A Miniature Gardener’s Northwest Flower and Garden Show Review
This year’s theme was Once Upon a Time, Gardens with Spectacular Stories to Tell and it produced a wonderful array of display gardens full of magical moments. Several different forms of miniature and fairy gardening where spotted throughout the show. It was good to see the professional designers finally recognizing the latest and hottest trend in gardening – and trying their hand a miniature gardening.
Here’s a review of the mini garden moments captured by Yours Truly.
The Three Little Pigs garden with the straw, stick and brick houses were great. I would have loved to get my hands on these miniature gardens as most of the plants used were a bit too big in scale for the buildings. Playful and fun nevertheless! This brick house was about four feet tall.
It was great to see these two fairy gardens tucked in the corner of another display garden. The brown wire mini garden accessories couldn’t be seen very well with the theatrical lighting at the show but the colorful fairies saved the day and probably attracted a number of children to the containers.
A couple of other vendors and a few school displays embraced the latest fairy garden trend. It was nice to see them peppered throughout the show too.
I finally met Gery Rudolf of A Small World Within Reach who did a garden bed display and a DIY seminar on the Thursday. Her specialty is larger miniature gardens of 1/6th scale and I found out that her gardens are really arrangements that are meant to last for a season or for a special occasion.
Last July, I volunteered to help with the children’s play garden for this show but alas, it went unnoticed. US Bank’s miniature play gardens didn’t quite make the cut with the children and were hardly played with. A girl parked herself in front of the gardens and began posing for me. Otherwise, that’s the only time I saw kids interacting with them.
And finally, Yours Truly did her own demonstration on the Saturday. There was a big typo on the signs and in the show guide that misled people into thinking that I was doing a completely different demo on “Guide for a Festive Brunch with Friends.” Huh? Some people got up and walked out once I began.
Nonetheless, the people that did take it in were so inspired by it, they bounced up to the stage afterwards to get a closer look to see what I was doing. It was fun to meet my fellow MGs and put faces to the names!
Not only were miniature and fairy gardens finally represented throughout the show but what I loved to see was the garden designers playing with larger-than-life sized objects to force the perspective the other way.
In this Paul Bunyan’s garden they included a large shovel to force the perspective the other way to make the garden appear smaller in relation to the over-sized shovel, about 6 feet long.
The Alice and Wonderland display garden had several larger-than-life moments that nicely done. The oversized teacup was about 18 inches in diameter. The “Drink Me” vial was about 2 1/2 feet tall.
All in all it was a great show for miniature gardening thanks to the main theme of the show. It was more than interesting to see professional garden designers trying to garden in miniature. I guess it isn’t as easy as it looks!
If you get a chance to go to the Philadelphia Flower and Garden Show (March 6 through 13th) or the Boston Flower Show (March 16 to 20th) these two shows have embraced miniature gardening – and have been doing so for years.
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