2018 Northwest Flower & Garden Show

If it’s February, it must be time for the Northwest Flower & Garden Festival (NWFGS) in Seattle. This year is the show’s 30th anniversary and the theme for the display gardens is “It’s a Garden Party.” The video slideshow runs about 13 minutes. Relax and enjoy.

Cake and Cheers for 30 Years
Cake and Cheers for 30 Years

I’ve been attending the NWFGS for nearly 20 years. It’s always a treat to see what the garden designers come up with. There’s color, fragrance, cool plants, water, texture, and structures — all coming together to pleasure your senses.

For the Apple of my Eye
For the Apple of My Eye

This year several of the gardens featured glass art. That’s not surprising as the Seattle area is a hotbed of creative glass blowing and sculpture.

The color palette this time around felt like there were lots of reds and yellows. Plants like coral-bark Japanese maple, tulips, daffodils, and witchhazel all contributed. Several of the gardens featured edgeworthia, which I don’t find in a lot of outdoor gardens in our region, but is a reliable early-blooming shrub in our climate. Fragrance came from daphne and sarcococca, both winter bloomers you’ll find outdoors about now.

A Stone Forest
A Stone Forest

I was intrigued by reflections in highly polished stone in the garden designed by Marenakos (the company that provides the stone for all the display gardens). The polished stone created the illusion of water in a garden that didn’t have a drop of the real stuff.

Celebrate Form: Art Imitates Nature
Celebrate Form: Art Imitates Nature

If you’ve never been to the flower show in Seattle and have any interest at all in gardening, you need to put the event on your calendar. This year’s show runs through Sunday, February 11. In 2019 the show will be later in February.

For my photographer friends … I photographed the display gardens with my Sony A6300 mirrorless camera and a Zeiss 16-70mm lens. It’s rather dark in the garden area, so I set my camera to ISO 3200 and shot most frames at f/4 or f/5.6.

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