Heirs & Heirlooms!
This little cutie is helping her dad, second-generation Flower Show exhibitor Ed Jameson lll, of Jameson Landscape & Irrigation, load up the company’s greenhouse with plants for this year’s Boston Flower & Garden Show exhibit. The show is filled with second and third generation family businesses whose hard work and dedication span decades and keep the show going strong. It’s the same tradition, and strength built over time, that make heirloom plants grow strong, too. We’ll offer several programs on heirloom plants this year. John Forti, the Heirloom Gardener, and Curator of Historic Landscapes at Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth, will show us how to landscape with heirloom plants in his lecture “Historic Gardens – In Your Own Backyard” at 11:30 on Wednesday, March 14. On Saturday at 4:30pm, join Ken Greene, co-founder of the Hudson Valley Seed Library for his talk “Heirloom Gardening”. The Seed Library will also have a booth in the Garden Marketplace if you’d like to try your hand at growing some new-to-you plants this season.
You Just Can’t “Contain” A Good Show Theme
The popularity of last year’s container gardening show theme has prompted a program on the topic at least once a day in the 2012 show’s Lecture & Demo schedule. On Wednesday, March 14, Tina Bemis from Bemis Farm Nursery will show us how to “Make a Great First Impression with Porch Pots & Window Boxes”. On Thursday, MassHort will offer several programs including one from the Mass. Nursery & Landscape Association and another from Master Gardener Betty Sanders titled “Containers for City Living” as part of the After Work Urban Gardening Series. Friday, container garden gurus Deb Trickett of The Captured Garden offers “Jaw-Dropping, Traffic-Stopping, Get-Your-Neighbors-Talking Container Gardens” and exhibitor Ed McLean of Boston-based Potted Up offers his wisdom in the after work urban series. On Saturday, “Four Seasons of Charming Container Gardens” will be presented by Lakeview Nurseries’ Michelle Harvey, and on Sunday, Trish Wesley Umbrell of Natick Community Organic Farm will take one last swing at it with her unique perspective on “Four Season Window Boxes”. In other words, if you like containers, we’ve got you covered!
Fun & Games at the Flower Show
While this year’s Boston Flower & Garden Show theme “First Impressions” invites visitors to think about the looks of their gardens and outdoor areas, we strongly believe those spaces shouldn’t just be for looking but also for living! So we’ve invited authors Paul Tukey and Victoria Rowell to introduce their new book, titled Tag, Toss & Run: 40 Classic Lawn Games on Sunday March 18 from 3:30 to 5:00pm. For more than five years, Tukey, founder of People, Places & Plants magazine, has focused his energies on the SafeLawn Foundation, educating the public about how to grow lawns naturally. With the publication of the new book, which was co-authored by actress and best-selling author Victoria Rowell, Tukey shares his desire to inspire people to use – rather than just look at – their lawns. Come to the show to say hi to Paul and Victoria and to get re-acquainted with the joy of old-time-y family lawn games like bocce and croquet and maybe learn a few new ones, too!
Get Green This Holiday Season
Need some fresh gift ideas and want to avoid the mall all together? Visit your local garden center or nursery. Introduce a friend to the wonderful world of eco-friendly gardening with the gift of a compost bin or a rain barrel. Need a quick and clever hostess gift? Put together a combination such as an unusual plant and a book on its care, or a cookbook and a windowsill herb garden. Have a new homeowner on your list? How about a starter set of garden tools, gloves and a rake? Did you know that many nurseries and garden centers will re-pot your loved one’s favorite houseplant for free with the purchase of a new pot? Consider gift certificates for gardening classes and services like landscape design consultation (less expensive than you think). And if you want to make any of these gifts extra special with very little effort, visit this website starting December 1 to order tickets to the Boston Flower & Garden Show!
Trees of Green
The recent hurricane and that random first fiery red leaf have us all looking upward and appreciating the lush green canopy, whose days are regretfully numbered in this particular neck of the woods. Take a good look. Are there branches that need to come down before the wet, white weight of winter makes them a hazard to your home or blocks a pretty view? Are there bare spots in your landscape in which you wish you’d planted something colorful and eye-catching for the drab months to come? Take a note or two because this year’s Boston Flower & Garden Show will address all your tree-related concerns with lectures such as Penelope O’Sullivan’s “Four-Season Landscapes: Choosing Trees & Shrubs for Year-round Appeal” and exhibitor Brent Markus’s program, “The Allure of the Japanese Maple”. Joe Biagioni of Arbor Alliance gets his clippers out for “Pruning 101” while Kerry Ann Mendez offers tips on “Creating the Wow Factor in Shade Gardens”. Got trees? We’ve got you covered. For a full list of lectures and demonstrations, click here.
The Fall Season of the Flower Show
In the days to come, the world will go “back to school.” It really doesn’t matter if you have school-age children or not, life is affected by the comings and goings of the school bus. For the Flower Show, a mental switch flips and suddenly September is the beginning of show season. Garden exhibitors take careful stock of the plants they will lovingly nurture over the cold winter months into March-blooming perfection. Retail vendors and speakers finalize their 2011-2012 show seasons. Suddenly the phones start to ring around our Paragon Group office in Needham with a pleasing regularity that was missing during our constituents’ busy spring and summer seasons in nurseries, garden centers and on landscaping job sites all across New England.
We’re excited to get down to business on this year’s Boston Flower & Garden Show. Though a lot of the groundwork has been laid, the fine details start to fill in over the next few months, painting a picture of the event to come. The people behind the show – the folks who design and build the gardens, the volunteers who give hundreds of hours to produce the many-faceted Amateur Competitions, the Production Team that works diligently behind the scenes on a thousand details, and our staff – are looking forward to working with all involved to create another joyful celebration of Spring.
This year’s show theme, “First Impressions,” reminds us a lot of those thrilling first days of school. We’re excited to welcome back old friends and introduce some “new kids”! The wheels on the bus are turning. You will find all the info you need to participate in the show on this website – a Garden Marketplace Exhibitor application, info on discounted group tickets to the show, the Amateur Competition Schedule – as it all becomes solidified. Thanks and happy gardening!
