Another Portland YG&P Show is history. As you all know I look forward to this event for weeks…planning which seminars to attend, wondering if this is the year a show garden finally knocks my socks off, and dreaming about new plants I’ll discover. This year will stand out for me but not for any of those reasons. The night before the show opened, at a private party with plant explorer Dan Hinkley, my husband passed out cold, twice…it was terrifying. While we still hope to get some answers (a follow-up doctor’s appointment is scheduled) he seems to be fine now. If there can be a silver lining to this horrible experience it’s this amazing horticultural community that I am surrounded by. The night of the event, and in the days following, the outpouring of concern and offers of help and well wishes have been amazing. Plant people truly are the best.
Sitting in the ER on Thursday night I never dreamt I would be at the show on Friday afternoon, but indeed I was. After dropping Andrew off at work (yes that’s the kind of man I married) I walked the show floor for a couple of hours…eyeing a few plants, seeing familiar faces and trying to critique the displays. To be honest it all seemed so surreal. The very things that felt so significant to me the day before were no longer, or at least not nearly as much. Maybe it was my altered state of mind but I found myself breaking the show down and categorizing things into reoccurring elements…circles, walls (sometimes with circles), benches (one of which was a circle) and of course then there were the plants.
We start in the garden "Thrive Outside" by Red Bird Restorative Gardens, because they had all the elements, this big wall with a cut-out circle was the first thing I saw…
I love the idea of it, but I could hear my father saying, what a waste of good firewood. I also loved their swinging bench…
Although I wonder about the practicality of having a pond underneath. The dark circle on the ground? Water...
I’d curl up there on a summer’s day, drinking a glass of wine and reading a great book, only to stand up (forgetting about the water) and step right in it!
At the back of the garden was another firewood wall, this one with a circle of sempervivum and sedum in the center. Love it!
Unfortunately there was a model doing yoga in front of it so I couldn’t get a good photo. At least it was a working garden.
A big circle!…
Although wood isn't really a design element in my garden I liked this wooden circle detail.
A corrugated metal cocktail table!
And of course I liked the stock tank pond, although wouldn't have looked better with a few plants?
How about a Weber BBQ fountain?
Here’s a floating circle…(yes the black again is water)
And a, well, I’m not sure how to describe this circle. The garden was called "A Glimpse Back to the Fifties" but the boomerang table really didn't belong here…really, completely wrong scale.
This vendor even made a circle with agaves around a center agave...
Moving on to the walls…what a perfect color to highlight the golden foliage of a Chief Joseph Pine…
I've not really gotten on board with the pallet garden trend, but I did like how it was being used here, as a dividing wall.
I feel like I've seen this before. Still love it though…
In the fabulous Urban Edible Garden was this planted niche in a wall…
This cool reclaimed wood planter wall piece…
(love those chairs too)
And these simple rusted sections used to create a see-thru wall of sorts.
Still in the Urban Edible Garden, I also really liked this simple hanging piece and the metal screen it was hanging on.
In another display I was taken with the use of a gabion retaining wall planted on one side. I don’t know how practical it is but it’s a great look.
Although you might want to use stronger metal for the framework (and larger rocks), looks like they had some issues here.
In the benches category there was more rusted metal…
A fabulous swing, which could actually double as a bed.
And this display from the ProGrass people could be transferred right into my garden (minus the accessories thank you)…
Finally, the plants! Phormiums were back, big-time.
I noticed several in the display gardens. Although I can’t say I saw any vendors selling them.
This was confusing. The tag clearing identified these as “Weeping Blue Atlas Cedar”…
But really, do these look like they’re weeping?
Clearly they do not. I asked one of the guys working the garden and he just sort of smiled and laughed like I was making a joke.
The color! That green just says spring doesn't it?
If you have a dead tree I think painting it and leaving it in the landscape can be a great idea…I just hope this one was dead.
And who doesn't love seeing a blooming magnolia? At first I was sure this was fake but the closer I looked I decided I was wrong.
This little show-goer had a long day…
Things I thought about purchasing…all of these agaves when I thought they were only $4 each or 6 for $20…
Sadly they were not.
I also was really tempted by the masses of Abutilion ‘Red Tiger’ plants but decided to wait until later and see if I still “needed” one.
I couldn't even look at the tag on this grevillea at the Xera booth to see which one it was/how much it was. I was afraid I wouldn't have put it down.
Love the polka-dot begonias…
And this nice tree fern at the Dancing Oaks booth would have loved to come home with me! For $85 it stayed behind.
I did buy this Bromeliad, Billbergia hallelujah…
And for the husband’s office a Euphorbia horrida, he’s been asking me to do a little plant shopping for him and this seemed like a good time to start.
I also attended a few fabulous seminars, although my note taking was a bit lax. Two of the best for true plant geeks were the ones by Sean Hogan and (yes) Dan Hinkley...if you're interested in the plants they spoke about Justin over at the blog 'Growing Steady' has a great plant list you might want to check out, here.
So that was my YG&P Show experience...the good, and the bad. Coming up in just a week it's time to do it all over again at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle. Hopefully my attention will be completely focused on the show this time.
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