2025 Northwest Flower & Garden Festival
It’s February, and we’re on the cusp of spring after an extended period of colder than normal temperatures and lingering snow in our garden. Each year, the Northwest Flower and Garden Festival in Seattle brings inspiration to gardeners all across the Northwest, inspiring us with creative ideas to integrate cool plants with fantastic hardscapes and sculptures.
The display gardens at the show can best be described in terms I’ve used many years: garden theater. The lighting is theatrical, the plants are always perfect, and you’ll see things blooming together that would never be possible in an outdoor garden. Nevermind, it’s all still good.
It seems like each year there’s a plant that shows up in several of the gardens. This year I was impressed to see Arctostaphylos, aka manzanita, used nicely. They were hybrids, not straight west-coast species so not natives, but in the right place they’d make a nice addition to your garden.
Art in the garden is often quite welcome and the display gardens showcase it nicely. I particularly liked the brightly colored twisted steel rods in the Fiery Blossom Bar display garden. Uplighting them added to the drama. Similar pieces were also in the Rejuvenating Waters: A Journey to Vitality display garden. I also liked the red knitted (?) spiderwebs in the Zone 9 display garden and the wooden outdoor shower enclosure in a garden featuring evergreen oaks.
The video tour below runs about 6 minutes and gives a taste of all the display gardens. Enjoy it full screen on the biggest screen you’ve got.
The 2025 show is now in the can, but mark your calendar for the 2026 Northwest Flower & Garden Festival February 18-22, 2026 at the Seattle Convention Center.