Boost Your Garden Design Skills and Save Money at a Flower and Garden Show

What if you could complete a master garden design course in a day? That's what you get when you attend one of the major flower and garden shows in anticipation of spring. Certainly, looking through web sites, books, and magazines are useful ways to find inspiration, but walking through dozens of gardens in a day (sans bone chilling winds and snow drifts) is my idea of comfort and efficiency.

If you live anywhere near Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco or any of the big-time, celebrity-studded venues, you'll find the inspiration to push your design chops to the next level. True confession: I've only been attending shows for a few years, mainly to find fresh ideas to share with my readers. But even though I've been designing gardens since the 70s, each time I visit a show, I come away with new tricks, discover hot plants, and find innovative products to use in my own clients' gardens.
(And this year, you can find me sharing my design wisdom at two West Coast shows, but more on that in a minute.)

My intent isn't to diss the smaller regional shows scattered around the country, but the resource pool of top-of-their game designers, garden creators, and speakers can be limited. On the other hand, regional shows feature local professionals intimately aware of the opportunities and challenges of gardening right where you live. If a local home and garden show is as far as your spare time and budget can take you, by all means, get thee to a nearby exhibit hall and soak up everything you can. The following advice applies regardless:

Didn't mean to tease, but you'll have to click to get the good advice at my January 16, 2012, Fine Gardening blog post.