The Tacoma Home and Garden Show Part One

This Weekend, Alison (Bonney Lassie) her husband Nigel, and I met at the Tacoma Home and Garden Show.  It's always a joy to see them and we had a blast taking in the event.  I was uncharacteristically early, perhaps because the venue was only a nine minute drive from my house, and when I arrived, there were already folks queueing up to enter. 

There were a lot of home improvement ideas (it is a Home and Garden show after all.) This display of pet doors for sliding glass panels was perhaps the cutest.  Nice to know that your stuffed animals can come and go as they wish.  (Tip:  if they stay outside too long in the Pacific Northwest, they start to smell funny and grow moss.)

The folks at Whitworth Pest Solutions, a fine company whose services I've used and with which I've  been very pleased,  brought along these eye catching displays of bugs from around the world.  

Yikes!  Wouldn't want to run into some of these bad boys!

There were several fetching waterfall displays.  Unfortunately, I forgot the name of the company whose work this was.

Alison did not seem amused when I asked her if she had crabs. I meant in her garden.  What could she have been thinking?

 It's always a pleasure to see Carman (Mad Mozaics) and her lovely work.

Alison and I each came home with one of these skulls.

This show-stopping table and benches are made of rescued redwood roots.  (The trees had already died.)

 Marenakos Rock Center always does a nice large display.

The glass-like surface of the polished rock begs to be touched!

Can you imagine having this in your garden? 

Olympic Landscape Design also has a large display garden each year.  Interesting to see the Cyclamen coum!

Thrilling to see "fiddlestix" by the talented and wonderful Barbara Sanderson (Glass Gardens Northwest.)

This water feature is hidden from view until one actually walks into the garden and acts as a lovely focal point to ponder from the patio seating behind it.

Black Mondo Grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Nigrescens') with Yellow Twig Dogwood is a great and tasteful combination.  I would have chosen Red Twig Dogwood and maybe a screaming red pot, perhaps spray painted the lantern purple and thrown some blue crushed glass around the base of the pot.  You see, tackiness like mine can't be learned but I've heard that it can be overcome.

Another distinct pleasure of the event was meeting Chavliness, who has been commenting on on my blog for quite some time, and the owner of her garden!  She'd even brought me some orange Alstroemeria seeds which I'm very excited to have and will do my best to not kill!  Thank you so much Chava! After we chatted a bit, their question was, "Where are the plants?" (My kind of People!)  More on that in tomorrow's post but for now, it's time to relax with a beverage of your choice

Some warm milk perhaps?