The Show’s Abloomin’

As a never-quits-planting gardener, I can’t think of any place more exciting to go than a garden show. Lots of gardeners seem to agree, even the not so avid: About 40,000 people attended last year’s five-day Los Angeles Garden Show, an event geared for about 10,000. Visitors went home fully charged for the fall planting season.

This year’s show will open on Wednesday and run through Sunday, and I know gardeners are again going to soak up new ideas like a thirsty lawn. More than magazine articles, television shows or even books, garden shows are where gardeners can get a jump start when their own ideas feel a little run-down.

At a garden show, they can listen to experts, walk through amazingly creative gardens filled with fresh ideas and take note of the plants being used. Visitors can even go home with a trunk full of new toys for the garden because everything from tools and plants to garden gates will be for sale under a pair of big tents.

Right now, designers, contractors and nurserymen are putting the finishing touches on this outdoor show. They are hammering together lath houses and picket fences, laying paving and planting everything from full-size Italian cypress to a Scottish putting green. I even got into the act this year, building half of a cozy potting shed as a backdrop for my daily talk.

Visitors to this year’s show will find that it has almost doubled in size, covering nine acres of the Arboretum in Arcadia.

They’ll enter through a grand new trompe l’oeil gate, painted by artists Nancy Turner and Peeter Alvet. Once inside, there are 18 exquisite gardens created just for the show and a marketplace with 50 vendors selling plants and garden accessories. The show grounds are ready for a plant-loving crowd, with added display gardens, talks and demonstrations (more than 35 talks), plus more places to eat and increased parking.

Exhibits will be clustered in the north lawn and the new south lawn. The talks will be given in the north lawn area, and the PlantMarket and MarketPlace will be housed in giant tents in the south lawn area.

*

Returning this year will be the gallery of roses, with a tent full of arrangements honoring European royalty, in keeping with this year’s theme, the European Influence.

The popular Robinsons-May designer “tablescapes” will also be back; each room setting will be housed in its own tent, and themes include “Mediterranean Warmth on a California Table” and “Lunch and Swim in a Provence Pool Pavilion.”

Display gardens will also have a European flavor, although they will be landscaped with plants that do well in Southern California. These gardens, created for the show, are full of plants and ideas for home gardens.

Visitors will find landscapes inspired by English, Scottish, French, Spanish and Italian gardens. There will even be a garden inspired by English colonial plots in the Australian outback.

The outback garden, by Marilyn Daly (who lived there for 10 years) with Barbara Koenig and Frank Tremmel, will feature Australian natives that do well in Southern California on one side of a water garden and 19th century European flowers on the other. Even the furniture will be made of Australian jarrah wood.

The European Influence

Italy will be represented in gardens by landscape architect Julie Heinsheimer, landscape architect Carey Orwig and Jane MacDonald Adrian of Environmental Interests.

Heinsheimer’s garden, titled “Before Vesuvius,” is a classical Roman garden with statuary, granite paths, tall cypress, boxwood hedges and old grape vines, where show visitors can “join the Roman nobility as they stroll through their serene garden . . . unworried by the thin wisp of smoke from the mountain.”

Orwig’s Italian garden doesn’t reach back quite as far, drawing more on the classic gardens of the Renaissance, using Mediterranean plants that also thrive here, with some grand architectural elements typical of the times.

Adrian’s garden mixes classical Italian elements with “Italian ultra-modern,” graceful columns and arches made from common materials.

Foxglove Design’s style garden is inspired by the south of France, another Mediterranean climate full of appropriate ideas. Naturally, there will be lavender, grapes and olives, with urns and a French picnic table and chairs that “will transport the viewer to Provence.”

Equally French is a garden by Janie Malloy of Home Grown that mixes flowers, herbs and vegetables into “Le Potager,” the classic French kitchen garden.

The Casa Colina Horticultural Therapy and Training Program is putting together a healing garden of herbs and sense-stimulating plants. Visitors will be encouraged to stop and sniff and even join in the work of the garden.

English-inspired gardens, using flowery plants that also grow in California’s climate, run the gamut from the grand--an awesome lath house by Walter Fouts that could have been plucked from a Victorian estate--to the cottage-like. Burkard Nurseries will have a casual little garden set for tea.

Be sure to visit Gertrude and Millicent, two nearly life-size figures in a proper English garden, complete with a lawn for croquet, by the Daisy Digger Landscape Co.

*

There will also be a special display garden that represents five of the area’s botanic gardens, including the Arboretum, Robinson Gardens and the Huntington, Descanso and Rancho Santa Ana gardens.

Designed by landscape architects Denis Kurutz and Shirley Kerins, it will show characteristics of each garden with a Craftsman-style kiosk that tells a little of their history and some of their plant specialties.

For instance, palms and fall-blooming perennials will be planted in the Virginia Robinson Garden section, and the Rancho Santa Ana section will showcase a broad range of native plants from wispy grasses to red-barked manzanitas.

Lectures and Demonstrations

When visitors tire of strolling, there will be places to pause and snack or have lunch. They can also sit at the many talks and demonstrations that will be given each day. The slide presentations will be held in Ayres Hall, and other talks and demonstrations will be held outdoors nearby. A complete list of the talks appears on Page K16.

This is where I’ll be giving my daily talk on “Secrets From the Potting Shed.” Visitors will see our potting bench (featured in the Sept. 29 Real Estate section), plus some accessories, including the perfect seed-starting flat, garden sieves, dibbles and other make-it-yourself potting and propagating aids. I’ll be talking about sure-fire methods of potting and transplanting, sowing seed, making cuttings and other gardening adventures that occur in a potting shed.

Indoor plant columnist Joel Rapp will also be there, as will columnist and rose hybridizer Jack Christiansen, who will help unlock the mysteries of growing this favorite flower.

Visitors will also be able to hear such experts as Renee Shepherd of Shepherd’s Garden Seeds speaking on European gourmet vegetables, Clair Martin of the Huntington on English roses and author Carole Saville on exotic gourmet herbs. The arboretum’s Tim Lindsay will speak about English cottage gardens and David Silber of Papaya Tree Nursery will discuss exotic fruits for Southern California.

The third area for talks and demonstrations is the Los Angeles Times Cooking Pavilion, where expert chefs and food writers from The Times will be demonstrating their cooking skills.

For instance, Times’ writer Barbara Hansen will be telling how to use exotic herbs in cooking, including many from Southeast Asia that we can grow here, and Charles Perry will give a talk titled “The Eggplant and I,” at which visitors will get some fresh ideas on how to use this “king of vegetables.”

The Markets

It would be cruel to get gardeners excited about their gardening and then offer them nothing to take home, especially at this best-of-all planting seasons. So they will be able to buy plants, many of them difficult to find anywhere else, at the PlantMarket, and garden accessories at the MarketPlace.

Papaya Tree Nursery will be selling exotic fruit trees and spice plants at the PlantMarket, and other growers will be there, all under one big tent, including the Wildflower Seed Co., several orchid and tropical plant growers and Greenwood Daylily, with its connoisseur collection of iris and day lily plants. Nurseries like Burkard, Hortus, San Gabriel and Las Tunas (which will feature aquatic plants) will also be there.

Marina del Rey Garden Center will bring a unique collection of terra cotta and cement pots, and Concrete Creations will have large custom planters.

Other garden accessories at the MarketPlace will range from solid copper sculptures for the garden to garden gates, benches, greenhouses, tools, even antique botanical and garden prints from Gladstone & Elwyn-Jones of England.

Botanical Books will display one of the best selections of gardening books to be found on the West Coast.

Visitors to the show won’t go home empty-handed and won’t lack for fresh ideas and new knowledge.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

When You Go

The 1996 Los Angeles Garden Show, sponsored by the Los Angeles Times and Robinsons-May, will be held at the Arboretum of Los Angeles in Arcadia, Wednesday through Oct. 27. It is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and benefits the arboretum.

Admission is $8, with children 11 and younger admitted free. Groups can arrange a day at the show (even a catered affair) for a discounted admission; call (818) 447-8207 for additional information.

The arboretum is just off the 210 Freeway at 301 N. Baldwin Ave. There will be plenty of free parking, with a connecting shuttle, just across the street at Santa Anita Park.