Sunday, January 22, 2006

Gardening season is still a ways away, despite the bit of warm January weather we had. So, I'm going to give you a bit of homework, as recommended by Lois Berg Stack, ornamental horticulturist for the University of Maine Extension in Orono.

You probably are going to visit at least one flower and garden show this winter. Do some research before you go to find out what you want to learn.

"Just go and look through the window," Stack said. "If you look at the landscape when it is at its barest, you can figure out what things it needs: whether it is hedges, vines, trellises or tall plants.

"That way, when people go to the flower show, the things that they are inspired by will have some direction," she said. "If people have something to think about, it might make them learn something at the flower show that translates into something constructive in the garden."

Stack is right. Looking at the beautiful display gardens at a flower show is a thrill on what is often a cold and snowy day, but it takes work on your part to take away knowledge that actually will help you in your home garden.

The gardens created for the show are really more for entertainment than education. The designers are working under controlled conditions. The first thing they control is time. They create gardens that could never happen in nature, because all of the flowering plants that appear in the shows have been manipulated into blooming early. First, they are in containers, so any plant that produces sparse blooms or less than perfect leaves never gets out of the greenhouse. They are not going to make it to the show.

Second, because spring flowers are easier to force into bloom, most of the flowers shown at the flower show will be spring flowers. Spring lasts for three months, but you'll often see a flower-show garden with forsythia, lilacs and azaleas all in bloom at once, which is seldom going to happen in an actual Maine garden.

Often garden designers will even add a summer-blooming perennial into the mix of spring shrubs, for example a delphinium, because the shape or color adds something that is needed in the design. Just remember: in your garden, the forsythia and the delphiniums and the azaleas aren't going to bloom at the same time, side by side.

Also the flower-show designers can squeeze more plants into each square yard of the design than you can do in your design. The plants are all in containers, and carefully fertilized to produce great blooms. In the real garden there will have to be some room for the roots to run, and there is likely to be at least a bit of bare soil or bark mulch between the plants.

So if you go into a flower show and see a garden that you like and want to replicate it at home, you are going to be disappointed unless you temper your expectations with a dose of reality.

That is why Stack recommends studying your garden now, when there are no blossoms, and no leaves on the deciduous plants. You will spot the places that are bare. And you can decide whether you need something long and low like a bench, something tall like a trellis, a small tree or a round and bushy shrub.

Watch how the designers have created contrasting shapes and forms, how they've mixed colors and textures. Note what you like and take that information back to your home gardens. Even if you will never be able to re-create the blooms in the same way the flower show designers have, you can copy their ideas.

The three shows attended most by Maine residents are The Portland Flower Show, scheduled for March 9-12, the New England Spring Flower Show in Boston March 11-19, and the Bangor Flower Show April 7-9.

There are dozens of other flower and garden shows throughout New England, and if you are traveling you might be able to catch shows in other communities. The Philadelphia Flower Show, March 5-12 this year, has the reputation as the "grandmother" of all flower shows in the nation, so it might be worth a bit more travel (or check with your travel agent for a tour).

And drop by the spring open house of your local garden center or nursery. They often will have a garden or two set up to give you some ideas.

Tom Atwell can be contacted at 791-6362 or at:

tatwell@pressherald.com