(DEL MAR) -- Homeowners and garden enthusiasts will have a field day at the 20th Anniversary Spring Home/Garden Show, March 4-6 at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. Wear comfortable shoes and plan to spend the day traversing the 5-acre show where 500 exhibitors will display products and services for the home – from kitchens, spas, flooring and windows, to BBQs, awnings, and even pets! Then, take a rest at one of the free non-stop seminars. Or, peruse the 21 display gardens housed in the Garden Masters building where theatrical lighting, sounds of trickling fountains, and sheer creativity make for a spectacular collection totaling thousands of square feet.
This special show feature, “The Garden Masters,” showcases the landscape design and installation ingenuity of San Diego’s finest designers and firms. Each of the professional participants creates a full garden just for this show that will inspire ideas for your own outdoor retreat – whether it’s an urban garden in a small space or one with lush meandering meadows with child-friendly features.
“The theme, ‘The Garden Masters,’ each year remains the same as it embodies the spirit of the show and the inspiration of the designers,” said Lawrence Bame, promoter of the 20th Anniversary Spring Home/Garden Show. “Each participating Garden Master creates a garden design theme. The variety is always clever and creative, and appropriate for local gardens.
Visitors to the Garden Masters building will see a broad and diverse range of fine professional skills and products available in San Diego where we enjoy abundant world-class resources.”
To create this show feature, the Garden Masters will bring in more than 2,000 yards of soil, 375 palettes of landscaping blocks, 300 boxed specimen trees and shrubs, tons of stones; plus 6,000 gallons of water to fill water features, ponds and waterfalls.
Just outside the Garden Masters building is the Garden Marketplace, where hundreds of different kinds of plants grown especially for our area are available for sale -- and the people who grow them are standing by to discuss them in great detail. These are the grass roots gardeners you’d love to know, who passionately band together in plant societies and garden clubs. Discover the “secret” nurseries of San Diego and buy directly the dynamite plants that will make your garden pop. Most are not available from large commercial dealers. From beginners to experts there’s everything gardeners want in one place at one time.
To further quench gardeners’ insatiable appetite for information, the San Diego Horticultural Society is sponsoring seminars by leading gardening experts such as Eddie Carrington, III, “The Bug Man” from Knight Pest Control. A regular on local TV, The Bug Man is not Mr. Chemical! Comical and knowledgeable, Carrington -- who actually likes bugs -- will explain how to take care of issues with ants and garden pests in a safe and sane manner.
What if you could make your grass look as luxurious as the turf at the Aviara Four Seasons Resort golf course? Now you can. Kevin Kienast, Aviara’s golf course superintendent, is an expert on grass and turf management. He’ll share valuable tips about San Diego-friendly grasses and how to care for them.
If you can’t get enough of color, Evelyn Weidner will show you how to Color Up Your Garden. Weidners’ Gardens is an institution in the San Diego area providing fine color plants. A few years ago they expanded their selection with a consortium of plant researchers and growers throughout the world dedicated to bringing the best color plants.
Show hours are from noon 7 p.m., Friday, March 4; 10 a.m. 7 p.m., Saturday, March 5; and 10 a.m. 5 p.m., Sunday, March 6. Admission is $12.00; children under 12 are free. Seniors receive a special admission price of $6.00 on opening day only; half-price tickets are available on Friday, Saturday and Sunday after 3 p.m. for $6.00. Free wheelchairs are available.
Both the Spring and Fall Home/Garden Shows at the Del Mar Fairgrounds are produced by Lawrence Bame of Westward Expos in San Diego. For recorded information, call (858) 519-0855, or visit www.springhomegardenshow.com.
