Producers of the Indiana Flower & Patio Show added visitor-friendly attractions such as the Country Club Cafe, featuring gourmet cuisine and drinks.
If the myriad of garden and landscape ideas weren’t enough to draw visitors to the 52nd annual Indiana Flower & Patio Show, producers added a few attention-grabbing details of their own.
Giveaways, contests and gourmet cuisine were a few of the items on tap for show attendees this year, held March 13-21, at the West Pavilion of the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis.
‘Swag Bag’ Giveaway of Garden Goodies
One thousand show guests received an “Original Garden Show Bag.” Reminiscent of the ‘swag bags’ celebrities receive at high-profile awards show, the bags are filled with a variety of outdoor living-related items. Each day of the show, the first 100 visitors received a bag. Another 100 bags were distributed at random throughout the West Pavilion during the show.
“It’s a fun way to say thank you to our guests for making the Indiana Flower & Patio Show their favorite outdoor living exhibition,” says Donell Heberer Walton, executive director of HSI Show Productions Inc., producer of the show. “We already give our guests the most fabulous gardens, landscapes and finer outdoor living experts, year after year.”
No one should ever go hungry as they walked through the 29 Showcase Gardens and other displays in the West Pavilion of the Indiana State Fairgrounds. So the Show offered the Country Club Café, presented by Lemcke Landscape and Stone Center of Indiana.
Menu items included sushi, shrimp cocktail and other delights created by Barto’s Catering, as well as drinks such as Bloody Marys, lemon drops, designer martinis and specialty beers.
Innovative Water Features
Together, the 29 Showcase Gardens of the Indiana Flower & Patio Show were the focal point of the week. Helping to pull the displays together was the job of Steve Wicker, who is co-owner of Indianapolis’ Cool Ponds with his wife, Staci. Renowned for their design and installation of innovative water features, Cool Ponds was selected to create a stream to wind through five Showcase Gardens at this year’s show.
Nicknamed ‘A Stream Runs Through It,’ the water feature originated and ended at the Cool Ponds display, which was themed after the Mark Twain classic “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” The stream then flowed its way through Franco Landscaping, The Noll Group and VIVE Exterior Design, and featured bridges along the main garden aisle.
Also adding interest, and a little friendly competition, to the show this year was the sixth annual Belgard Challenge. This event pits three Central Indiana landscape designers against each other in a contest to create the best garden within a $25,000 budget, installed.
The 2010 competitors, all first-time entrants, included Outdoor Oasis of Ninevah, Seibert Landscaping of Indianapolis and Nature’s Choice Landscaping of Brownsburg.
Each competitor was required to showcase Belgard hardscapes, as well as other landscape elements such as water and fire features, trellises, arbors and plants. The cost, installed, was not to exceed $25,000.
Show attendees selected the winner with on-site voting. Winning the challenge is a big boon to the award-winning landscaper.
“Two former Belgard winners have gone on to win major show awards,” says Donell Heberer Walton, executive director of the show. “Dave Purcell of Dave’s Lawn & Landscape, Fountaintown, has won both the Garden of Excellence and Mayor’s Choice Awards, and Brian Franco of Brownsburg’s Franco Landscape has received Garden of Excellence accolades.”
“Both began their relationship with our show as Belgard Challengers,” she says.
Garden Design and Philosophy
In keeping with the theme, ‘A Novel Idea,’ this year’s show also featured a book debut. Cheryl Jacques of Brower/Jacques Design in Greenfield was on hand with her newly published book, “The Magnolia Principle: How Needs, Seeds and Weeds Bloom Inner Peace.” The book, and the author, could be found at the Brower/Jacques Design Showcase Garden.
Jacques describes her book as “a self-help book about gardening and what you might realize from the process philosophically.” Each plant featured in the book, she says, represents a specific human personality type, and thus each plant has its own set of issues when it comes to gardening.
The book features photos of plants and landscapes, as well as poetry, all of which were brought to life in the Showcase Garden. “Writing a book has been a real adventure into the unknown, but very rewarding. I’m excited to share it with people, and hopefully, uplift their lives,” she said. “This garden design is my soul on paper,” she says.
Comments on this entry are closed.