This years Flower and Patio show was a wonderful way to bring you out of the funk of winter, it's always great to see and smell all the amazing flora that is jam packed in to complement all the wonderful hardscape that seems to prevails at these shows. The number of gas firepits had to have taken the Exhibition Hall up one growing zone! I really liked the theme of neighborhoods; it was a great idea, as there are numerous great neighborhoods in this city. Overall I think the show was done nicely and was thankful to see the number of non-gardening related booths limited.
What's missing is the opportunity to really educate people about realistic gardening. As a Master Gardener, one of our responsibilities is to educate the public and I like to work at our booths to facilitate this goal but so often while working at shows like this I get some form of the same question, "How do I get my garden to have everything blooming all the time like these are." Now I work in advertising and I realized that having non-blooming plants in the display wouldn't bode well in a feature garden. It would be admirable if someone could figure out a way to show how to stage continuous instead of having a full season of blooming plants all blooming simultaneously! For those of us that know this is not a possible view it gets a little frustrating trying to explain to novices that is they want this sort of profusion of color for three months they might be spending a lot of money on annuals and pumping them full of bloom-builder fertilizer.Maybe next year someone could be daring and not have every plant that is possible to force into bloom, in full bloom crammed in together. It's just not right to see tulips growing amongst full grown hostas, after all this is not Bree Van De Kamp's hydrangea garden on Wisteria Lane.
