I love garden shows! Last week Farmer Jim and I travelled to Seattle to attend the Northwest Flower and Garden show. I was speaking about ‘How to Create a Successful Kitchen Garden’ at the show which was so much fun. I love being able to share my passion for gardening with others. My favourite highlight of the garden show are the seminars. I love to learn so we took in as many seminars as we could.
We looked at the display gardens, shopped at the vendors and basically wore ourselves out each day. What I loved about the show were the connections I made with other gardeners. Before my talk I was in the lobby early and met a lovely woman sitting outside the seminar room. We got to talking and she said she was waiting for me to do my talk. Seriously, she had been waiting awhile so I was humbled that she would do that. She went on to tell me that she was struggling a bit as a single income earner with a mortgage that was more she could handle. She wanted to learn how to save money by growing food. I talked about how I had compared my harvests and saved quite a bit of money. You can read about it here at Was It Worth It to Grow My Own Food? After I left her I wish now I had thought at the time to offer her some seeds. I have thousand of seeds and it could have started her a new garden. I hope she reads this as the offer of seeds is still open.
On our third day at the show we met a couple from Idaho who said they had listened to my talk the night before. We got talking like most gardeners do and I found out they had come to Seattle for their 39th wedding anniversary. Of course, if you know me, I love to talk about growing food and so did they. We talked about greenhouses, growing too much and how we love what we do. I love hearing gardening stories from all over the country. Its those connections that make this country great.
I think after three days of wandering around the show the vendors got used to seeing us. Often when they found out we were from Canada they had to ask us what we thought about their politics. OK, I won’t get into the discussion here since this is a gardening blog but I was surprised to be asked what we thought.
On our last day we stopped to see a display on aquaponic gardening. I was on a mission to get more information for my friend Bren over at Gardenchat. Luckily for me two young ladies from Cascade high school were more than happy to tell me all about the aquaponic system. It turns out the aquaponic system is a school project offered by Farmer Frog. The students loved everything about the aquaponic system for growing plants and told me all about how it worked. I think the best part was seeing their enthusiasm for gardening. It’s not a secret that the average gardener seems to be between 40 to 70 years of age. I was thrilled to hear these young people so excited about gardening.
I will have more about the Northwest Flower and Garden show this week as there was so much to see. I would like to thank the staff, the sponsors and volunteers that make this garden show possible. I will be back next year. It’s shows like this one that inspire us to try something new in the garden.
