NW Flower + Garden Show

I love the pattern + patchwork quilt quality to their display!

Ah the texture of California!

Wow! What a trough!

I loved these succulent balls hanging around the shop.
They had upside down succulent pyramids too (see below).

This year marks the last for the garden show in Seattle. It has been the biggest garden show on the west coast. Rats! No more browsing the delicious lily and dahlia shops. No more garden show great deals from Lee Valley. No more chit chatting with the experts. What a shame to end this rite of spring. Shown above is my favorite spot at this year's show. It's the Smith + Hawken shop booth. It wasn't even a garden display but it was far more inspiring than the mediocre grand displays that get all the attention.
Long ago I quit my job from a sexist bullying landscape architect's office to study for my landscape architecture exam. During that time I worked at Smith + Hawken in their original Mill Valley store, before they sold out to a corporation, and Paul Hawken's office overlooked the nursery from across the street. He didn't like it that I wore my Ville du Sole (oh I miss that store!) French hat while working in the nursery. He sent word to the store to have me remove my lovely hat and wear a Smith + Hawken straw hat instead. Too many customers were asking where I had bought my lovely French hat, and he was getting miffed.
That was a lovely summer. The plants were propagated in part and selected by the great plantswoman Sarah Hammond. The planting displays were exceptional! She said that they had never had another employee in the nursery that could sell as many plants as me before. It was my unbridled enthusiasm that roped in the buyers. After studying at Oxford, a few years earlier, and writing my research paper on Folly Farm, a Gertrude Jeykyll garden, I was fully engulfed in the English perennial border mania that was rising at that time. It was dreamy working regular business hours in a lovely inspiring place. That store is no more. The corporate takeover wiped out that little haven for garden aficionados. Sarah gave me a gorgeous Deutzia 'Goldsal Pink' when my son was born. She had brought back the plant from England and propagated it in her Bolinas nursery. I still have that plant growing in my garden and swoon when it blooms. By the way, I passed the five day landscape architecture license exam that summer, quit my job at Smith + Hawken, and went to work in another architecture + urban planning firm in the city. Yes, I made more money as a professional, but working at Smith + Hawken was more enjoyable by far.