Barbara Peake Wise is the author of the upcoming new book, Container Gardening for All Seasons: 101 Plant Recipes for Year-Round Color (Cool Springs Press, Feb, 2012). She works for Southern Land Company, LLC in Franklin, Tennessee as their Director of Floriculture, where her responsibilities include overseeing the design, installation. and maintenance of the 250+ annual beds and 400+ containers in Southern Land Company’s developments. She provides the homeowners with educational classes, container and window box planting services, and gardening consultation. Barbara has been on the Discovery Channel’s ‘Picture This’, is a writer for Tennessee Gardener and has a monthly gardening column, Garden Compositions, in Nashville House, Home, and Garden magazine. This year her blog featured “365 Days of Container Gardening” – a daily post of container planting ideas for every season. With the desire to “Cultivate a Culture of Gardening®”, Barbara is a Master Gardener, a member of OFA and GWA, and has learned in raising her four highly active sons that gardening was cheaper than therapy when it came to maintaining her sanity.
Follow Barbara online at:
Blog: www.bwisegardening.blogspot.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/barbarawise
Twitter: www.twitter.com/bwisegardens

The WOW Factor
Principles of Creating Beautiful Container Gardens
Thurs, Feb 9 at 12 pm / Hood Room
The WOW factor is not just produced in what you see; it’s about following principles that produce excellence. Using container gardens and annual color beds we’ll look at how to transform a home or garden area from “walk on by” to “wow, oh my!”  This seminar will take you through design principles to keep in mind when combining plants in containers, great plants for season long or year round container gardens, some “trust me, they’ll look better once they are planted” annuals that you might be passing by in the garden shops, and choosing the right plant for the right place for the right kind of gardener.

Garden Compositions
Transform a Garden into a Symphony of Sensations
Fri, Feb 10 at 10 am / Rainier Room
Composing a container garden is not simply throwing random plants together in the same way that  composing a song is not about throwing a bunch of notes  together ; it’s about following principles that produce excellence, it’s about creating something that will stick with you like a good melody.  Using container gardens we’ll look at how to transform a home or garden area into a symphony of sensations and have others singing your tune. This seminar will take you through design principles to keep in mind when combining plants in containers, great plants for season long or year round container gardens, some “trust me, they’ll look better once they are planted” annuals that you might be passing by in the garden shops, and choosing the right plant for the right place for the right kind of gardener.  

Meet the author!
Book signing immediately
follows these seminars.