Snow Fever Vortexed by Expo

February 24th, 2014

Another week, another polar vortex on the way. But at least we gardeners got a brief break from the snow and cold this past weekend, thanks to a welcome thaw and the annual Pennsylvania Garden Expo at Harrisburg’s Farm Show Complex.

The Greenskeeper’s waterfall dropping off a pergola grabbed a lot of eyes at Pa. Garden Expo 2014.

Expo’s attendance on opening day was up a whopping 48 percent from opening day 2013, and Saturday’s attendance was 25 percent higher than a year ago, according to Expo Manager Karen Rousche.

I think at least some of that had to do with winter-weary plant-lovers chomping at the bit to see some color other than white.

There’s always something new or interesting to see at Expo. Here are eight things that caught my eye at Expo 2014:

1.) Palmyra’s The Greenskeeper showed a novel way of running a walking path through a water feature in its display garden.

Water running through channels in the pavers at The Greenskeeper’s display.

Owner Eric Allebach and crew carved out the undersides of pervious pavers so water could run through channels in its way from an upper pond and stream into a lower pondless basin. You could see and hear the water running through the openings as you walked (dry-footed) over top.

Even more eye-grabbing was the start of that water course. Water being piped from the lower pondless basin ran across a translucent channel atop a pergola, then dropped about 12 feet in a waterfall into a pond before heading down the stream.

All of that earned The Greenskeeper Expo’s 2014 Best of Show award as well as Most Creative award.

2.) Over at Dreamscapes Watergardens, Dustin Stohler came up with a cool, custom-made focal point for the display’s main pond.

Dreamscapes’ mushroomish log-and-boulder fountain.

He started with a fat tree stump, set a large, oval boulder on top and bored a hole through both so water could spout up to make a rustic fountain. It looked like a Yellowstonesque bubbling mushroom to me.

As usual, Lebanon-based Dreamscapes won the show’s Best Water Feature award.

3.) Harrisburg’s Daniel J. Reed Landscape had a pair of subtle but clever variations in landscape walls.

One was a waist-high patio wall in which the blocks were set vertical and at an angle to make a much more elegant appearance than the usual stack-‘em-up-flat technique.

Vertical and angled wall blocks at the Reed Landscape display.

The second neat twist was a stone wall at an outdoor bar. Reed let the second block level protrude an inch or so to create a foot rest at the base of the bar’s stool side.

Expo-goers must’ve noticed because Reed’s display won People’s Choice honors in visitor voting on opening day.

4.) About half of the gardens had trios of rock-column fountains – apparently a trendy item these days.

The use that stood out most to me was a pair of them that Earth Tones Hardscape of New Cumberland used to flank the entry into its multi-level display garden.

Each of these rock-column fountain trios were the centerpieces of square, paver-walled basins that flanked the steps leading up to the display’s pergola-covered patio. Very elegant.

Rock-column fountains like this one at Earth Tones Hardscape are trendy for 2014.

5.) Over in the marketplace, the “Musical Magic” flower show put on by the Penn-Cumberland and Garden Club of Harrisburg clubs added a welcome new dimension to Expo 2014. The garden clubs did a few shows at earlier Expos but hadn’t run one in years.

Despite the plant-covering snows, entrants managed to come up with a surprising variety of good-looking landscape specimens for the judging. It was nice to see things like holly, variegated boxwood and cherry laurel NOT encrusted in icy snow.

What I especially liked were the educational displays done by school kids, in particular the table-top Zen gardens created by the Harrisburg YWCA Junior Gardeners in conjunction with Penn-Cumberland Garden Club. Some of those elementary-age kids have a good design eye already.

Some of Harrisburg YWCA Junior Gardeners’ table-top Zen gardens.

6.) The painted rain barrels were another attention-getter in the marketplace.

The Downtown Mechanicsburg Partnership bought five recycled, 55-gallon, plastic pickle-shipping drums and converted them into rain barrels that local artists and Mechanicsburg High School students painted.

The barrels will go from Expo display to being auctioned off at Mechanicsburg’s sixth annual Earth Day Festival on April 26.

7.) Trying to grow your own edibles in a sustainable, organic and local-friendly way?

One of Your Garden Solution’s table garden boxes, planted in Square-Foot-Garden style.

Camp Hill-based Your Garden Solution is at the forefront of that trend with its own Lancaster-made compost planting mix, Square-Foot-Gardening lessons and some of the nicest raised planter boxes I’ve seen.

The boxes are Amish-made out of rot-resistant fir, cedar and sassafras as opposed to treated lumber, and at least one of the sizes is ideal for a wheelchair to fit underneath.

8.) Maybe it didn’t reach out and grab many folks like a waterfall dropping off a pergola, but the Susquehanna Bonsai Club’s entryway had an attractive backdrop wall for a sunflower arrangement.

Susquehanna Bonsai Club’s bamboo and stick backdrop mat wall.

The 6-foot-high wall was made out of 2-inch bamboo, cut in half long-ways and fastened into a frame that was then filled with twigs to make a natural mat-like wall.

I’m thinking panels of these would make an excellent patio screening or a backdrop to any patio-side water garden. It also looks to be something that most people could strap together themselves, given enough cut bamboo and twiggy sticks.

As for the rest of the Expo awards:

* Davis Landscape of Harrisburg won the Best of Show Silver Award and Most Educational Award for its display garden, which had a pair of the fullest-blooming ‘Okame’ cherry trees I’ve ever seen at an indoor winter show. They nailed the timing of those two pink beauties.

* GoldGlo Landscapes of Millersburg won Best Hardscaping honors for its intricate paver displays, a pavilion with a fireplace inside, a pair of semi-circle fountains built into a retaining wall and a second pavilion with a wind-up awning.

Levendusky Landscape’s color-filled, Best-Use-of-Plants display garden.

* Levendusky Landscape of Wellsville, which has built Expo gardens ever since its inception, won this year’s Best Use of Plants award and also Sunday’s People’s Choice award. A field full of shrubs and perennials – all in bloom at once – filled the foreground of the garden and led to a waterfall and stream toward the back.

* Hummel’s Landscapes of Harrisburg won the People’s Choice voting on Saturday for its gardens surrounding Dreamscapes’ water feature. Besides all of the color and the outdoor kitchen, the ramped walk featured a “squirter” that shot water in a finger-sized arch up and over the walk.

Just about everyone stopped to try and figure out how it was working. (Answer: a pump, a narrow tube, focused water pressure and tinkering around to get the aim just right).

Next up for me is doing a pair of talks at this weekend’s Pennsylvania Garden Show of York. I’ll be doing talks on Friday, Feb. 28, on “Answers to the 10 Most Mystifying Garden Questions” (11 a.m.) and “20 Things I Wish Somebody Would’ve Told Me Before I Ruined the Landscape” (2:30 p.m.)