Wild onions sprouting with abandon in lawns everywhere signal it’s time for the Capital Home and Garden Show to end winter’s hibernation. The garden part of the show gives a tickle to green thumbs on the latest plants, trends (yes, plants have their own runway walk too!) and gadgets that fill our garages, sheds and tool bins. Held at the Dulles Expo Center February 27 – March 1 in Chantilly, it will feature HGTV’s host for A Gardener’s Diary, Erica Glasener.
Glasener graduated from the University of Maryland and worked at the prestigious Scott Arboretum at Swarthmore College heading up education programs. She’s now a columnist for the Atlanta Journal- Constitution when she’s not on a flat screen TV near you. Look for her presentations on Designing Gardens that Thrive: Tough Plants for Tough Times and Made for the Shade throughout the weekend.
Other informative presentations will cover organic insect control, butterfly gardens and landscaping with native plants. Rain barrels and zone busting lecture topics both caught my attention as the former are great for saving water which translates into money, with an important side product of reducing strain on the watershed. Zone busting, presented by Jim Dronenberg of the Four Seasons Garden Club, will provide tips on pushing the envelope on palms and other tender plants with proper placement, drainage and a little help from climate change.
But the thrill of the show are the gardens themselves and Joshua Dean, landscape designer from Merrifield Gardens worked three days with sixteen workers to create grottos and five different water features carting in eleven tons of stones and thirteen palettes of mulch. Check out the huge eighty year old boxwoods and the 1930 Ford Model A pick-up . And that’s just one garden.
This show kicks off a month of regional delights with the Philadelphia Flower Show beginning next week and the Washington Home and Garden Show later in the month.
http://www.examiner.com/x-3726-DC-Gardening-Examiner~y2009m2d27-Capital-home-and-garden-show-welcomes-spring
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