The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

The San Francisco Flower and Garden Show. Will I Ever Feel Happy Again?

The flower show at the Cow Palace 2007

The flower show at the Cow Palace 2007

I have been disappointed with The San Francisco Flower and Garden Show for the past few years, especially since they changed venues to the San Mateo Convention center.

Every year for the past four years though I feel so ripped off after I leave. It doesn’t feel special and theatrical like the old Cow Palace.

The flower show at the Cow Palace 2007

But I really want to go again this year. I can’t stop myself. I just keep on hoping. 

I should probably just give up and forget about the The Show, but I can’t, waaaaaahh! 

OK, so here’s my plan: Perhaps my approach is wrong. I usually just drive up to San Mateo early when the show opens, plop my $20 down, and spend a couple hours. Of course, when it was in the Cow Palace, sniff, I’d spend all day. 

I never go to the seminars ‘cause I can’t remember anything and I hate taking notes. I would prefer to take pictures and pretend I know what I’m doing. 

But this year, I’m thinking of going to the gala. Drinking I can do. 

I’m very good at it. I can drink and garden. So here’s what, I’m kinda shy, and I feel very inadequate as a gardener, so I have a hard time talking to the designers about their gardens. I figure, a couple of cocktails and I could be blabbing my head off with these people.

Think how much first-hand knowledge I could glean from these people, I may not remember it in the morning but I can glean can’t I? I will be spending about three times the money but I could be having four times the fun. 

The flower show at the Cow Palace 2007

It will be dark, and perhaps that, in combination with alcohol, will make the venue seem much more theatrical and cool like the old, sniff, Cow Palace.

Maybe everything will look nicer and seem better and more dramatic. Maybe I’ll dance in one of the temporary design display garden ponds or fountains. 

The flower show in San Mateo 2009. This was a pretty cool garden.

Maybe I’ll get kicked out and be asked never to return to the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show ever again and that way I wont have to torture myself by comparing the San Mateo County Fairgrounds with the Cow Palace for the rest of my life.

Pathways

I am finally installing pathways throughout my garden.

  In a perfect world, I would pay someone to carry out my designs. I have done it before—when my wallet was fatter. 

In leaner times I come to the realization that I myself must carry out my own designs, and do my own bidding, if you will. Whaaaaaaah!

Luckily I have a teenage son who can help me, so here goes.

I am trying two techniques, I’m sure they are both wrong, But… 

With the first technique I will lay out the design on the ground, take off the topsoil, lay down some permeable weed-block fabric and then cover it with 3-6 inches of decomposed granite. Make teenage son tamp down decomposed granite with nifty tamper-downer-thing purchase at hardware store.  Dogs can be like cats, they love to lie down right in the middle of whatever you are doing.

I line the edges with rock and voila…pathway. 

The second technique will be the same as first minus permeable weed-block fabric. If you really must know, I am trying out the second technique because I ran out of weed-block fabric.

My landscaper (who I can't afford anymore) never uses it. He says that you don’t need to, so we shall see which technique works best.