By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine
Photographs by Erina Kong
The Northwest Flower and Garden Show seems as connected with spring in Seattle as birdsong. Take it away, and I get that vague melancholy that comes from reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. I just can't imagine Seattle without the show. But after 21 years producing the third largest flower and garden event in North America, Duane Kelly is bowing out; so this week—now through Sunday—may be your last chance to see it for yourself.
I previewed the show yesterday, and was wowed: the 23 competitive show gardens are outstanding. One of my favorites was a rooftop garden (bottom) planted with grasses and bamboos designed to blow in skyscraper breezes, plus living carpets, walls, and even a tabletop planted with succulents.
The show also includes two outstanding native plant gardens. Ask any garden writer to name a well-executed native landscape outside of nature, and you'll be faced with a long pause. We can all think of gardens with a cobalt blue Ceanothus here, or a stunning Romneya there, but cohesive whole native gardens? Rare as hen's teeth. This year's show, however, has two good ones.
There are also two or three impressive Asian-influenced gardens. One, a very large Thai garden, has three distinct sides; I loved two of them (you guess which). A Japanese-influenced garden with a moon gate is an absolute stunner whose large trees are underplanted with warm-colored grasses and interspersed with a glass dry stream bed, a woodland section, and linear stretches of ground covers, polished stone, and wood. It's a garden I couldn't duplicate ever, but would love to take home.
Finally, Sunset editor Julie Chai and I were very much taken with a large garden that seemed the ultimate study in greens. Built around an outdoor kitchen and edged on one end by aspens on the other end by chalky white Himalayan birches, the garden was all at once restful and uplifting. Plantings were arranged in colonies, as they are in nature, and the hardscape was perfectly executed.
The show is also the best-ever source for tools, orchids, and all manner of plants, garden art, seeds, bulbs, clothes, and more. Go early and give yourself plenty of time—because there may be no next time.
The Northwest Flower and Garden Show is inside the Washington State Convention Center, which straddles Interstate 5 between Union and Pine Streets in downtown Seattle. Show hours are 9 to 8 Wednesday through Saturday, 9 to 6 Sunday. Tickets are $20 for adults; for full pricing info, click here.
