The Northwest Flower & Garden Festival is in full bloom this weekend at the Convention Center. It sprouted Thursday and won’t wilt until Sunday evening, so if you’re eyeing those flowerbeds and feeling the coming of spring… here’s where to get inspired.
It’s not just for green thumbs. If you’re thinking about selling your house, you’ll cultivate a better sales price by improving your curb appeal with flora—and each day the festival offers free seminars and demonstrations to teach you how to do just that. Gardentopia: Design Basics for Creating Beautiful Outdoor Spaces (Friday, 10 a.m.) and After the Sun Sets: What You Need to Know to Illuminate Your Garden Beautifully (Sunday, 1:30 p.m.) are just two options that seem pruned perfectly for the future home-seller.
If you’ve already found your dream house, the festival’s bounty crop of aesthetic information will still benefit you, alongside many other classes that teach homeowners how to get the most from their green spaces. For instance: Growing a Garden for Your Personal Health and Wellness (Friday, 11 a.m.) or Bling on the Wing: 12 Months of Flowers for Hummingbirds (Saturday, 3 p.m.).
Even those without a back yard have plenty to see here, too. The ten beautiful patio gardens that make up the City Living exhibit took up root in the Convention Center’s Skybridge, where apartment and condo dwellers (or anyone else with limited outdoor space) can get inspired about growing. As the festival says, these micro gardens “demonstrate just how creative container plantings can be. These 6ft x 12ft masterpieces incorporate intimate outdoor living spaces for relaxing and entertaining while incorporating vertical wall planters, bold plant combinations, lavish textural accents, cozy seating and even water features. These gardens are created by leading retail nurseries and landscape designers in the Pacific Northwest.”
And if you just want to window-shop, this is the place to be this weekend. Twenty brilliant gardeners are competing for the honor of best display—and each had only 72 hours to pull everything together. There’s a reason this garden festival is world-class, and if there were any question, these gardeners prove it. Photos of their spectacular creations won’t be posted until after the festival, but these photos below have already been making the rounds.
Everyone seems to be talking The Fleurs de Villes, debuting in the Pacific Northwest for the very first time.
The Northwest Flower & Garden Festival also has a treasure hunt for the kids, book signings, floral design workshops, and all sorts of other plant-based inspiration. This weekend can sow all sorts of ideas for how to make a garden feel as integral to your home as a living room, for instance—and sellers, homeowners, and renters alike can reap the benefits.
