Hyperfocus of the Week: NW Flower and Garden Festival

For a Northwest Plant lover,  The Northwest Flower and Garden Festival is a must. Well, probably just once for this plant lover. My mom and I attended Thursday and Friday, staying overnight at a nearby hotel (that had a broken elevator, mediocre dining, but decent noise control). 

The show was at the Seattle Convention Center and cost $42 for a two day ticket. Admission covered many classes, demonstrations, and seminars; access to the show gardens and porch gardens; and three Costco sized areas of vendors. 

We began our first day with a self-guided tour of the show gardens. There were two exceptional gardens. The first was book themed, with a garden library, stair stepped log planters, and a pond with floating wooden bowls. It was as if someone walked into my head and made it into a garden. 

The second best garden of the show was food themed. There was a winding path of canning jars filled with a feast’s worth of goodies surrounded by tasteful edible plants. The color scheme was amazing and I plan on stealing it for my porch garden this year. 

The rest of the show gardens were fine. People obviously put a lot of work into them, and they were skillfully designed, but they didn’t tell me a story. It was just hard scape+flowers+ random this and that to break up the eyeline. One garden was a dye garden which I should have loved—and the colors were nice—but it was too busy for me with strips of cloth woven into the arbors making me think of those suits that special forces wear to blend into the terrain—but like fairy special forces? With pastels? 

After our garden walk through, Mom and I made our way down to the DIY stage to watch a demonstration on Ikebana flower arranging. It was amazing. The first thing the demonstrator said was “this is going to change how you look at your yard” and boy was she correct. Ikebana is all about minimalist arrangements that are asymmetrical, in interesting containers. 

I can’t wait to get out and gather some sticks and early plants to make into art. 

At this point in the day we had a couple hours to kill before our next seminar so Mom and I decided to wander through the vendor offerings. It was…disappointing. As I mentioned, there were three areas for the vendors. The first was filled with a combination of MLM’s, gutter companies, and artists who had either blown glass, cut metal, or some sort of homemade soap/candle booths. 

Now, I have no problem with metal garden art or blown glass, but every booth looked the same (except for the adopt a glass slug booth). At the very end we found a really neat selection of pieced together yard art using vintage glass pieces painted in pretty colors, but that was after thirty minutes of trudging through crowds staring at another metal sunflower display. 

The second section of vendors was a little more artsy, with some wood workers and clothes stalls thrown into the mix of visual artists, but a lot of the booths seemed to be filled with the sort of junk you find at downtown tourist shops in small vacation towns everywhere.  There were some honey and hot sauce folks as well, who did seem to be doing well. 

The largest vendor area was about 50% plant vendors,  20% organizations, and 30% random vendors. I browsed tractors, got my hair straightened by a chatty lady hocking beauty tools, eyed the biggest pickle display ever, and declined to try out the adjustable beds and foot massagers. 

The plant booths were really what we had come for, but the plan was to do a quick walk through on Thursday and then come back with the wagon on Friday for our haul. 

It was time for our second class of the day by this point and I enjoyed learning how to mount orchids onto cork wood. I think this might be my next plant party idea. 

Day 2 started with a four block trek from the hotel to the convention center with Mom insisting on pulling the wagon then telling everyone we saw “She makes the 80 year old pull the wagon!” What a sense of humor. 

While I sat down to watch a container showdown, where two professionals were pitted against each other and the clock while creating beautiful container displays, Mom started shopping for plants. I joined after chatting with my favorite plant podcaster, Maria Failla, host of Growing Joy. She is as delightful in person as she is on her show and I highly recommend following her for great plant tips. 

So! Our haul. I was fairly reserved in shopping for myself. I did buy a lovely pink jasmine for my bathroom, and a pink princess philodendron that is just stunning. I also snagged a crimson queen Hoya carnosa as I plan on expanding my Hoyas this year. Plant Daddy Seattle had a great selection at good prices.

The folks at Predatory Perennials were our favorite at the Festival. Knowledgeable and enthusiastic, they grow their own stock and you can tell. It was healthy and well cared for. I bought Moss some Pinguiculas for his terrarium. 

Mom spent quite a bit of time at Rancho Cacto’s booth. They are a farm out of Aurora, Oregon, and they have a fantastic selection of cacti and succulents from all over the world. 

Fern Grotto was another booth that I spent some time at. The owner is a terrarium expert and was kind enough to walk me through what we could be doing better with Mossy’s project, and how to turn it into a real bog. I am planning on taking a class with Moss there at some point, even if it means a long drive! 

My goal of the trip was to get a handle on my plans for my patio garden this summer. I was surprised at how few booths were focused on outdoor plants. We did buy some bulbs and a few packets of seeds, but most of the vendors seemed to be indoor plant heavy, or fruit trees. This may have something to do with the time of year? 

I hit up a terrarium class next and got a few ideas, but by this time I was running out of steam. Still, Mom needed another hour for browsing plants. By 4:30 pm our wagon was full and my feet were tired; we hiked the four miles uphill with our goodies, drove onto the Bainbridge ferry, and made it home by 8. 

On the way home, Mom and I talked over the bests and worsts and what we would do differently if we go back. The seminars were great—worth the price of admission. We should have brought more snacks. The wagon was the right call. 

Probably half the plant vendors had nursery stock from the same large distributor that furnishes many of our local places, as well as the big box stores. They were charging at least as much or more than we would pay locally, so we largely ignored them. What was lovely was getting to meet the owners of a lot of the specialist nurseries that grow their own stock. Now that we know they exist, we will certainly be visiting when we are in town. 

Perhaps the most lovely thing about the whole trip—other than hanging out with my mom—was the general sense of camaraderie. Everyone in that building was a plant person. Plant people are really cool people. It was like being in a space with thousands of potential friends. All in all well worth the trip.