Gardening : Landscapes to Delight or Inspire
There’s nothing else quite like it on the West Coast: a garden show with little landscapes to admire (and inspire) outdoors and displays of exotic flowers and gardening paraphernalia indoors--and under two big tents.
Whatever you’re interested in--dazzling orchids such as the huge yellow-flowered oncidiums flowering now, drought-resistant plants, potpourri, garden furniture, English tools, outdoor lighting, Grecian olive jars (100 to 300 years old), ready-built gazebos, sod, or flowers (lots of flowers)--you’ll find it this weekend at the Los Angeles Garden Show at the County Arboretum in Arcadia.
The entrance, an “open house” with windows suspended in hedge walls, was designed by the Landscape Architecture Student’s Assn., and it establishes the show theme “At Home in the Garden.”
Just inside is a mystical, fog-filled landscape designed by Joe Linesch and Paul Comstock for Monrovia Nursery Co., which won the Judges Award.
“The idea was to make a slightly magical garden,” says Comstock, and the Mee Fog System, developed in nearby San Gabriel, does the trick, emitting droplets only 10 microns in diameter to produce clouds of fog.
In one corner, just to the side of Ayres Hall, are some clever little gardens in nursery flats (those shallow boxes that ground covers are sold in), made by area children. These too received awards for categories such as “Happiest Ghost Garden,” inspired by Halloween, no doubt, and “Most Warlike Garden,” peopled with GI Joe figures.
The Department of Water & Power has a display inside Ayres Hall of drought-resistant plants, and the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden won an award for their display of rare and endangered plants called “Treasures of the Flora.”
Out in the tents, the Theodore Payne Foundation is selling California native plants.
Virginia Gardener has an entire bookstore inside one of the tents, with the largest selection of gardening books imaginable.
English tools and other nifty garden accessories are being offered by Sassafras Nursery and Ashbrook’s for the Garden, and everywhere there are bromeliads (at bargain prices), orchids, African violets and other exotics for indoors or out.
Surrounding the tents are many outdoor landscapes by different designers or nurseries. They’re filled with chrysanthemums and many other flowers that can be coaxed into bloom during the fall months, but the reason for holding the show at this time of the year is that it is the best season for planting just about anything in Southern California.
This is the last weekend of this event, which got off to a rainy start, and it might be the show’s last year at the Arboretum, because it has become bigger than they can manage. A search is under way for new quarters.
Show hours are from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., today and Sunday. Admission is $6 for adults; $3 for children, seniors and students. The Los Angeles State and County Arboretum is on Baldwin Ave. in Arcadia, just south of the 210 Freeway.
