Today, right smack in downtown Seattle in the immense convention center, I got my first taste of spring. A fellow gardener in my Master Gardener cohort described it perfectly when she said you walk in to the NW Flower and Garden Show and the smell of soil immediately meets your nose. She wasn't kidding. And when it did, I felt like I'd made it home. Needless to say, the show was amazing. I went by myself and was perfectly content, wandering around in garden bliss for the entire day. Here are some highlights:
Turns out, I have a thing for rusty garden art. You might have noticed the rusty flowers I have "growing" in my garden already. Well, the booth of Home and Garden Art of Ballard was just too much to bear. I've been looking for a rooster to accompany my future hens and I found one today. I also managed to snag an amazing metal sign. Pictures of these new additions to my garden will be coming soon. 
The Seattle Tilth and NW Bloom display garden was stunning – complete with a chicken coop and a goat! These cold frames were the highlight though. Cold frames keep crops like lettuce warm during the colder fall and winter months so you can have fresh veggies all year long. I loved the chartreuse-painted reclaimed window that they used for its lid - and a wagon wheel hatch to boot!
Seattle Urban Farm Company had an amazing vegetable garden display in an old truck. Wild strawberries grew vertically out of the side of the truck. Stalks of corn filled the bed. To top it off, there was a chicken coop along side the old truck with a couple of beautiful hens inside. Their nesting boxes were in the cab of the truck.
Speaking of reclaimed materials, I discovered that Re Store offers classes on how to transform new finds into treasures. I also attended an amazingly entertaining seminar by one of the co-authors of the book, The Salvage Studio. I haven't actually gotten my hands on the book yet, but judging by the pictures I saw and awesome ideas I gleamed during the presentation, it would definitely be worth purchasing. 
Also, the recycled bottle rain chain (created by Bedrock, the company that keeps me stocked with all the tumbled stained glass for my mosaics) was amazingly beautiful. If I hadn't just purchased a metal rooster, I just might have splurged on the chain to funnel rain water into the new rain barrel I'm going to install next week. Finally, I stumbled upon the Cascade Harvest Coalition, an organization dedicated to connecting farmers and the community, thus supporting the local food system. They gave me this super cool farm guide with all the user-friendly information I could want about tons of local farms in our state, from CSAs to U-pick farms.
In the end, I left with some 4 inch pots of sage, some metal accessories for my garden, lots of new information, and inspiration to make my garden as beautiful as it can be. I think it's safe to say that I will be a repeat visitor to the show in the years to come.
2 comments:
I'm so glad you took the day off to go to heaven. Looks like you found even more inspiration! :)
I missed the show this year, went looking for a photo of the wine bottle rain chain, and found your blog and a kindred sensibility, thanks for posting!
I wanted to tell you of a mis-use of a word- I'm sure there's a name for this, where you don't think about the meaning of a phrase and therefore substitute a similar-sounding word that doesn't make sense for the correct one.
You said, "...judging by the pictures I saw and awesome ideas I gleamed during the presentation, it would definitely be worth purchasing." If you think about it, 'gleam' (to shine) makes no sense, and that grower's word 'glean'(to gather or harvest) fits much better, and is correct.
Keep writing!
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