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Display gardens and much more at SF Flower Show

Sacramento Digs Gardening
BY Debbie Arrington PUBLISHED MAR 22, 2019

Clearwater Landscape Design of Folsom won top honors at the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show at Cal Expo.
(Photos: Debbie Arrington)

Big crowd on hand at Cal Expo for state’s largest garden show

A huge opening day crowd greeted the 34th annual San Francisco Flower and Garden Show, which made its Cal Expo debut Thursday.

Held for the first time in Sacramento, the show continues through Sunday with special events and seminars each day.

Uprooted from the Cow Palace after a scheduling snafu, California’s largest garden show settled into the Pavilion building normally inhabited by livestock at the State Fair. Scores of popular vendors such as Dan’s Dahlias and Hartley Botanic greeted returning customers who came from throughout Northern California to shop, listen and learn.

In three corners of the massive building, guest speakers entertained hundreds of patrons at a trio of presentation stages. Artistic floral arrangements, edible gardens and impressive bonsai trees – some a century old – emphasized the flower and garden aspects of this big show. So did the thousands of live exotic, unusual or rare plants offered for sale. Heirloom vegetable seedlings were in abundance.

Because of the late venue change, participants had less than three months to get ready for Cal Expo. Garden creators usually spend eight to 10 months preparing for the SF Flower Show’s competition.

Show producer Sherry Larsen said she had to scramble to get designers willing and able to create innovative display gardens, a hallmark of this venerable event. Instead of a dozen or more, seven mostly local designers took part.

The big winner was a SF Flower Show regular. Folsom’s Nathan Beeck and Clearwater Landscape Design earned Best in Show with an eye-catching “fire-resistant” display garden featuring a double waterfall, reflecting pond, steel siding and native plants. Beeck and Juan Chavez designed the garden, using plants by Site One Nursery.

Kent Gordon England's display garden

Runner-up was another show veteran: Kent Gordon England. Known for his restoration designs, the longtime designer created a flower- and citrus-filled English-style cottage garden, built around reclaimed Grecian columns and an enchanting greenhouse.

Sacramento’s Ahmed Hassan, well-known as HGTV’s “Yard Crasher,” was awarded third place for his contemporary display garden, built around twin 20-foot magnolia trees.

In the edible gardening section, Bill Maynard and his City of Sacramento community gardens crew “had fun with wattles,” straw-filled barriers. Maynard also demonstrated different ways to make an instant raised bed vegetable garden.

Several garden clubs were on hand to share their expertise. One in particular stood out: The Paradise Garden Club. President Ward Habriel was among thousands of Paradise residents who lost their homes during November’s deadly camp fire. The club’s signature project, “Daffodils Across the Ridge,” has become a symbol of hope for the community.

Before the fire, the club had planted more than 162,000 daffodils as part of its 10-year-old project. Rising from the charred streets of Paradise, many of those daffodils are now in bloom.

“There’s nothing left of our house, but we have daffodils everywhere,” Habriel said. His club is raising fire-safety awareness as well as donations to plant more daffodils.

The San Francisco Flower and Garden Show continues from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.

Details and tickets: www.sfgardenshow.com .

One of many artistic floral arrangements on display

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Keywords:

Flower and Garden Show kent gordon england Sacramento paradise garden club Cal Expo clearwater landscape design nathan beeck San Francisco

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Garden Checklist for week of Nov. 3

November still offers good weather for fall planting:

* If you haven't already, it's time to clean up the remains of summer. Pull faded annuals and vegetables. Prune dead or broken branches from trees.

* Now is the best time to plant most trees and shrubs. This gives them plenty of time for root development before spring growth. They also benefit from fall and winter rains.

* Set out cool-weather annuals such as pansies and snapdragons.

* Lettuce, cabbage and broccoli also can be planted now.

* Plant garlic and onions.

* Keep planting bulbs to spread out your spring bloom. Some possible suggestions: daffodils, crocuses, hyacinths, tulips, anemones and scillas.

* This is also a good time to seed wildflowers and plant such spring bloomers as sweet pea, sweet alyssum and bachelor buttons.

* Rake and compost leaves, but dispose of any diseased plant material. For example, if peach and nectarine trees showed signs of leaf curl this year, clean up under trees and dispose of those leaves instead of composting.

* Save dry stalks and seedpods from poppies and coneflowers for fall bouquets and holiday decorating.

* For holiday blooms indoors, plant paperwhite narcissus bulbs now. Fill a shallow bowl or dish with 2 inches of rocks or pebbles. Place bulbs in the dish with the root end nestled in the rocks. Add water until it just touches the bottom of the bulbs. Place the dish in a sunny window. Add water as needed.

* Give your azaleas, gardenias and camellias a boost with chelated iron.

* For larger blooms, pinch off some camellia buds.

* Prune non-flowering trees and shrubs while dormant.

* To help prevent leaf curl, apply a copper fungicide spray to peach and nectarine trees after they lose their leaves this month. Leaf curl, which shows up in the spring, is caused by a fungus that winters as spores on the limbs and around the tree in fallen leaves. Sprays are most effective now.

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