My Long Overdue Review of Canada Blooms 2010

With Canada Blooms being next week, "What are you looking forward to at Canada Blooms?" is a question that keeps popping up on facebook and twitter. Since I haven't yet posted what I enjoyed most about Canada Blooms 2010, I guess I'd better get to that, before I'm two years behind instead of one!

Purple hyacinths, purple campanula, white tulips, and ferns--what a combination!

What I enjoy about Canada Blooms is liable to be a little different than everyone else--you see, I'm one of the small team of volunteers that are responsible for planting up all of the huge planters you see throughout the show. So while I do swoon over many of the larger feature gardens, I have a fondness for the exuberant collections of blooms we create throughout the show.

You'd never get this combination to grow together "in real life", but what a show it makes!

 

 

 

 

A delicious combination of pink. These ranunculus were amazing.

Proudly showing off one of my creations

Small scenes with big impact
Being a rabid heuchera fan (betcha don't know many of those!) I had to stop and take half a dozen pictures of this "lawn" of heuchera and "Princess Irene" tulips at the Home Depot garden. Absolutely adorable.

The Canadian Cancer Society's fortress of daffodils was a sad and delightful monument, all at the same time:

Air ferns and orchids make extraordinary wall art

Vegetable Delight
The Toronto Botanical Garden's display had a whole edible theme to coincide with their 'edible summer.' I know the trend now is to include edibles with your ornamentals, but no one can make those combinations look as stunning as Paul Zammit (TBG's Director of Horticulture.)

I did not know that chrysanthemums were edible. And how did they get tomatoes to fruit in March?!

A tiny perfect raised bed.

The vegetable theme carried through with the City of Toronto's garden. Check out this herb and veggie topiary:

And if you could actually grow a real garden with this mix of plants, we'd have everyone in the city gardening:

Competition in the flower show is tough. I do a bit of floral design but these arrangers are in a whole other league:

The Dance of Time

Feature Gardens

Some things at the show are just too big or too difficult to do capture in one tiny photograph. Landscape Ontario's garden was a stunner but how to encapsulate something so mammoth? This time lapse video from Landscape Ontario will give you some idea of the scale of this undertaking:  

 

Good Things

And of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that a highlight of Canada Blooms in 2010 for me was seeing...

Martha!

Canada Blooms 2010 was a wonderful burst of garden in a desert of winter, and I've no doubt that Canada Blooms 2011 will be even better. I promise not to take a year to post a report...