shows

From the Philadelphia Flower Show 2005

During this down time of the year the weather isn’t good for gardening outdoors. The winter seems to be dragging on and yet there is still a couple months more to go. It’s the time that I start thinking of garden shows. I’ve never entered a garden show. I’m way too busy to get involved in that obsession, but I have friends that do them. I do enjoy going to them. It’s a great escape from the doldrums of winter, and it’s also a good way to get motivated for the coming season.

Sometimes it’s a good place to get design ideas, but design for a show can be oriented to plants that will show well, meaning that they are easily forced into bloom for a show, or can be grown to large size in a small container, and are relatively inexpensive to produce since forced plants often do not survive once the show is over. Plants that have broken dormancy in February will need spring light and temperatures, which is difficult enough for a small plant, and extraordinarily costly for a tree.

The displays are also just that: a display. It’s not a real garden, so plant combinations could be combinations that would never occur in a real garden: for a number of reasons. They could combine plants that have very different cultural requirements (dry and wet plants planted together, or shade and sun plants together), which works beautifully for a display that lasts a few weeks, but not for a long term garden.

The displays also don’t take into account seasonality. The displays are oriented toward spring, of course, and if you really did plant some of those designs in a garden, the other seasons may lack performance.

Still, it’s a fun and exciting thing. What gets me, sometimes, is when I have great garden ideas that someone else has also had, and has installed in a garden show. Such is the case of the “underwater” garden that I designed when I lived in Palm Springs, California in 1999. I was so enamored with the succulents and cacti that grow in the area, and the idea that they looked like coral, that I designed a garden that looked like a coral reef, the “fish” being hummingbirds that could be attracted with feeders or with plants that attracted hummingbirds such as Chuparosa. I never installed it.

In 2005 I went to the Philadelphia Flower Show, known as the oldest (and grandest) flower show in the country. This show, held at the convention center, was so large that we never saw all of it in the six hours or so we spent there. Mostly that was because my companions to the show got overwhelmed, and decided that enough was enough, despite my pleas to see the last several acres of displays and sales. I bought some Eremurus ‘Cleopatra’ instead (which has yet to bloom).

At one point I turned to see a display that was, as you might have guessed, a “coral reef” garden created from succulents and cacti. Hey! That’s MY idea! Well, of course it was theirs as well. Their design was much more “flower show” oriented, in that the design was much more elaborate and flashy than I had in mind, and really garnered attention. Fish sculpture were placed among the “corals” and the designers succumbed to the temptation of putting in such fishtank cheesiness as a treasure chest. The difference is like that of home cooking vs. restaurant food. Still, it was nice to see that the idea I had would really work. I guess that goes to show you: if you have a good idea, you’d better get it done before someone else does it.