BC Home and Garden Show
Where: BC Place Stadium, 777 Pacific Boulevard, Vancouver.
When: Wednesday (4 p.m. to 9 p.m.); Thursday, Friday (noon to 9 p.m.); Saturday (10 a.m. to 9 p.m.) and Sunday (10 a.m. to 6 p.m.).
Admission: $15 for adults ($12 online); $12 seniors ($5 for seniors before 5 p.m. Thursday, Friday), and free for children, 12 and under.
The Vancouver Sun Gardener’s School will be back at the BC Home Garden Show next week with a first-class program of speakers on a wide range of gardening topics.
It is the school’s 10th anniversary. I started it back in 2002 as a place for gardeners to find great information and inspiration for a new season of creative gardening.
Officially, this is the school’s 11th year, but we missed a year when the show was cancelled because of the Winter Olympics in 2010, so technically this is actually the 10th time the Gardener’s School has been held.
Not a lot has changed.
A decade ago, speakers were showing slides from a tiny projector propped up in the middle of the aisle. Today, we use more high-tech computer systems to project PowerPoint presentations and digital images.
But we do try out new things.
For instance, a new idea I will be test driving this year is something called Live Story. It will be the equivalent of a typical garden page feature story, only presented live on stage with the subjects of the interview appearing in person and speaking directly to the audience instead of through printed quotes.
B.C.’s New Generation of Gardeners will be the topic of this first Live Story presentation. I will be interviewing two of the youngest and most successful garden centre owners, Jordan McDonald, of KJM Nursery in Southlands, and Miles Hunter, of David Hunter Garden Centre in Surrey. Together, we will tell the story just as it would appear in the newspaper.
Jordan and Miles will be on stage with me to offer their expert insights and tips into gardening, just as they would (and have done) in regular feature stories.
I think this format will be as spontaneous and immediate as reality TV and even more interactive than the Internet. In the process, you’ll pick up all kinds of great insights and information.
As we present the Live Story, images will be projected on to a big screen to illustrate the story.
For the rest of the days at the Gardener’s School, I will be doing a PowerPoint presentation called Gardens that Touch the Heart, featuring some of the most exciting gardens I have visited here and abroad and various creative elements in them that made them unique, beautiful and memorable — ideas we can all duplicate in our own gardens.
We’ve pulled all the stops out this year, it being a special, celebratory anniversary year, to assemble an even more impressive program of top-notch speakers, including many local favourites such as Brian Minter from Chilliwack, and Gary Lewis from Richmond, but others from out of town — Ciscoe Morris, Seattle’s favourite TV gardener, and Carolyn Herriot from Victoria, author of the best-selling The Zero Mile Diet and A Year of Growing Organic Food.
Art Drysdale, who was at one time the host of the top radio garden show in Canada, Your Home and Garden, will be joining us to talk about his visits to fabulous gardens around the world.
Mike Weinmaster, of Green over Grey, Living Walls and Design, will give a special presentation on the beauty and simplicity of vertical gardening (green walls) and how they can be used more effectively in the city to transform an ugly space into a spectacular green oasis.
The last time Weinmaster gave his presentation to top designers and architects he got a standing ovation. I think you will be impressed by his enthusiasm and vision of the world of green-wall gardening to come.
All of my local favourites will be speaking at this year’s school – all the people I routinely contact to talk about latest trends and cool ideas and hot new plants.
These are people with their fingers on the pulse of horticulture, so I know you will come away from their talks with plenty of brilliant ideas and cutting-edge plant information.
Miles Hunter will return to the stage on his own to talk about roses — one of his garden centre’s specialties. As a boy, it was Miles’s job to label thousands of roses as they arrived at the garden centre. Without knowing it, he became an expert on the best roses in all the key colours and categories. He’ll be sharing that knowledge.
Rebecca van der Zalm, owner of Art’s Nursery in Surrey, also grew up in the gardening business and has a wonderful, practical depth of knowledge. I find I never come away from speaking with her without learning something new and interesting.
She will be joined on stage by Laurelle Olford-Down to explain how to guarantee success in your garden.
Pam Dangelmaier and Elke Wehinger, of Botanus in Langley, think we could all make better use of lilies in our garden. I totally agree. This is one summer-flowering bulb that we don’t use creatively enough.
Make sure you bring a notebook to jot down the planting sequences and creative ideas, as well as the names of all the best-performing cultivars and how to us them in engaging combinations.
Alfred Kwan is a hugely talented, but surprisingly shy man (when it comes to speaking in public), but I am delighted that I was able to persuade him to share his years of expertise gained as owner of the immensely popular WIG Garden Centre in Burnaby.
He will also be decorating the school’s stage this year with some of his fabulous succulents, so you’ll get an idea of his standards of excellence in horticulture by just glancing at the complexity of plant material on stage.
Gary Lewis, of Phoenix Perennials in Richmond, is in big demand these days as a director of the Perennial Plant Association and the Great Plant Picks committee in Washington. He will be talking in depth about the value and diversity of hellebores (jewels of winter) and good companions.
And rounding out our program will be B.C.’s consummate gardening pro, Brian Minter, owner of Minter Country Gardens in Chilliwack, who packs so much information into his talks that he really is a one-man lecture series.
No one works as hard for an audience as Brian. He always manages to leave his listeners deeply enriched with new knowledge and fresh inspiration. Precisely what the Gardener’s School is all about.
So I hope you’ll find time in your busy schedule to be with us.
I think the Gardener’s School is great value in itself for the admission fee, even without all the other special attractions at the show.
If you find other things to entertain you during your visit, that’s a bonus. But I guarantee that your garden will be better for your investment of a little time at our Gardener’s School.
swhysall@vancouversun.com
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Article source: http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Home+Garden+show+Back+school+green+thumbs/6165264/story.html
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