2007 Central Ohio Home & Garden Show

Whenever you see two of the same things side by side, you can't help but compare them. Yesterday, Mom and I went to the Ft. Wayne Home and Garden Show and today we traveled to Columbus to the Central Ohio Home and Garden Show. We expected to be wowed in Columbus, after seeing the much smaller Ft. Wayne show, but that was not the case. No doubt it was because the Columbus show was more home than garden. If either of us was building or remodeling, then Columbus would have been the place to be, but we were there for the gardening stuff.

The Garden Showcase, which featured what was supposed to be gardens from other countries, was beautiful even if we couldn't tell what country a garden was from without looking at the sign. Outdoor rooms was the theme for many of them, and the word of the day was 'stone.'










It was amazing to see how many creative ways stone pavers, blocks, slabs, pillars, and freeforms could be used. These displays were lavish and would cost several thousand dollars to recreate in your own yard, but bits of them could be taken and modified for use in the average backyard garden. And besides, it's always fun to dream and see how the other half lives.

By far, the most beautiful was the Japanese garden. It received a Gold Award, and it deserved it. Not only did the layout of the space contribute to the esthetics of the display, but also the use of beautiful and unique trees, shrubs, and plants. Shades of green flowed one into another and it was anything but bland, yet it didn't scream at you. It gave a feeling of peace and being at one with nature, which is what most of us enjoy most about being in our gardens.

Besides the use of stone, if there was anything else that resonated throughout the displays, it was the variegated evergreens. The lime green shades of some were fabulous, while the whitish and orangey shades made some appear to possibly be in a state of dying, even if that wasn't the case. It's a personal preference that makes you either love them or hate them.

Paul DiMeo, one of the designers for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition was a featured speaker. The team had done a makeover for the Jason Thomas family of Columbus, and they were supposed to be there, too, but we didn't hang around long enough to see them. I remember watching that episode, though, because one of the team members cut his hand while working on a wooden flag wall hanging and ended up in the hospital.

It didn't take us long to browse the displays, both home and garden, and by noon, we were on our way back towards home. We stopped at Tuttle Crossing Mall to take care of an exchange at Brookstone, and we grabbed a bite to eat at Panera Bread. We got to look in at Pottery Barn, which is always a treat since we don't have the store locally. I bought a shadow box frame on sale, and a small metal figurine of a hummingbird, which I plan to use together with a picture of one of my garden flowers.

It was another fun day, though with the way I've felt this past week (flu), I probably should have stayed home. But I just hate to miss out on anything, and now I can say that I didn't. Flu be damned.

2007 Ft. Wayne Home & Garden Show

Okay, I'm pumped.

Mom and I attended the Ft. Wayne Home and Garden Show today. There was a little bit of everything to whet our appetites for all the garden-y fun that awaits us in a few weeks, which was the point of it all. Just the smell of the mulch used in the landscaping displays was enough to make me wish it was May instead of March, not that I wasn't feeling that way already.






The orchids and ferns hanging in the entrance to the garden room set the mood immediately. That led to a lovely stone patio and water feature surrounded by tulips, daffodils, and hydrangeas. Ahhhhh...Spring!





Program books and shopping bags were provided, but Mom didn't think she'd need a bag. I was pretty sure I would, and we didn't get far before she'd changed her mind. We were taken in by the copper and glass hanging rooting vases for sale at one booth. There were so many different designs, it was hard to decide on one to take home, but we somehow managed. Next, we spent some time looking over the plant offerings by Country View Greenhouse. I was tempted by some hellebores and heucheras, but managed to resist buying potted plants just yet, since they can't be planted outside for awhile.




It seemed to me that the 'it' thing at the show was water features. There were displays from several different companies that will construct them for you. We saw some neat basalt stone pillar fountains that Mom was pretty taken with. The $800 price tag just for a group of three in graduated sizes puts them out of my range, but they were unique and just my style.







We then made our way to the Butterfly Pavilion. There, you could go into a small enclosed area, where Painted Ladies and Monarchs were fluttering about.

The Painted Ladies were very friendly and they not only landed on you, but you could put your hand near one and it would crawl on and let you hold it.



For eight dollars, you could buy two Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) caterpillars to take home and raise through the butterfly stage. These were being sold here to benefit the American Cancer Society, so not only was it an easy way to try a fun thing, but it was for a good cause.

Next, we bought some Foxtail Lily (Eremurus stenophyllus) bulbs in both yellow and orange, six for twenty dollars, which included two starter pots, liquid plant fertilizer and bonus gladiolus bulbs and anemone corms. We sniffed the tuberose (mmmmmmm...) at the same place, but didn't buy any.

We took our purchases to the car, then returned to listen to Martha Ferguson tell about the gardens and their restoration that she oversees at the Gene Stratton-Porter State Historic Site near Rome City, Indiana. It was fascinating and she enticed us to visit when the weather is warmer. Martha is also known as 'Earth Girl' and is the author of one of our favorite garden blogs, The Good Earth. It was a joy to meet her!

We made a quick run-through in the second large room of displays, where I found and purchased a packet of seeds for the Himalayan Blue Poppy (Meconopsis betonicifolia). Now I've not yet been able to grow a poppy, let alone these somewhat temperamental ones. The seed packet says it's 'somewhat challenging', but for most gardeners, that's just an engraved invitation to try and grow it. Wish me luck.

We bought some teriyaki beef jerky and cinnamon roasted pecans and munched our way around the rest of the displays before deciding to call it a day well spent. And we're going to do it again tomorrow, when we travel to our state capital, Columbus, for the Central Ohio Home & Garden Show.

The Hippeastrum on the Shelf

My favorite winter flower grows in pots in my house - on the floor, in the window sill, on the table. I'd never grown amaryllis before last winter, but when I saw 'Papilio' in a Dutch Gardens catalog, I had to have it. Wearing stripes, as I like to do, it was a flower after my own heart. But it did not come without a price. I think it was $25, and that was more than I wanted to risk on something I knew very little about.

I shopped around the web and found one for $9 and I ordered it. Once it was here, I had to decide if I was going to suspend it on pebbles with just its roots in the water, or pot it up in soil. Since I wasn't planning on discarding the bulb once it was done blooming, I decided to plant it in a pot. By putting it in soil, I could water and feed it once it was finished blooming and the bulb would store up strength for next year's bloom.

About seven weeks later, I was rewarded for my efforts with a bloom every bit as lovely as its pictures. 'Papilio' means 'butterfly' in Latin, and we enjoyed its fluttery beauty for about two weeks. And now I was hooked. I wanted more. Walmart had the more common large-blooming varieties, such as 'Red Lion', 'Apple Blossom', 'Dazzler', and 'Minerva', and of course, there were all kinds to be had from online stores. I purchased a few more and by the end of the winter, we had had an amaryllis in bloom at any given time from Christmas on.

When it got warm enough outside, I took all my hippeastrum bulbs (that's the botanical name for the amaryllis we're talking about here) and planted them in the ground in my garden. I didn't expect them to bloom in the summer, but I did want them to have the benefit of the sunshine and nutrients from the soil and rain. And if I got lucky, maybe they would multiply by producing little offset bulblets.

When the cooler weather of fall arrived about the beginning of October, I dug up the bulbs, cut the foliage down to the top of the bulb, shook the soil off, and put them in mesh bags to store in my dark, cool basement. I left them there for about two to three months, watching for any signs of them starting to grow again. Early in December, a couple of them started to push some foliage out the top, which was my signal to pot them up again and start the blooming cycle once more.

I got a few new ones this year, of course, and we've once again enjoyed blooms pretty much the entire time since Christmas. One, in particular - 'Royal Velvet' - had me oohing and ahhing so much that Romie said one night after I'd commented for the umpteenth time what a luscious color it was, "I'm glad you're getting so much enjoyment out of that." And I really was. I couldn't stop looking at it. It was as if by looking at it so intently it would reveal the secret to its beauty. It never did, of course, but then a provocative lady never tells all her secrets, does she?

Last fall, during a visit to Mitchell Books in Fort Wayne, 'Papilio' once again caught my eye. She was the cover girl of Starr Ockenga's book, Amaryllis. Ahhh...there was another amaryllis addict. Bought the book. Drooled over it all the way home.

And now I present to you some of the members of my Harem of Hippies: