For five days in March, the Canada Blooms flower and garden show drew record-breaking crowds to the Metro Convention Centre in downtown Toronto. Thirty-seven gardens were on display, showing off the skills of professional landscapers, garden designers, and horticulturists from southern Ontario. The floral competition attracted floral designers as close to home as the Garden Club of Toronto and from as far away as New Zealand, Ireland and South America. The show also featured gardening greats like Barbara Damrosch who talked about four season vegetable gardening (always a challenge in this country), Raymond Evison who is noted for his wonderful clematis, and British garden designer, John Brookes. It was impossible to see all the gardens, all the exhibits, and listen to all the speakers in the one day I attended the show -- but I tried. (Did I mention I am an obsessive gardener?)
The first thing that strikes you about a show like this is its size -- massive. The display gardens alone covered a six-acre area. Then there was 50,000 square feet of marketplace where gardeners could find everything from live plants (this year's pet plant was the variegated Jacob's Ladder, Polemonium 'Brise d'Anjou') to obelisks -- wooden obelisks, wrought iron obelisks, twig obelisks, stained glass obelisks. Tucked into a 10,000 square foot corner were the plant society booths providing educational information about all things horticultural. Topping it all were the seminar rooms on the upper levels which filled with gardeners and homeowners looking for the latest tips on growing herbs, annuals, and succulents; learning new techniques for pruning, seed starting, and planting wildflowers; and getting design ideas from "potscaping" to gardening with grasses.
Ironically, what I remember most vividly of this huge show was one of the smallest of the display gardens.
Designed by Earth Inc., a company recently founded by graduates of the Ryerson and Humber College landscape design programs, "A Garden for Living" featured an antique outdoor shower installed against a cord of wood pigeon-holed with bottles of chardonnay and champagne nestled in terra cotta wine coolers. Under the vine-covered arbor, a bistro style dining area stood on a patio of flagstones sprigged with moss, baby daffodils and crocuses. Lush greenery brushed the edges of the shower, and vines twined through the antique iron doors of a barn-boarded potting shed. If it were mine, I would never leave this urban oasis.
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5.
Dec 2, 2001 5:17 PM
I am a gardening beginner. Second year gardening, first year water and rock garden. I had good luck with water lettuce and hyacinths, even though they didn't flower. The water garden also included b ...
-- posted by gadget1948
4.
Apr 17, 2000 6:32 AM
When to plant your seeds outdoors really depends on what kind of seeds they are. Usually, there will be instructions on the back of the package. If yours don't have instructions, you may want to borro ...
-- posted by GardenMart
3.
Apr 8, 2000 9:12 AM
I would like to know when can I start to plant my garden seeds Outside..???
-- posted by lindamac
2.
Apr 1, 1999 3:41 PM
Thanks for your comments, JoJo -- I owe it all to the miracle of modern technology and can take no professional credit for those photos! Actually, I was a little disappointed that the lighting was so ...
-- posted by GardenMart
1.
Apr 1, 1999 12:44 AM
Hi Lorraine
The Canada Blooms Show sounded wonderful. I've never seen an indoor flower show that's really convincing and atmospheric, but this one sounds so. The tie-in of the pigs-in-a-basket and ...
-- posted by Jojo
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