Day 1 at the Central Ohio Home and Garden Show

What an exciting time of the year. While waiting for spring, my husband and I try to take advantage of anything related to gardening at all and we always look forward to going to this great show. We arrived before show hours and had to stand back in a waiting area until the announcement was heard over the loud speaker that it was time to begin our quest for spring. We were out of the gate and off we went. We quickly made our way to the gardens area where there were 16 gardens to explore. This year’s theme was “Art in Bloom.” We have a favorite garden and every year off we go to explore it before the line gets too long. This garden is the result of months of hard work by the Cedarbrook Landscaping and Garden Center. Every year this group puts on a fantastic show during this event. This year, their theme was “The Art of Bees Making Blooms.” This garden’s entrance was graced with Rhododendrons and Azaleas with an evergreen backdrop of Arborvitae. You walk through a giant hive with lots of information on how bees do their jobs in the garden.

Rhodys at different stages

There were bears, bees, and honey all over the place.

There was even a giant bee who got to pose for me!

Around every corner was a surprise of plant material. The biggest surprise was discovering a new plant named “Faxeus Liteus.” Check this out! I could not resist sharing this picture with you.

A plant of many lights

You had to be there!

I could not help appreciating all of the art that was integrated into the gardens at this home and garden show. Many thanks to Brenda from BGgarden.com for the opportunity to attend this show. Thank you for giving us your art of photography on your web site.

"Art in Bloom"

A Visit to the Great Big Home and Garden Expo

Tulips, crocuses, daffodils, oh my! We won..a pair of tickets to the Great Big Home and Garden Expo in Cleveland, Ohio thanks to Brenda Haas of BG garden. She writes a great gardening blog that I follow. This past weekend, my husband and I made the trip up north to check out this garden show. We were not sure what we would experience, since this is a new home and garden show housed at the Cleveland International Expo Center. A former home and garden show held at the IX Center switched locations this year and was replaced at the IX by this new show. We were not able to make it to the former show, now housed on the East side of town, but really wanted to attend one of them. Well, I have not won much over the years, but I really lucked out by winning tickets to this new show. We got in the car anticipating arriving around the time the show opened for the day. We made it! The gardens were better than we could have imagined. There were 20 different gardens inspired by songs, and most of them were very large in scale. Seeing all the colors and greenery took me right out of our typical February Ohio weather to another place. That magical place in the garden. Each garden had quite a bit of hardscaping too. My husband and I love rocks. One of the gardens even had the words Cleveland Rocks spelled out in rocks. Two gardens really had impressive features. One was inspired by the song "Red, red Wine". It had a stream of wine flowing through it. Another garden inspired by the song "American Pie" actually had an old Chevy in it, based on the lyrics "Drove my Chevy to the levy, but the levy was dry". Pretty cool! We were amazed by the sheer number of plants, rocks, water features, and sculptures too. The show had many sculptures which were integrated into and around the gardens. There was even a dedicated area where many sculptures were on display and for sale sponsored by RiverSpan. We had so much fun checking this out. We even took a picture of the Bartlett sisters, three pears. We are so glad that we were able to go. Many thanks to BGgarden.com! I would highly recommend this Home and Garden show to all gardeners.

Here are some pictures from our visit:

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