Food and Creativity Grow at the Portland Yard, Garden & Patio Show this Weekend

  After coming off days at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show (any stats yet on attendance? Can't wait to hear if the numbers are up...) I headed down to Portland last Thursday with a distinct lack of enthusiasm for yet more doo dah.

However, the moment I walked into Portland's Convention Center, with its warm lighting and more human scale, my enthusiasm bounced back. In the three years since I last spoke in Portland, this smaller, sweeter show, put on by the Oregon Association of Nurseries, has grown up. This was a banner year, with exciting plants, one of the best display gardens I've seen at any show ever, lots of local vendors,  and, as always, the Hardy Plant Society's display of branches and flowers cut from member's gardens.

This simple display brings real sophistication and a needed educational component for plant-centered gardeners, for the range and variety of the plants is so impressive.

I especially loved walking down the aisles sniffing dozens of different kinds of witch hazel, writing down names of viburnum...it's like a haze of a real winter garden, gathered together to remind us what's possible in our climate, even in mid-February. You can just picture devoted gardeners out cutting a branch here, a fragrant flower there, plucking one of their prize hellebores, forcing a twig of Daphne odora, and bringing their garden's bounty down to the convention center to share with the rest of us...

The show feels more real than ours, perhaps because of the lighting, and its more manageable size (about half the attendance). I love having the lights turned up so you can see plants and people (enough of the theatrics at our show! Give us light!), and that the commercial, display and educational components of the show are well integrated. In one aisle, I bought begonias, fingered some beautiful scarves, mooned over lilies, and picked up literature on hardy succulents, right before I wandered through the fabulous "Garden To Table" display of edibles.

This garden is so believable, so modern in its sensibilities, design and materials. Inspired by the French potager style, it meanders along the back wall of the convention center,  divided into a series of rooms, a style that worked as well for fruits and vegetables as it does for ornamentals. The use of repurposed materials added to the garden multi-dimensionality, as did twiggy arbors and a lenghty old barn ladder hung as an arbor over the rustic dining table (above, left).  A little greenhouse with citrus plants, a chicken chateau, bee hive, and a canning kitchen, let alone espaliered fruit, herbs and vegetables add up to a productive, earthy, fun and sophisticated display by designer Karen Schwarrz. Calendula Garden Design and Carol Senna of Melingo Studio Landscape Design.

You'll want to settle right down at the dining table, admire the coolest centerpiece I've about ever seen (note to Ciscoe - check out the brussels sprouts at the heart of the arrangement), press a few apples in the cider press, stir a pot of jam in the outdoor kitchen....I'm still pondering how the designers made this garden so welcoming, utilitarian, and believeable, yet sophisticated in its sensibilities and use of materials.  This might be the display garden that helps us re-think our use of garden space, materials and emphasis....and alone is worth a trip to Portland...you still have time, the show runs through 5 p.m. tomorrow...

The low, horizontal centerpiece on the outdoor table is an inspired mix of edibles, herbs and flowers

The kitchen components are utilitarian, homey, comfortable and decorative - with unfussy details like the green wall and ceramics that are perfectly suited to the garden in scale and spirit...

The plants are ornamentally arranged in raised beds; as each garden room unfolds into the next, you have the feeling of productivity and every square inch gracefully and cleverly used to grow food. There's nothing self-consciously ornamental about how these edibles are used, but they're planted to show off the inherent beauty of each plant...

I'll post more photos and impressions of the show over the next few days, but wanted to get word out about this fabulous garden in case you still have time to make it to the Portland....

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Ruth]

This sounds wonderful! Can't make it tomorrow, but want to calendar this show for next year. Is the date set?

[valerie Easton]

Hi Ruth,
I can't find dates for next year on the OAN (Oregon Association of Nurseries) website...usually it's one or two weekends after the Seattle show...you could check the OAN website in a few weeks and see if they've posted the dates for 2013...the show is definitely a good excuse for a winter trip to Portland...

[The Velvet Bulldog]

Thank you for your comment regarding the lighting at the NW Flower & Garden show--it's ridiculous. At one garden, a friend and I were trying to figure out whether a shrub was dark green or maroon. What's the point of that? A former instructor of mine, who had a garden in the show said that often the gardeners aren't able to interact with the lighting designers and get less light than they want. I say, to heck with the "lighting designers." Turn on the lights!

[Scott Weber]

I agree...this was probably my favorite display at the show...and yet somehow I forgot to post my photo of it...drat! I thought the vignette of Rosemary and Kale was the single most effective planting at the entire show...elegant and understated. Also, a great example of how you can take humble, even (gasp, COMMON!) plants and use them well.

[Rodney]

Absolutely gorgeous! I wish I could see it in person, but unfortunately, Oregon is a bit off the beaten path for us Midwesterners.

Thanks for sharing!