WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15

As we continue to live in a fast-paced world that is driven by technology and commerce, we are increasingly facing nature deficit as we disconnect from the natural rhythms of the world. British garden and landscape designer Arit Anderson is a Trustee of the National Garden Scheme in the UK, a charity that is dedicated to raising funds and awareness for nursing and health charities. This talk will explore why gardens should be an essential part of patient care plans in the health sector, and how community gardens can be the life and soul of towns and cities. 

Few other design principles can deliver a more impactful garden experience than creating a compelling theme. Explore the design process and learn from case studies on how to create captivating, thought-provoking and memorable garden spaces that are built around an organizing, storytelling principle.

The Heronswood Garden is famed for its dramatic herbaceous borders and lush woodland garden, but over the last two years, we have begun to build an epic rock garden in our parking lot. Join garden director Ross Bayton on a journey of creation as he guides you through the building process, providing tips on construction, soil selection and best plant picks.

Beyond Arborvitae: Every Garden Needs More Conifers!

Roger Ragusa - General Manager, Wells Nursery LLC

“Structure” is the term used to cover those plants that give you a great looking garden all year round, no matter what’s in bloom. Structure can come from both broadleaf and coniferous evergreen plants and deciduous shrubs with colorful branches. These three seminars cover a range of fabulous plants that provide year-round interest and great structure. Roger Ragusa kicks it off with conifers for dramatic textures and form and a variety of colors, each with distinct attraction. Mark Turner shows you the many beneficial NW native plants that you can tuck into your garden for added beauty and structure. And finally, Gary Lewis will highlight the functional and aesthetic uses of ground covers in the landscape, including tips and tricks for designing with ground covers to take your outdoor space to the next level.

“Structure” is the term used to cover those plants that give you a great looking garden all year round, no matter what’s in bloom. Structure can come from both broadleaf and coniferous evergreen plants and deciduous shrubs with colorful branches. These three seminars cover a range of fabulous plants that provide year-round interest and great structure. Roger Ragusa kicks it off with conifers for dramatic textures and form and a variety of colors, each with distinct attraction. Mark Turner shows you the many beneficial NW native plants that you can tuck into your garden for added beauty and structure. And finally, Gary Lewis will highlight the functional and aesthetic uses of ground covers in the landscape, including tips and tricks for designing with ground covers to take your outdoor space to the next level.

“Structure” is the term used to cover those plants that give you a great looking garden all year round, no matter what’s in bloom. Structure can come from both broadleaf and coniferous evergreen plants and deciduous shrubs with colorful branches. These three seminars cover a range of fabulous plants that provide year-round interest and great structure. Roger Ragusa kicks it off with conifers for dramatic textures and form and a variety of colors, each with distinct attraction. Mark Turner shows you the many beneficial NW native plants that you can tuck into your garden for added beauty and structure. And finally, Gary Lewis will give you a roundup of the best ground covers and dynamic ground cover combinations for different gardens in the Pacific NW. He’ll highlight hot new introductions to the world of ground covers to keep your garden on the cutting edge.

Ciscoe Morris - Radio, TV host, columnist & best-selling author, Ask Ciscoe and Oh, La La!

Nita-Jo Rountree - Author, Growing Roses in the Pacific Northwest

Another competition between Ciscoe Morris and Nita-Jo Rountree, the hortiholics that bring you the Facebook ‘Plant of the Week’ for the Bellevue Botanical Garden Society. They will be featuring the coolest of the cool plants. Watch them battle it out as they explain why their picks are the best for Pacific NW gardens. Besides stunning visuals and entertaining banter, you will learn interesting facts about the plant, how to care for it, and why it is special.

Sally Morgan - U.K. co-author, The Climate Change Garden and author, The Healthy Vegetable Garden

Kim Stoddart - U.K. garden journalist and co-author, The Climate Change Garden 

Join the U.K.’s Sally Morgan and Kim Stoddart for a look at how climate may bring extreme weather challenges, changing seasons and greater risk of pest and disease in U.S. gardens. How will this affect trees, bulbs, flowers, shrubs and edibles on the ground for everyone? This is a solution focused presentation with accessible, savvy ideas and inspiration to help gardeners make their outside spaces more climate resilient for the future (water conservation, storm water management, soil management, looking at plant selection and much more besides). The importance of soil, encouraging wildlife for biodiversity and natural pest control and many more hands-on easy-to-employ ideas.

The western half of the U.S. is at a turning point. How do you adapt your landscape to be fire-smart and climate-resilient? What can you do to design a healthy, aesthetically pleasing landscape, while creating a defensible barrier from fire for your family and home, along with safety for firefighters? Discover the essential things to plan and maintain a fire-safe landscape and “harden” your home for protection, plus plant choices to avoid, tasks to do, and tools to get the job done.

It’s a jungle out there! Your beautiful, tranquil garden is a battlefield in which plants wage war against predators and struggle to outcompete one another for light, water, and nutrients. Using familiar examples, this seminar looks at how plants fulfill the five functions necessary for life: growth, feeding, defense, reproduction, and dispersal. This is a fascinating look at how plants grow—not how to grow plants. Get to know your plant family like you never had before!

Have you ever wanted to learn more about the wild, wonderful, and colorful lichens that adorn the fences, benches, and trees in your garden? In this presentation you will learn how the lichen’s symbiosis works, how important lichens are to natural ecosystems, and where lichens may be growing in your garden. Come watch this seminar to take a closer look at these often-unnoticed organisms and discover the fascinating world of lichens.

If you’re struggling with a difficult outside space, you are not alone. In a challenging housing market, many gardeners are realizing they may be in their current home longer than they envisioned. However, by breaking down the process of garden creation into manageable sections, shifting our perspective and cultivating a sense of contentment, we can create the garden that lives inside of us—right where we are. Marianne will share inspiration, design tips, and real-life gardens to get you excited about your outside space—no matter what it is.

Color is one of nature’s most sophisticated tools to capture the attention of all living creatures. Learn how cultivating our perception of color and honing our ability to distinguish nuance can be used to create pleasing garden pictures and enhance everyday life. Sharing observations and imagery from her daily practice, Lorene invites you to take a closer look at plants and color in hopes of enlarging the way you see the world and deepening your compassion for beauty in nature.

Picture-perfect plant combinations make for beautiful gardens, yet keeping every plant in its place is a lot of work. If you grow native and site adapted plants, and long to lower your maintenance time and budget, this seminar is for you. Learn tips and techniques for working with Mother Nature to create a beautiful, reduced maintenance garden by augmenting and editing. Using layering, under planting, free seeding perennials and annuals, and a little benign neglect, you can reduce the amount of time spent working in your garden.

Daffodils and tulips are the supermodels for spring flowering bulbs that they eclipse other bulbs worthy of growing. Who has grown or are familiar with Grecian windflowers (Anemone blanda), Ithuiel’s spear (Triteleia laxa), spring starflowers (Ipheion)? With such evocative, poetic names, it’s surprising that they are not more popular. Diversifying our bulb plantings not only extends the season, but support pollinators as these under-utilized bulbs have not been overbred.

Ever wonder how you keep ending up exhausted after long gardening days and still have a garden that looks like you did nothing? When this happens, you’re likely getting ‘randomized’ and just need help getting organized! In this session, Robin draws from her online Garden Mentors Gardening Academy to help you become a more efficient, targeted, and effective gardener. You’ll come away with easy ways to plan, prioritize, and set realistic, achievable individualized gardening goals.

Many of the plants used in the luscious display gardens at the Festival can be purchased from nurseries in the Plant Market. Richie has visited with nurserymen and women to find the hidden gems that are for sale. He will introduce his top picks from the conifer, tree and shrub categories available at the show. These plants tend to be longer lived in our gardens, so the selection process is all the more important. Richie has done the homework, so you don’t have to!

Joe will help you get orchids that you treasure with this great hands-on demonstration. He’ll cover basic orchid background, cultural requirements, (light/temp/water/etc.), fertilization, and pest/disease control and reblooming. He’ll review greenhouse vs. window vs. artificial light growing techniques, how to initiate flowers on a healthy plant, which orchids are best for newbies, demo orchid repotting and mounting an orchid to a piece of wood. Even brown thumbs can grow orchids if you learn the basic techniques!

Ginger has been gardening in the roughest of roughs—from the limestone of the Texas Hill Country to the glacier outflows of the Chugach Mountains and now in the moist, thin soil of Alaska’s Inside Passage. Ginger will start at the bottom digging and move up to pruning. She’s dealt with a thing or two over a career of nearly thirty years breaking tools and shredding gloves while operating her own landscape business and managing horticulture projects in public display gardens.

You’ve no doubt seen these stylish troughs and thought you’d like to have one or two. You probably thought it would be too hard to make one, but Patrick will show you how to make a unique trough to display your garden treasures. Alpines, dwarf hostas, dwarf conifers, mosses and more look great in these rugged, yet classic containers. A “cooking show” format will be utilized to make and plant an actual trough, to be given away!