With the Pacific Northwest having an unseasonably warm September ( it’s about time!) it seems appropriate that the winner of the voting for the song was the Beatles “Here Comes the Sun.”   Between now and September 15 you can vote on plant groups to be used in the garden. The garden show is [...]

  Well it’s official! Your “Design a Garden” votes are in, and the music genre is Rock ‘n Roll and the winning era of music was 1960 – 1990. Now designer Lloyd Glasscock, of Looking Glass Design has selected eight popular musical artists for you to choose from in our next week of voting. This [...]

  Have you ever wondered about the countless design decisions that must go into creating a world-class garden show display garden? From the garden creator’s initial kernel of an idea, to the final building of the garden in 72 nerve-wracking intense hours, it is 9 months of planning, designing, recruiting, building, buying, forcing, pleading, sweating [...]

They came, they saw, they raved. The three Show Judges – Panayoti Kelaidis, Lucy Hardiman and C. Colston Burrell – bestowed eight Gold Medals on the nineteen show gardens that they judged, proclaiming it the “best garden show ever.” The 2011 show garden theme, “Once Upon a Time…Spectacular Gardens With Stories to Tell,” sowed the [...]

COLLEEN MIKO, GUEST BLOGGER Inside the Northwest Flower and Garden Show, we experienced the emotional rush of spring.  The positive energy and excitement were measurable as people drank in the garden possibilities presented by so many talented “plant people.” Over and over, attendees of the show expressed this hopeful optimism as they enjoyed the elaborate, [...]

MARTY WINGATE, GUEST BLOGGER Each year, garden creators are offered the chance to decorate and hide a certain object somewhere within their displays. It’s a fun game for both kids and adults; this year, you’ll be looking for piggy banks. But in addition to the pigs, you’ll find another theme running through the displays: sustainable [...]

  The past few years, when I would go to the Washington State Convention Center during move-in of  the Northwest Flower & Garden Show, I always had one primary objective – not to get run over by a front loader or trip on a piece of lumber and face plant into a pile of compost. [...]

Early next year, during five typically cold and gloomy days in February, the Washington State Convention Center in downtown Seattle will spring to life like a Tim Burton movie set. Twenty-two groups of garden designers and landscapers will be creating dramatic show gardens, most using a beloved book or fairy tale as the source of their [...]

The Washington State Convention Center is just a cavernous empty space when the show production staff and garden creators begin their magic. The show gardens are created in only 90 hours, beginning Friday evening, with the teams often working around the clock. All of the gardens must be completed, cleaned up, and vacated by 12:00 [...]

Opening Day slammed me with the incredible fragrance of nature as I walked onto the showroom floor today. There is no better perfume and it was intoxicating as I stood, and breathed deeply-and breathed deeply again. The fact that I could smell it even before hitting the showroom floor was a tantalizing reason to move [...]