• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Carol J. Michel

Award winner author of gardening humor books

  • Home
  • About
    • Contact
  • Books
    • Shop
    • Creatures and Critters
    • Potted & Pruned
    • Homegrown & Handpicked
    • Seeded & Sodded
    • The Christmas Cottontail
  • Speaking
    • Upcoming Speaking Engagements
  • May Dreams Gardens
  • Social
    • YouTube
  • Gardening Humor
  • Children’s
  • All Books

May Dreams Gardens

When A Gardener Goes To The Indiana Flower and Patio Show

March 14, 2010 By Carol Michel 9 Comments

When a gardener goes to the Indiana Flower and Patio Show…

The first thing she does is head up the main aisle to see the display gardens. This year’s show theme is “A Novel Idea!” and so the gardener tries to guess what novel the designer used for inspiration before she sees the sign indicating what book it is.

The gardener sees this garden complete with a topiary serpent and guesses correcty that it was inspired by The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.

The gardener gives this one a green thumbs up for good use of plant material.

The gardener then turns to her right and is taken aback by flowers she has never seen before.

She knows without thinking that this garden was based on The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. The gardener soon realizes that those flowers are not real, of course, but she gives credit to the landscaper for good use of detail even in this large scale garden. Notice the ruby red slippers?

The gardener sees this little planting and is reminded again how she would like to have a copse, a small grove of trees somewhere in her garden.

She also likes the use of the ironwork and is reminded that she would like to have an interesting gate that leads into her vegetable garden, which implies a fence between the vegetable garden and the rest of the yard, a detail she has discussed with her Garden Designer.

The gardener goes further into this display garden, which is based on The Adventures of Robin Hood by Roger Lancelyn Green, and can’t take her eyes off this path.

She makes a note to send a picture of this path to her Gardener Designer because she thinks it has several elements of garden design in it including wanderability and gardimacy.

After seeing the display gardens, of which there were several more than pictured here, the gardener goes through the other aisles of the show where there are various experts to talk to and lots to buy. She regrets that she didn’t have time to stop at the gigantic seed displays, but found this display of old hoes for sale.

The gardener didn’t buy one because these are just not her kind of hoes. She realizes this revelation may be shocking to some people who didn’t know that there was a kind of hoe that wasn’t her kind of hoe.

After leaving the show, the gardener is further inspired to garden and can hardly wait to get her hands in the dirt in her own garden. And that’s a sure sign that the Indiana Flower and Patio Show has accomplished its mission, once again.

For more information and pictures of the Indiana Flower and Patio Show, visit the Hoosier Gardener’s blog.

(And don’t forget to visit last Wednesday’s post and enter the contest to win a Fiskars® Momentum™ Reel Mower! Last chance to enter is Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 9:00 EDT.)

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: when a gardener

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Helen @ Gardening With Confidence says

    March 14, 2010 at 1:04 pm

    I love that iron gate! Were those little Hoe, Hoe, Hoe signs? They were cute! H.

    Reply
  2. Gail says

    March 14, 2010 at 2:15 pm

    Carol, I love the path, too…It would be nice in a garden. The hardscape is one of the hardest working elements in my garden…but it did take me years to add it…I was always impatient to have flowers. gail

    Reply
  3. Annica Janes says

    March 14, 2010 at 4:42 pm

    Great pictures – and I love the new look of your blog!
    ~Annica

    Reply
  4. Ramble on Rose says

    March 14, 2010 at 6:07 pm

    This sounds like a very fun theme for a garden show! It's sort of related to the "Cultivating Great Performances" theme of the Chicago show. Lots of artsy-ness in the Midwest garden shows this year!

    Reply
  5. Jayne says

    March 15, 2010 at 12:11 am

    I loved the Hobbit Garden, and the iron gate, and the path — in fact I the gardens in all the photos. What a great show.

    Reply
  6. Wendy says

    March 15, 2010 at 2:14 am

    looks like fun! I love these themes. It'd be such a fun challenge to design something after some of these flower show themes. I just visited the Philadelphia Flower Show (pics on my blog) as a first timer. It was quite amazing!

    Love the facelift by the way! It's bright, cheerful, and current!

    Reply
  7. Vetsy says

    March 15, 2010 at 6:25 pm

    My imagine nation would run wild in this garden of fairy tales.

    I would love to skip around at this garden show..it would make me feel like a giddy little kid..

    Reply
  8. Christine B. says

    March 15, 2010 at 7:03 pm

    So happy you mentioned those Oz plants were fake. I was turning over in my head what they could possibly be: gladiola and begonia cross from hell, is what I settled on. The Tolkien garden was fantastic!

    Christine in Alaska

    Reply
  9. Matti says

    March 16, 2010 at 3:04 pm

    OMG, Hoe art is awesome! Matti

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Updates from Carol Michel

* indicates required
Email Preferences

Categories

  • Blog (3,012)
  • Internal (2)

Blog Tags

annuals Blogging books bulbs dr. hortfreud embrace fairies fall family flowers fruits garden bloggers bloom day garden bloggers book club garden design gardeners gardening gardening geek gardens hoes holidays hortense hoelove houseplants humor indoor gardening insects lawn letters to gardening friends perennials rabbits reviews Secrets seeds shrubs spring tools trees vegetable garden vegetable gardening vegetables weather weeding weeds when a gardener wildflower wednesday winter

The Gardenangelists Podcast with Dee Nash

Gardenangelists Podcast

Footer

Gardenangelists Podcast with Dee Nash

Gardenangelists Podcast

Connect

  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • maydreams icon

Quick Links

  • Home
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Books
  • May Dreams Gardens
  • Podcast

Updates from Carol Michel

* indicates required
Email Preferences

Newsletter Archive

Copyright © 2022 · CarolJMichel.com · Sitemap · Privacy Policy

Book purchase links are affiliate links and Carol earns a small commission if you make a purchase.