Maymont Flower and Garden Show

I haven't gone to the Maymont Flower and Garden Show in several years, so I decided to spend a cold rainy day with a couple of co-workers and head inland to Richmond to see this year's show. The event is a fund raiser for The Maymont Foundation which helps operate Maymont Park in Richmond. The park sits above the James River and was one of my favorite places to go when I was a child. There are acres of unusual trees, a Gilded Age mansion, Italian and Japanese gardens, a small zoo with Virginia native animals as well as other attractions. The F&G show is held at the Richmond Convention Center and was once run entirely by the foundation and its dedicated volunteers, but now it is run by a company called MAC Events. I am sure the decision to let a for-profit company run the event was based solely on financial reasons, but I noticed some definite differences in shows past, and the show I saw today.

It used to be that as soon as you walked in from the parking garage or the street, the smell of fresh cut flowers greeted you and you could see a small sample of the vendors selling all sorts of things interesting to gardeners. This year we walked down a long sterile hall, with no sense of anticipation, and no indication that we were going to a garden show in the main hall. Previously there was a grand entrance leading to the main show floor, but this year you entered through a small side door. Once inside the show was divided in two; half was a home show and the other the flower and garden show. The entrance display is pictured above and gave you the theme of this year's event, which was a good thing because there was little else to indicate what it was.

The above picture is of the Best in Show landscape display, it was done by Ed's Landscaping & Nursery. It was clever and well planted with a wide variety of bulbs, perennials, trees and shrubs. Its theme was the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, and all of the plant material was labeled using broken bits of cups, plates and saucers. My favorite was done by Shipp & Wilson, Inc., and I liked it because it had what I thought was a better use of more unusual plants. Below are a couple of their pots.
Other landscapes displays were attractive and had a few unusual features, but were weakly planted, and some were merely exercises in seeing how many different ways landscaping block and pavers could be used. I did like this dripping bathtub. I also saw a "thinking out of the box" ikebana,
the biggest Clivia I have ever scene,
and I plant I will own this year.
The number of landscape displays was down from years past, and I saw no plants that I have not seen before, or that screamed "take me home". There were fewer vendors and what they offered was less varied, unless you went to the home show side of the event. Here could be found kitchen counters, vinyl siding, sunrooms, mortgage brokers, mop sellers, replacement windows and miracle cookware. Also missing or reduced in number were the various plant societies, government agencies, the art show, and the garden clubs.

Having worked with the Maymont show and others like it in the past, I can appreciate what kind of work goes into them, and what the pressures are for non-profits in creating and organizing a financially viable event. I guess it should be understandable that sometimes it is easier to let someone else manage an event; I only wish it could have been as colorfully varied and as fun as it once was to while away a cold rainy day there in February.