The West Suburban Chicago Flower and Garden Show

We have all heard of the Chicago Flower and Garden Show, but I am sure not too many of you have heard of Wannamakers Flower and Garden Show!  I think it began about ten years ago and each year has become better and better.  It is not elegant or overplanned but is a composite of what we are all about, small planting areas, barbqueing, seating areas, water features.  Best of all, it is free!

Not everyone in suburbia lives on an acre of land.  In fact where I live and many of the surrounding areas we have city type lots that will not accomodate a swimming pool or an expansive patio or deck.

I attended yesterday and I looked like a roving reporter with my small digital camera snapping pictures of the displays.  I had to make a choice between my big digital camera and the pocket version.  I went for the pocket version because I didn't want to make a spectacle of myself.  It is a very personal show, speaking to the owners of growing nurseries, people who make food for hydrangeas that give you pink or blue hydrangeas, your choice!

There were flowers for sale, in fact just about everything was for sale at a discount for the show days.  I was so busy taking pictures and talking that I really was not a focused shopper.  There was this new tomato cage which I bought as an experiment because I have never found a cage that really worked and believe me I have had them all.  Right now I am using an expensive one from Gardeners Supply which still doesn't keep the tomatoes within bounds.  I purchased just one of these new cages because she said Burpee was their biggest customer.  We'll see if it can keep my Beefmaster within bounds!

Maybe these local flower shows are where it's at, servicing and inspiring the locals.  I bought the tomato cage as an experiment and six lilies.

Midwest Gardening Symposium

A whole day of just talking Gardening and Gardens what could be better?  I attended the Midwest Gardening Symposium on Friday at the Morton Arboretum.  It was a great day filled with wonderful garden books, authors as speakers and so much up-to-date gardening information:

• Slow down on the garden curves, no amoeba shaped lawns
• Go upstairs, if you can, and look out at your lawn shape
• Use more straight paths with multiple centers in the garden
• If you have a curving path keep it soft just enough to create mystery
• Your multiple centers should have a destination focus, i.e., fountain, statuary, pergola, arbor, obelisk, etc.
• Make sure there is something distinct to look at as you gaze through a window, i.e., statuary, structure, container, etc.
• Release the inside into your outside, garden should be an extension of your inside home, color, style, etc.
• Use art in your garden palette, i.e., Vincent Van Gogh colors for your patio containers, check out an art print book and use the colors of a favorite artist for your theme
• Think of telling a story with your garden, antiques with a newer home, collectibles, painted vintage chairs, some eclectic modern surprises with a vintage home
• Make vignettes such as sword (grasses), frilly (ferns) broad (hosta) all together
• Plan or redesign your garden in the winter thinking  pathways, structures, raised beds, evergreens, trees for shape and deciduous shrubs and grasses
• Use flower plantings in your vegetable garden and vegetables in your flower borders (many of us have been doing this for years)
• Use light plants against dark
• Borrow a pleasing view from a neighbor's yard, arrange your plantings so that their yard shows through
• The new outside decorating color for furniture and pottery is aqua or turquoise

Our speakers were wonderful, Gordon Hayward author of Art and the Gardener, and several other books, Pam Duthie author of Continuous Bloom and Continuous Color.  Pam Duthie is part of a new group called Perennials in Focus who are in the process of evaluating plants over a three year period in real gardens.  They have a new website  http://www.perennialsinfocus.com/  We had other expert speakers talking about using vegetables in containers and garden plantings and garden maintenance. 

I spent too much on books!!!!