Boston Flower & Garden Show 2011

Aaah, flower shows. The Boston Flower & Garden Show is going on through Sunday, March 20th, and I had the chance to attend this week. Is there nothing better on a cold, raw, rainy March day than to smell the dirt, see the green, ooh and aah over the flowers and displays and think of Spring? So of course we have to start off with the tulips and bright colors. But there was so much more!
I loved this beautiful display of foxgloves, one of my favorites in the garden.

Another favorite of mine at the garden shows is the stone work. This circular stone sculpture was breathtaking, and of course there are Spring flowers there as well!
And this one I would like to have in my backyard. I have the perfect spot for it, maybe someday.
The theme of this year's show was the Container Garden.
I went to an inspiring lecture by Deborah Trickett of The Captured Garden. Here is a basket of Deborah's with seedlings just hatching from egg shells. I came home with all sorts of ideas, as Deborah said, anything that can hold dirt can be used as a container!

And wouldn't this have been a beautiful place to sit down and have lunch! The Newport Flower Show put on a gorgeous display that made you want to climb right in and sit down.

So after we rested a bit and ate some lunch, my friend Ginny looked at the plastic containers our lunch came in and declared them perfect for seed starting! We collected
containers from the ladies we were sharing a table with and came home with some nice mini terrariums.






And fasion seemed to be a theme this year as well. The stone lady went with the Newport display, and the pink dress with the flower bodice, in the display by Village Arts & Flowers of Walpole, MA was stunning.





But this lady was my favorite. Perched high on the top of a rock outcropping, you almost didn't notice her unless you were really looking. Gazing down on all of us, she looked peaceful and serene in her woodland setting, right at home.

Flower Show Time

Spring must be near, because the flower shows have started. I played hooky today and spent the day at the Rhode Island Spring Flower & Garden Show in Providence. It's the earliest one in the area and there is something wonderful about smelling dirt and seeing plants in bloom in February.

It always amazes me how whole buildings can be brought into a convention center and set up to look like they just belong there. The time and effort required is Hurculean I'm sure. This was
my favorite, a stone house with a moss roof and a stone heart shaped entrance framing the building. It can't be seen well in the picture (double click on it to enlarge the picture) but the top was all grapevines and had a birds nest sitting in the middle. And of course, it was surrounded by incredible plantings.

Here are some other pictures of displays and blooms that struck my fancy...



The lighting on this display gave an ethereal, other-worldly cast on a chapel-like stone building as if it was caught at sunset bathed in red and pink. Accenting the building was a pond in front, dramatic red dogwood branches, daffodils and flowering shrubs. On the side of this were a few fallen down tombstones, surrounded by crocus and primose. Like stepping into a fairyland.

Lady slippers and other orchids to the right. I've never been able to keep an orchid alive, never mind have these beautiful blooms, but I love admiring them.




And then there's the whimsy. This was a whole VW bus from 60's decorated in peace and love, parked in the middle of a man-made forrest. This was the back...unfortunately I dropped my camera and it decided it didn't want to work anymore so I couldn't get a picture of the front which was quite spectacular. Even had a couple hippies sitting in the front that looked like they were made of moss. Groovy!


I attended a fun demonstration on making herbal vinegars by Paul Split, a horticultural consultant who does demonstrations all over the place (http://www.paulsplit.com/). I make plenty of herbal vinegars but got some new ideas as well as a good source for bottles. Paul is a great presenter, and I appreciated his extolling the virtues of organic gardening to the crowd while making his vinegars.

I also attended a lecture by Julie Moir Messervey on the Home Outside: Creating the Landscape You Love based on her new book. Well organized, practical and inspiring, her slides were beautiful and I wanted to run home and start putting in new gardens all over the place.

I finished up the day going through the vendor area. I bought some heirloom seeds from the Hudson Valley Seed Library - a Dragon's Tongue bean and scarlet Flax - and a neat herb grinder. I usually always buy pussywillows at this show but couldn't find any so headed to the parking garage. In the elevator, wasn't there a woman with 2 bunches of pussywillows. I asked where she had found them and she told me those were the last 2. So no pussywillows this year from the show, but it was a wonderful day. How many days until Spring?