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Vancouver Island |
Victoria | News
Victoria Home & Garden Show April 1, 2004
Spring show takes you
down garden path
This weekend's Victoria Spring Home and Garden Show is packed with
over 200 exhibitors selling home improvement products, but the show
really belongs to the gardeners.
It may look like a jungle, but Jeff McClelland put this display
together with Byron Wilson inside the Juan De Fuca recreation centre.
Custom-crafted structures, as well as indoor and outdoor furniture
built from reclaimed boughs, have become popular garden focal points.
A slate pathway winding through a garden is an example of one of the
many outdoor designs possibilities you'll see at the show.
Landscape designers have been busy preparing for this weekend's show.
The first of January may be the calendar date famous for resolutions
but in Victoria, New Year's takes a back seat to the raft of vows made
by gardeners at the spring equinox when home-horticulturists wake up
to see the winter backwash coating their flowerbeds.
Nothing marks this better than the annual mood of spring home and
garden shows, and if the editor would let me, I'd emphasize the word
"garden" in big bold letters and circle it three times in bright red
ink. While this weekend's Victoria Spring Home and Garden Show is
packed with over 200 exhibitors selling home improvement products, the
show really belongs to the gardening gang.
"The gardening organizations now take up more of my time than the
other 200 exhibitors," says show manager Doug Hope. "But it's fun and
it's what separates us from other shows."
The Victoria Spring Home and Garden Show will feature some top-notch
garden displays by award winning landscape designers.
Here's my list of "gotta-see-it" show exhibits.
PLANTPHORIA
Asian interior decor is hot in Victoria, and award winning local
landscape designer Valerie Marcotte is taking the popular indoor theme
outside.
Marcotte teams with Laurie McKay, owner of Better Gnomes and Gardens,
as well as local island nurseries to create two gardens that stand at
opposite ends of the style spectrum.
The Þrst is a Japanese garden that puts true traditional Oriental
methods through their paces, relying on texture, form and varying
shades of leaf colour to create an aura of tranquility. Tall, arching
arrow bamboo, coral-barked sango kaku and elegantly shaped tanyosho
pines will blend with blue diamond rhododendrons, black bamboo and
delicate pale-pink leafed hakura nishiki willows. Granite Oriental
lanterns create eye-catching focal points in this display.
Then Marcotte turns playful in the Spring Swing garden, a countriÞed
display that features a sod-roofed rope swing and slate stepping
stones that wind past a stream and pond. Purple periwinkle, fragrant
pink, purple and white hyacinths, creamy Easter lilies, red Azaleas
and variegated ivy breathe spring colour into this whimsical setting.
JUNGLE KITCHEN GARDEN
Show visitors will have to look up at the Juan de Fuca Recreation
Centre's ceiling to make sure they're not standing outside when
they're at the jungle kitchen garden exhibit by Jeff McClelland and
concrete rock-scape crafter Byron Wilson.
McClelland, famous for rescuing native plants from forest harvests,
and who is a six-time award winner at the acclaimed Seattle Northwest
Flower and Garden Show, will be on hand to offer native plant garden
advice. The display will feature PaciÞc hemlock, cedars, shore pines,
salal and wild native þowers, all couched in Wilson's outstanding faux
rock and waterfall setting.
FURNITURE
Furniture shoppers will have lots to choose from in garden
furnishings. Look for carpenter John Lore's rustic, driftwood bough
creations. Lore, owner of Pickle Ridge Rustic Carpentry at Whippletree
Junction, got his start more than 10 years ago working with woven
willow, but switched to red cedar for its durability in wet West Coast
winters.
Built primarily out of reclaimed boughs that would otherwise have been
chipped or burned, Lore's benches, swings, chairs and rockers are
mortise and tenon joined.
Homeowners who have been agonizing over taking down a diseased or
poorly placed favourite tree can call on Lore to custom-craft indoor
or outdoor furniture from the tree as a keepsake. Lore also makes
indoor furniture out of alder.
SWINGING INTO SUMMER ON A HAMMOCK
There is nothing quite so soothing as an afternoon spent lounging in a
hammock in the company of a good book. Whistler-based Daydream
Hammocks will show off deep-pocket Brazilian hammocks and funky swing
chairs.
WALLS OF SOUND
Music lovers who are tired of putting boxy speakers into their
interior decor and tripping over speaker wires won't want to miss the
Walls of Sound display.
This company takes the in-wall speaker system a step further by
sealing audio transducers inside the wall cavity of the home,
effectively turning drywall into speakers.
The transducer can be set safely inside bathroom walls for those who
like musical accompaniment for their shower singing.
THAT'S NOT ALL FOLKS
There's plenty more to see including the home seminar theatre where
visitors can pick up tips from home and gardening experts. Look for
the Vancouver Sun's garden editor Steve Whysall, CH TV's Get Up and
Grow host Carolyn Herriott and for the Þrst time ever, Nanaimo's
surprise hit landscape architect Bill Saunderson from the Green Thumb
Garden Centre. Cooking demonstrations, the latest in garden tools and
at-home comfort features will all be on display throughout the show.
DETAILS
The Victoria Spring Home and Garden Show runs Friday to Sunday at the
Juan de Fuca Rec Centre at 1767 Island Highway.
Friday 1 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Sunday 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Admission at the door is $8 for adults, $6 for seniors and students,
and free for children under 13 accompanied by an adult.
A draw will be made for the rustic gazebo on display in Valerie
Marcotte's Spring Swing garden exhibit, built by John Lore from Pickle
Ridge Rustic Carpentry.
© Copyright 2004 Times
Colonist (Victoria)
reprinted
with permission
Story Credit: Joanne Hatherly
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It may look like a jungle, but Jeff McClelland put
this display together with Byron Wilson inside the Juan De Fuca
recreation centre.
Custom-crafted structures, as well as indoor and
outdoor furniture built from reclaimed boughs, have become popular
garden focal points.
A slate pathway winding through a garden is an
example of one of the many outdoor designs possibilities you'll
see at the show.
Landscape designers have been busy preparing for
this weekend's show.
Your complete vacation, accommodation, business
and community information guide to
Victoria, British Columbia in series of Travel Guides including,
Sooke,
East Sooke,
and
on southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
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