, the Cascade and Olympic ranges were covered with snow, but inside, spring was full-blown.
Some gardens had mature fruit trees in full flower, others were filled with flowering shrubs and bulbs at their best. The most dramatic display was a 70-foot slice of a Parisian park, packed with lilies, roses, tulips, delphiniums and spring annuals. Gilt statues and verdigris walls made a stunning backdrop.
Several display gardens used Northwest native plants to good effect. The Founder’s Cup award went to a monumental landscape of granite boulders, heather meadows and carefully pruned pine--one growing atop a solid slab of rock like a giant bonsai.
*
One of my favorite display gardens combined traditional Chinese imagery with contemporary Northwest wood artistry. A Chinese-inspired arbor, elegant in its simplicity, led into a courtyard filled with bamboo set against a backdrop of sculptural, totem-like wood poles.
It’s an example of a new kind of garden that Ann Lovejoy, the Northwest’s favorite garden author, calls a “fusion garden,” where two culturally different styles become one.
Listening to experts like Lovejoy speak on “Gardening in Cascadia” and talking with other avid gardeners are other good reasons to travel to garden shows.
In less than 60 minutes at Lovejoy’s talk, I learned what gardening is really like in the Northwest--and was surprised at how dry their gardens become in summer and at how rotten their glacier-packed clay soils can be.
I’ve always assumed that they had rich, fertile soil and plenty of water, though a pamphlet I picked up titled “Water Conservation in a Northwest Garden” suggested otherwise. It was clear we had our gardening differences but also our similarities.
I’ve already put next year’s show on my calendar. In 1998, it’s scheduled for Feb. 4 to 8. Call (206) 789-5333 for more information about tickets and times.
The San Francisco Landscape Garden Show is coming April 16 to 20. For more information on that show, call (415) 750-5108.
