Gardening and growing plants.: Melbourne 2011 Flower Show after thoughts.

By James Wall

In the aftermath of the show, it has given me time to think about my involvement and the efforts of others. This year was particularly relevent to me as we are looking at building a new garden and some retaining walls at home. You suddenly see things in a different light when they are plausible ideas you can utilise yourself.

got these plants the week before from a growers excess stock - lucky !

I used to be involved with the flower show (MIFGS) many years ago as a seedling and potted colour grower. The task was to grow the plants and have them flowering just on time. It was someone elses

job to do the design, drop in and manage the stand during show days. I just had to make sure there were some plants. Scheduling and overseeing the crop - an activity with nerves that begin much earlier than the show. You have a few tricks up your sleeve to speed or slow down the crop but the biggest influence is of course the weather. Too warm and the flowers come out early and too cold and they don't come out at all - ouch, that would look bad. Of course you can always schedule two crops and hope to sell the one you don't use, but this can be expensive.

sorting out which plants to take

This year was different for me. This year I was going to be the designer, plant sourcerer, and drop the display in. It was in fact only a small part of a big site. The Royal Horticultural Society asked me to do the display in front of their hanging basket competition. This sounded good - not to much pressure, and they wanted plenty of colour. They asked me what I was doing. I just said it was a red and silver garden and that was pretty much it.

now what exactly was going where ?

I must say I have huge respect for Martin Semken and Joh Patrick. These are people I have observed and admired for the companies they run. Martin landscapes and John runs a landscape architect company. These guys PLAN their projects. Sure, they might modify, but they believe you don't start a project until you have a plan. So I began work on what plants I would need.

getting there

To cut down on costs, I decided to pre-order some red and silver plants as a base, and then see what was around closer to the show. Some years there is a lot around, other years no-one has what you need, so i knew their was a risk. After visiting Oasis, there was a nice batch of red hypoestes so I got a large number of these potted up, and ordered some red verbena and petunias and some silverdust. It was 9 weeks until the show, so these should make it from small seedlings - SHOULD !

finished

Just before the show I started asking growers what they had. Initially, the pickings were
slim. It was therefore good to hear that Berwick Nursery had lots of things and they were overstocked so I would get some of it at reduced prices. All up I was probbaly spending a bit over $4000 - nothing like the big budget displays, but this was never going to have a $50,000 budget.

possum proofing on the unfinished first night

Once the setup stage began, I left it to the last few days. This was so the plants would be fresh, as well as the possums having less nights to do any potential damage. I had a chat to one of the landscapers working on the Tree and Shrubgrowers site. These guys had been here for nearly 10 days. Not only was their construction work on a phenominal scale, they were using about 15,000 plants ! My display took me 2 days by myself and used a few less plants.

Tree and Shrub Growers display included 15,000 plants

You could feel some tension just before judging time. People were frantically sweeping the last fragments of imperfection away, but everyone seemed to have done something decent before time was up. Looking around, there was a realisation that my display was going to pale into insignificance compared to the show gardens - but that is not what this show is about. Its about every little effort from every little display adding up to make one very successful show that was attended by well over 110,000 people.

butterfly and ladybird

My respect for the designers, landscpae architects and landscapers has grown, and I always knew there was enough quality wholesale nurseries to provide the high standard of plants required. As a retailer, it made me very happy, and very proud to be associated with such an important industry event.

A few more pics: